John 10:8

John 10:8. All that came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. In the similitude of the door, Jesus had declared that it was through Him alone that the flocks could come out of the Jewish fold into the pastures into which they had longed to enter; and this was a truth not depending only upon His proclamation of it, but lying in the very essence of the Old Testament dispensation. The prophecies had fixed the thoughts of all true Israelites on ‘Him that cometh,' and had shown them that until His coming their hopes could not be fulfilled. But some had forgotten this, and had falsely claimed the place that belonged to Jesus, each deceiver pretending that he himself was the medium through which God's people were to be led to the satisfaction of their hopes. But those who trusted in God and waited patiently for Him were kept by Him from these deceivers: ‘the sheep did not hear them.'

Such is the general sense of this verse; it is less easy to fill up the outline it presents. We may well wonder that any should have thought that the words ‘ all that came before me' might include the prophets of the former dispensation; for the context most clearly proves that Jesus is speaking of those who ‘came before Him,' professing to be ‘the door of the sheep.' The word ‘came,' indeed, can hardly be interpreted without the thought of that designation so peculiarly belonging to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, ‘He that cometh.' No one else has a right thus to say ‘I come,' ‘I have come,' ‘I came.' The idea of taking the work of Jesus in hand lies in ‘came.' When, accordingly, setting aside the thought of all true prophets, we ask who they are to whom this description applies, we naturally think, in the first instance, of false Messiahs, of whom many appeared in Jewish history. It may be said that we have no record of a claim to Messiahship earlier than the time when these words were spoken. This answer contains too positive an assertion. There is reason for believing that Judas of Galilee (mentioned in Acts 5:37) was regarded by some as the Christ; and Gamaliel's words respecting Theudas (Acts 5:36) may very possibly cover a similar assumption. The Gospels reveal a state of Messianic hope out of which such deception might easily arise. That popular insurrections were continually occurring is a notorious fact; and if Josephus, our chief authority for the history of this period, fails to give us a careful account of the religious hopes that were fostered by the leaders of revolt, his character and aims as a historian are a sufficient explanation of his silence. But whether the thought of false Messiahs is admissible or not, the meaning of the words must extend much farther, and must embrace all who had sought to turn the people from waiting for the promise which God had given, or had substituted other principles of national life for the hope of the Messiah. Such had long been the practical effect of the rule and teaching of Pharisees and Sadducees. These men had sat in the seat of Moses to make void the law and to extinguish the promise by their vain traditions, and for their selfish ends; and they are certainly, perhaps mainly, thought of here.