John 10:6

The application of the parable was sufficiently obvious; but ταύτην … αὐτοῖς. παροιμία [παρά, οἶμος, out of the way or wayside] seems more properly to denote “a proverb”; and the Book of Proverbs is named in the Sept [73] αἱ παροιμίαι or παροιμίαι Σαλωμῶντος; and Aristotle, Rhetor., 3, 11, defines παροιμίαι, as μεταφοραὶ απʼ εἴδους επʼ εἶδος. But παροιμία and παραβολή came to be convertible terms, both meaning a longer or shorter utterance whose meaning did not lie on the surface or proverbial sayings: the former term is never found in the Synoptic Gospels, the latter never found in John. [Further see Hatch, Essays in Bibl. Greek, p. 64; and Abbot's Essays, p. 82.] This parable the Pharisees did not understand. They might have understood it, for the terms used were familiar O.T. terms; see Ezekiel 34; Psalms 80. But as it had been spoken for their instruction as well as for the encouragement of the man whom they had cast out of the fold, (John 10:7) εἶπεν οὖν πάλιν, Jesus therefore began afresh and explained it to them. ἐγὼ εἰμι ἡ θύρα τῶν πρόβατων. I, and no other, am the door of the sheep. [Cf. the Persian reformer who proclaimed himself the “Bâb,” the gate of life.] Through me alone can the sheep find access to the fold. Primarily uttered for the excommnuicated man, these words conveyed the assurance that instead of being outcast by his attachment to Jesus he had gained admittance to the fellowship of God and all good men. Not the Pharisees but Jesus could admit to or reject from the fold of God.

[73] Septuagint.