a stone into his sling and landed it just in front of the straying sheep’s nose as a warning to turn back. He had his staff, a short wooden club which had a lump of wood at the end often studded with nails. It usually had a slit in the handle at the top, through which a thong passed; and by the thong the staff swung at the shepherd’s belt. His staff was the weapon with which he defended himself and his flock against marauding animals and robbers. He had his rod, which was like the shepherd’s crook. With it, he could catch and pull back any sheep which was moving to stray away. At the end of the day, when the sheep were going into the fold, the shepherd held his rod across the entrance, quite close to the ground; and every sheep had to pass under it (Ezekiel 20:37; Leviticus 27:32); and, as each sheep passed under, the shepherd quickly examined it to see if it had received any kind of injury during the day.
The relationship between sheep and shepherd is quite different in Palestine. In Britain, the sheep are largely kept for killing, but in Palestine largely for their wool. It thus happens that in Palestine the sheep are often with the shepherd for years, and often they have names by which the shepherd calls them. Usually these names are descriptive, for instance, ‘Brown-leg’, ‘Black-ear’. In Palestine, the shepherd went in front and the sheep followed. The shepherd went first to see that the path was safe, and sometimes the sheep had to be encouraged to follow. A traveller tells how he saw a shepherd leading his flock come to a ford across a stream. The sheep were unwilling to cross. The shepherd finally solved the problem by carrying one of the lambs across. When its mother saw her lamb on the other side she crossed too, and soon all the rest of the flock had followed her.
It is strictly true that in this part of the world the sheep know and understand the shepherd’s voice, and that they will never answer to the voice of a stranger. The author and journalist H. V. Morton has a wonderful description of the way in which the shepherd talks to the sheep. ‘Sometimes he talks to them in a loud sing-song voice, using a weird language unlike anything I have ever heard in my life. The first time I heard this sheep and goat language I was on the hills at the back of Jericho. A goat-herd had descended into a valley and was mounting the slope of an opposite hill, when turning round, he saw his goats had remained behind to devour a rich patch of scrub. Lifting his voice, he spoke to the goats in a language that Pan must have spoken on the mountains of Greece. It was uncanny because there was nothing human about it. The words were animal sounds arranged in a kind of order. No sooner had he spoken than an answering bleat shivered over the herd, and one or two of the animals turned their heads in his direction. But they did not obey him. The goat-herd then called out one word, and gave a laughing kind of whinny. Immediately a goat with a bell round his neck stopped eating, and, leaving the herd, trotted down the hill, across the valley, and up the opposite slopes. The man, accompanied by this animal, walked on and disappeared round a ledge of rock. Very soon a panic spread among the herd. They forgot to eat. They looked up for the shepherd. He was not to be seen. They became conscious that the leader with the bell at his neck was no longer with them. From the distance came the strange laughing call of the shepherd, and at the sound of it the entire herd stampeded into the hollow and leapt up the hill after him’ (H. V. Morton, In the Steps of the Master, pp. 154–5). W. M. Thomson in The Land and the Book has the same story to tell. ‘The shepherd calls sharply from time to time, to remind them of his presence. They know his voice, and follow on; but, if a stranger call, they stop short, lift up their heads in alarm, and if it is repeated, they turn and flee, because they know not the voice of a stranger. I have made the experiment repeatedly.’ That is exactly John’s picture.
H. V. Morton tells of a scene that he saw in a cave near Bethlehem. Two shepherds had sheltered their flocks in the cave during the night. How were the flocks to be sorted out? One of the shepherds stood some distance away and gave his peculiar call which only his own sheep knew, and soon his whole flock had run to him, because they knew his voice. They would have come for no one else, but they knew the call of their own shepherd. An eighteenth-century traveller actually tells how Palestinian sheep could be made to dance, quick or slow, to the peculiar whistle or the peculiar tune on the flute of their own shepherd.
Every detail of the shepherd’s life lights up the picture of the good shepherd whose sheep hear his voice and whose constant care is for his flock.
THE DOOR TO LIFE
John 10:7–10
So Jesus said to them again: ‘This is the truth I tell you – I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If any man enter in through me, he will be saved, and he will go in and out, and he will find pasture. The thief comes only to kill and to steal and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.’
THE Jews did not understand the meaning of the story of the good shepherd. So Jesus, plainly and without concealment, applied it to himself.
He began by saying: ‘I am the door.’ In this parable, Jesus spoke about two kinds of sheepfolds. In the villages and towns themselves, there were communal sheepfolds where all the village flocks were sheltered when they returned home at night. These folds were protected by a strong door of which only the guardian of the door held the key. It was to that kind of fold Jesus referred in verses 2 and 3. But when the sheep were out on the hills in the warm season and did not return at night to the village at all, they were collected into sheepfolds on the hillside. These hillside sheepfolds were just open spaces enclosed by a wall. In them, there was an opening by which the sheep came in and went out; but there was no door of any kind. What happened was that at night the shepherd himself lay down across the opening, and no sheep could get out or in except over his body. In the most literal sense, the shepherd was the door.
That is what Jesus was thinking of when he said: ‘I am the door.’ Through him, and through him alone, we find access to God. ‘Through him’, said Paul, we ‘have access to . . . the Father’ (Ephesians 2:18). The writer to the Hebrews calls him ‘the new and living way’ (Hebrews 10:20). Jesus opens the way to God. Until Jesus came, people could think of God only as, at best, a stranger and as, at worst, an enemy. But Jesus came to show people what God is like, and to open the way to him. He is the door through whom alone entrance to God becomes possible.
To describe something of what that entrance to God means, Jesus uses a well-known Hebrew phrase. He says that through him we can go in and come out. To be able to come and go unmolested was the Jewish way of describing a life that is absolutely secure and safe. When people can go in and out without fear, it means that their country is at peace, that the forces of law and order are supreme, and that they enjoy perfect security. The leader of the nation is to be one who can bring them out and lead them in (Numbers 27:17). The person who is obedient to God is said to be blessed when he comes in and blessed when going out (Deuteronomy 28:6). A child is one who is not yet able by himself to go out and to come in (1 Kings 3:7). The psalmist is certain that God will keep him in his going out and in his coming in (Psalm 121:8). Once anyone discovers, through Jesus Christ, what God is like, a new sense of safety and of security enters into life. If life is known to be in the hands of a God like that, the worries and the fears are gone.
