John 10:22-42

Third Section: 10:22-42. The Second Discourse.

In chap. John 7:19-24, we have seen Jesus return, in a discourse pronounced at the feast of Tabernacles, to the fact of the healing of the impotent man (chap. 5), and thus finish His justification of Himself which was begun at Jerusalem several months before (John 10:17-42), at the preceding feast. The same is the case here. In the second part of chap. John 10:22-42, He resumes the thread of the discourse pronounced after the cure of the man who was born blind, at the feast of Tabernacles, and thus completes the teaching begun in the previous visit. We have explained this mode of action (vol. I., p. 450). The exasperation of His adversaries in the capital not permitting Him to treat the questions in full, He takes them up with a new beginning at a succeeding visit.

The feast of the Dedication (John 10:22) was celebrated about the middle of December. Two months must therefore have elapsed between the feast of Tabernacles and this feast. Where did Jesus pass all this time? As no change of place is indicated and as, in John 10:42, Jesus is plainly again in Jerusalem, Hengstenberg, Meyer, Weiss, and others infer from this that Jesus remained during this whole period in the capital and its neighborhood; the last named, without hesitation, treat as a harmonistic expedient every opposite idea. But there is nothing less certain than the conclusion thus drawn from the silence of John. At the end of chap. 5 the evangelist does not in any way mention the return of Jesus to Galilee, and yet it is there that the Lord is found again in the beginning of chap. 6. Still more; there is nothing more improbable than so prolonged a sojourn of Jesus in Jerusalem or in its neighborhood at this time. Let us recall all the precautions which Jesus had been obliged to take, in order to repair to that city at the feast of Tabernacles, that He might give to this visit the character of a surprise. Why? Because, as is said in John 7:1, “Jesus would not go into Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him.”

And yet in such a state of things, He could have remained two whole months peaceably in Jerusalem in the presence of the hostile party, and after the conflict had been still further aggravated by the violent scenes related in chaps. John 7:1 to John 10:21! Such a sojourn could only have determined the catastrophe before the time (John 7:6). This impossible supposition is, moreover, positively incompatible with John's narrative. In the discourse in John 10:25-30, Jesus reproduces in substance that which He had pronounced after the cure of the man who was born blind; He even expressly cites it (John 10:26: as I said to you). This fact implies that it was the first time that He found Himself face to face with the same hearers since the feast of Tabernacles, where He had used this allegory of the shepherd and the sheep. Finally, this supposition of a sojourn of two months in Judea between the feast of Tabernacles and that of the Dedication is certainly false, if the narrative of St. Luke is not a pure romance. Luke describes in the most circumstantial and dramatic way the departure of Jesus from Galilee, and His farewell to that province, in order to repair to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51 ff.). He shows how Jesus gave to this act the most striking notoriety by the solemn threatenings addressed to the cities where He had accomplished His ministry, and by the sending out of the seventy disciples, who should prepare His way in southern Galilee, as far as Peraea, that is to say, in all the country through which He was about to go to Jerusalem for the last Passover. How could this departure accomplished with such great publicity be identified with the journey to the feast of Tabernacles mentioned by John in chap. 7, a journey which, according to John 10:10, was made as it were in secret and which brought Jesus suddenly to Jerusalem?

It is to this, however, that the matter must resolve itself, if, after the journey in John 7, Jesus did not return to Galilee. Would it be true historic impartiality to condemn purely and simply one of the two narratives, when they can be so easily reconciled with each other! Jesus, after the feast of Tabernacles, returned to Galilee which He had left so suddenly, just as He had returned thither after the feast of Purim (end of chap. 5). He resumed His work there also for a certain time. Then (Luke 9:51 ff.) He called upon His adherents to sever the last bonds, in order to follow Him to Jerusalem; He sent before Him the seventy disciples, to the end of preparing by this means the last appeal which He desired Himself to address to the cities and villages of southern Galilee which had not yet been visited, and it was then that He pronounced the condemnation of the cities on the borders of the lake of Gennesareth, the constant witnesses of His ministry. This prolonged pilgrimage, the account of which fills nine Chapter s of the Gospel of Luke (Luke 9:51 to Luke 18:18), must have been interrupted, according to this same Gospel a strange circumstances by a brief journey to Jerusalem; for the story in Luke 10:38-42 (Jesus in the house of Martha and Mary) which is placed, one knows not how, in the midst of this journey, transfers the reader all at once to Bethany, and the parable of the Good Samaritan, which immediately precedes, seems also to be connected with a visit to Judea. What means this excursion to Jerusalem implied in the narrative of Luke, perhaps without a knowledge of it on his part (for he does not mention Bethany)? How is it possible not to be struck with the remarkable coincidence between this journey and the journey to the feast of the Dedication related by John? After this rapid excursion to Jerusalem, Jesus proceeds to resume His slow journeying in the south of Galilee; then He crosses the Jordan to go into Peraea, as is distinctly stated by Matthew and Mark. This sojourn in Peraea, a little while before the Passion, is the point where the four Gospel narratives meet together. Compare indeed Matthew 19:1; Mark 10:1, and Luke 9:51; then Luke 18:15 ff., where the parallelism recommences between the narrative of this last writer and that of the other two Synoptics (the presentation of the young children, the coming up of the rich young man), and finally John 10:40-42. While following their own particular course, the four narratives are thus without difficulty harmonized.

The following passage includes an historical introduction (John 10:22-24), a first address of Jesus, in which He shows the Jews the moral separation which exists between them and Himself (John 10:25-31), and a last teaching by means of which He seeks yet once more to remove what was for them the great stumbling-stone, the accusation of blasphemy (John 10:32-39). The passage closes with the description of the sojourn in Peraea (John 10:40-42).