John 10 - Introduction

Second Cycle: Chapts. 9 and 10.

The consequences of the first point of departure, the healing of the impotent man, chap. 5, are exhausted. A new miracle produces a renewed breaking out of hatred among the Jews and calls forth a new phase of the conflict. Nevertheless, one feels that the worst of the conflict is past. The people of Judea, those even who had shown themselves for a moment disposed to believe, are offended, like the Galileans, at the absolute spirituality of the promises of Jesus. He begins from this time to abandon that lost community to its blindness; He labors especially to the end of gathering about Himself the small number of those who are to form the nucleus of the future community. So the incisive character of the preceding conversations gives place to the tone of resignation and of saddened love.

1. Chap. 9: a new miracle opens the second cycle;

2. Chap. John 10:1-21: with this miracle is connected a first discourse, and then the representation of its immediate effects;

3. Chap. John 10:22-42: a second discourse, which, although given a little later and at another visit, is, in respect to its subject, only a continuation of the first; finally, a brief historical notice.