One of the minor themes that has caught my attention throughout my latest pass through scripture in my morning readings is the orthodoxy of our Lord’s teaching during his time in the public eye. Most of the subjects he referenced came directly out of the Law, Psalms, Prophets and wisdom literature with which the Jews were extremely familiar, and his take on these subjects was entirely in harmony with all the writers of the Old Testament from one end to another.
Now, it is certainly true that he reframed these ancient concepts in new ways appropriate to his own generation, but he never left himself open to the charge of preaching heresy. His doctrine was in every respect firmly moored to the scripture that he himself insisted cannot be broken.
The Shepherd of Israel
When we come to the “good shepherd” teaching of John 10, we find Jesus riffing on a theme most familiar to us from the Psalms. His first century audience had no doubt sung these words together: “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock.” That’s Asaph in Psalm 80. Like so many other things he taught, the shepherd and sheep metaphor was not original to Jesus. Isaiah wrote that the Lord God will “tend his flock like a shepherd”. On the eve of Judah’s first diaspora, Jeremiah assured the people of God, “He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.”
We may observe that the OT shepherd figure had a fundamentally national significance. It pictured the twelve tribes as a great flock of sheep, and assured them God would keep his promises concerning the nation despite its corporate failings. Israel was in the hands of God, where it was safe for all time. The devout in Israel surely treasured these precious thoughts during our Lord’s time on earth, especially with Judea and Galilee as provinces in the Roman Empire, and the Jewish nation as thoroughly incapable of self-determination under the thumb of Rome as during its dispersion throughout Babylon and later Persia.
The Lord My Shepherd
But the writers of the OT did not stop there. The shepherd metaphor is not just national but very, very personal. Think of Psalm 23, where David depicts the Lord not just as shepherd of the flock at large, but also a shepherd to everyone who places his trust in God. He’s “my” shepherd, not just “ours”. He makes “me” to lie down in green pastures, not just “us”. It’s no wonder Christians relate so intensely to that psalm. Jews in the first century surely did too.
Now Jesus picks up this OT theme in John 10. “Truly, truly, I say to you,” he begins, “he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.”
All good so far. Nothing unorthodox about that. Sheep, shepherds and sheepfolds were all familiar territory.
An Extravagant Claim?
What’s new is something the Jews may have perceived as a rather extravagant claim: “I am the door of the sheep.” A carpenter’s son from Nazareth is identifying himself as the exclusive way into the refuge in which God keeps his people safe from harm, feeds and cares for them.
So then, Jews paying attention didn’t have to wait for the Lord’s assertion in verse 30 that “I and the Father are one” to get offended. If they were actually registering and processing his metaphor, Jesus had already declared his identification as the true Shepherd of the OT scriptures by verse 7, attributing to himself a role that in the religious Jewish mindset belonged exclusively to God. From the very beginning, he boldly laid claim to the exclusive property of YHWH. They were not merely God’s sheep, they were “my sheep”.
Back to Genesis
Yet even in this Jesus was not being remotely heretical. He was still very much in harmony with the writings of the prophets. All the way back in Genesis, the father of the nation had prophesied of a Shepherd, one who was Israel’s rock. Yet he was also a human being, not just a remote, divine source of protection. He had to be, because he would come “from” Jacob himself:
“[Joseph’s] arms were made agile by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (from there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel).”
It may be more obscure than Psalm 23, but there’s good reason to think that passage is deliberately Messianic, though it’s unlikely Jacob himself understood fully what he was saying. John Gill writes:
“Some think that Christ is principally meant, who in his office capacity was from the mighty God of Jacob, a Shepherd of his providing and appointing, and a stone of his laying.”
Among these commentators was Nachmahides, a 13th century Catalonian rabbi who identified the stone of Genesis 49:24 with the stone that the builders rejected in Psalm 118, a scripture Jesus would also pick up and apply to himself. The pairing of those two familiar names of Christ makes me suspect that old Spanish Jew was on the right track.
Stones Again
As much as the claims of Jesus drove the Jews into a murderous rage — they picked up stones “again” to stone him and, yet again, none of those stones got thrown — not a word he said was disharmonious with the writers of the Old Testament. These men anticipated one who would be both Shepherd and Stone to those who believed.
Perhaps the Jews’ real problem was this: that the prophesied Shepherd was no longer their exclusive property. Jesus goes on:
“I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
Depicting Jews as sheep was fine, but any reference to Gentiles tended to drive them over the edge. Did they catch this one? Who can say. Nevertheless, the blessing of the Gentiles through Messiah was yet another Old Testament theme, and nobody present could deny it. They might hate it, but they couldn’t deny it. “All the families of the earth.” “A light for the nations.” “My name will be great among the Gentiles, says the Lord of hosts.”
Never Man Spake
In any case, the more I read the Old Testament, the more I understand why Jesus was allowed to go on so long antagonizing the religious leadership of Israel. For three years, he provoked them at every turn. We may ascribe his miraculous preservation from harm for such a lengthy period of ministry to God if we like, or to the Lord’s own discernment. Either is perfectly reasonable. His enemies could not take him until the time was right for him to offer himself on our behalf. Moreover, knowing when they were reaching their limit, he often withdrew unexpectedly out of their reach.
But another contributing factor was this: the Jews could not refute what he was saying because it was absolutely orthodox in every respect. There was good reason so many of the faithful in Israel believed in him.
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