John10chapter 10

Every detail of the shepherd picture is working practice. Village flocks were penned overnight in a common walled fold with a single opening and a doorkeeper; in the open country a shepherd slept across the gap himself, which is why Jesus can call himself both the shepherd and the door. Several flocks shared a fold, and each shepherd separated his own in the morning by calling — the sheep genuinely learned one voice. And Middle Eastern shepherds lead from the front rather than driving from behind.

The hired hand is not a slur but a job description. A man working someone else's flock for a wage had no stake in the animals, and no wage was worth being mauled for. Wolves in that country hunted at dusk and scattered a flock before taking one.

The feast named is Dedication — Hanukkah — and the date it commemorates is why the question asked there is loaded. It marked the cleansing and rededication of the temple after Antiochus IV desecrated it in the second century BC, and the Maccabean fighters who won that freedom were the last men to be hailed as deliverers of the nation. Asking, at that feast, how long will you keep us in suspense, tell us plainly if you are the Messiah, was asking whether he intended to do it again.

Solomon's Colonnade ran along the eastern edge of the temple platform, a long covered walkway with a roof and columns. John says it was winter — the colonnade was the sheltered side, out of the wind coming up from the Judean hills, and the natural place to stand and talk in December.