John 10:11-13

“ I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep. 12. But the hireling, who is not a shepherd and to whom the sheep do not belong, sees the wolf coming and abandons the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters the flock. 13. But the hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care for the sheep. ”

The first picture was all resplendent with the fresh tints of the morning; the second depicted the life and activity of the flock during the course of the day; the third seems to place us at the moment when the shadows of the night are spreading, and when the sheep, brought back to the common inclosure by the shepherd, are suddenly exposed to the attack of the wolf which at evening lies in wait on their path. Jesus here appears again in His character as shepherd. But this third allegory is not confounded with the first. The governing element in the first was the contrast between the shepherd and the thief; in this one which we are about to study, it is the antithesis of the good shepherd and the hireling guardian. The salient feature is not, as in the first picture, the legitimacy of the Messianic mission, but the disinterested love which is the moving cause of it. It is this sentiment which makes Christ not only the shepherd, but the good shepherd.

The word καλός, beautiful, designates with the Greeks goodness, as the highest moral beauty. The sequel will show in what this beauty consists. This word καλός explains the article ὁ, the: He who perfectly realizes this sublime type. Then Jesus indicates the first trait of the character of this shepherd. It is love carried to the point of complete abnegation, even to the entire sacrifice of oneself. Some (Meyer, Luthardt) find in the expression ψυχὴν τιθέναι (literally: to put his life) the idea of a pledge given: Jesus pledges His life as a ransom for ours. But this idea of a ransom is foreign to the imagery of the shepherd and the sheep, and still more to that of the wolf under which the enemy is represented.

This expression may be compared with that which we find in John 13:4: ἱμάτια τιθέναι, to lay aside his garments. The idea is that of laying down His life. Comp. Huther on 1 John 3:16. Keil, however, alleges against this second sense the words ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων, on behalf of the sheep. We must therefore give to τιθέναι the sense of: to place at the disposal of another, to surrender, to sacrifice; comp. John 13:37. In John 10:12, we must not add the article and translate, as Ostervald, Arnaud, Crampon do: who is not the shepherd. Jesus means: who is not a shepherd, who has the place of a hireling. It is not the owner of the flock who acts thus, but a hired servant to whom the owner has intrusted it. Whom did Jesus mean to designate by this person? No one, say some interpreters in reply, particularly Hengstenberg and Weiss: there is here an imaginary figure intended to make prominent by means of the contrast, that of the good shepherd. But in that case it would be strange for it to be described throughout two entire verses as the counterpart of that of the good shepherd, and as quite as real as the latter. Most of the interpreters think that this person repreents the Pharisees. But they would be presented here in too different a light from that in which they were depicted in the two preceding similitudes.

A cowardly guardian is a different thing from a robber and an assailant. And, if the hireling represents the Pharisees, who will then be typified by the wolf? According to Luthardt, this person is the principle hostile to the kingdom of God, the devil, acting by means of all the adversaries of the Church. But Jesus, in chap. 8, has completely identified Pharisaism with the diabolic principle. He cannot therefore represent the first here as a mere hireling, a cowardly friend, the other as a declared enemy. Lange, in his Life of Jesus, understands by the wolf the Roman power. But it was not really under the blows of the Roman power that Jesus fell. Meyer had at first applied the figure of the wolf to all anti-Messianic power, Pharisaism included; but the result of this was that the hireling fleeing before the wolf was the Pharisees fleeing before the Pharisees! He has accordingly abandoned this explanation in the 5th edition. The wolf represents, according to him, the future hireling shepherds in the midst of the Christian Church. But what could have led Jesus to express at that moment an idea like this, and how could His present hearers have caught a glimpse of this meaning? It seems to me that the figure is explained if we recall to mind, on the one hand, the fact that a μισθωτός is a servant for wages, and, on the other, that there were in the theocracy no other accredited and paid functionaries except the priests and Levites.

These were the ones to whom God had officially entrusted the instruction and moral guidance of His people. But, during the most recent times, the Pharisaic party had so far obtained the mastery over the minds of the people, by turning to their advantage the national pride, that whoever, even among the lawful rulers of the theocracy, did not submit to them, was immediately put under the ban and brought into discredit, as in our own days whoever in the Roman Church dares to cope with the spirit of Jesuitism. There were many, undoubtedly, in Israel who would have willingly maintained the truth of God. We have as a proof of this John 12:42, so far as relates to the rulers in general, and Acts 6:7, so far as relates to the priests in particular. But, like so many intelligent and pious bishops in the present Catholicism, they in a cowardly manner kept silent. One man alone had the courage to face this formidable conflict with the dominant party, and to expose His life for the maintenance of the divine truth and for the salvation of the sheep. The: Crucify! crucify! was the answer of Pharisaism, cut to the heart by the “ Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! ” The wolf represents therefore the principle positively hostile to the kingdom of God and to the Messiah, the Pharisees; and the hireling, the legitimate functionaries who by their station were called to fulfill the task which Jesus accomplished by voluntary self-devotion, the priests and Levites, accredited doctors of the law. The passage John 9:16, had already given us a glimpse within the Sanhedrim itself of a party well disposed towards Jesus, but which did not dare openly to oppose the violent threats of the Pharisees against Him. Jesus presents here only the historical factors which have co- operated in the accomplishment of the decree of His death. He has nothing to say of the profound and divine reasons which presided over the decree itself. The word ἁρπάζει, snatches, applies to the individuals whom the wolf assails (αὐτά), while the action of σκορπίζειν, to scatter, extends to the entire flock: τὰ πρόβατα, the flock, a word which we must be careful not to reject with the Alexandrian authorities.