10:31-33 Clearly the Jews understood Jesus to be claiming more than simple agreement with God in thought and purpose but equality with the Father as deity. They prepared to stone Him for blasphemy.370They believed Jesus was blaspheming because He was claiming to be God (cf. 5:18; 8:59). Before they could act Jesus asked them for which of His many noble, beautiful works (Gr. erga kala) they were stoning Him. This question confronted them with the incongruity of executing a man for restoring people who had suffered from handicaps. Jesus' miracles testified that He was doing divine work. However the Jews did not think this through but responded that it was not for His works but for His words that they were going to kill Him. The reader should realize by now that Jesus was exactly who He claimed to be, one with the Father and more than a mere mortal. A man was not making Himself out to be God, but God had made Himself a man (1:1, 14, 18).
If Jesus did not really claim to be God, He could easily have corrected the Jews' misunderstanding here. The fact that He did not is further proof that the Jews correctly understood that He was claiming to be God.
10:34 Jesus proceeded to point out that the Jews' authoritative revelation, the Old Testament, proved His claim. He cited Psalm 82:6 to show that the Old Testament used the word "god"(Heb. elohim) to refer to persons other than God Himself. If God spoke of people as "gods,"why should the Jews object if Jesus implied that He was a god?
The identity of the people whom God addressed as gods in Psalm 82:6 is debatable. The most popular and probable view is that they were Israel's judges who were functioning as God's representatives and so were in that sense little gods (Ps. 82:1-4; cf. Exod. 21:6; 22:8).371Another view is that these gods were angels.372This seems unlikely since the contrast in view in the psalm is between God and mere man, not angels. A third view is that God was addressing the whole nation of Israel when He gave them the Law. He spoke to the people as His sons and in this sense meant that they were gods.373However the contrast between God as the true Judge (Ps. 82:1, 8) and the people whom He rebuked for judging falsely (Ps. 82:2-7) seems to favor the first view.
10:35-36 The clause "the Scripture cannot be broken"means that man cannot annul it, set it aside, or prove it false.
"It means that Scripture cannot be emptied of its force by being shown to be erroneous."374
Jesus' statement affirms the unity, authority, and inerrancy of Scripture. Jesus held a very high view of Scripture. His point was that it was inconsistent for the Jews to claim the Old Testament as their authority (v. 34) and then to disregard something that it said because they did not agree with it. It was inconsistent for them specifically to stone Jesus for claiming to be God and the Son of God when the Old Testament spoke of humans as gods and as God's sons.
"In the singular he grapheusually means a single passage of Scripture, and the verb translated broken(luo) is used in v. 18 of disregarding the letter of the law. The meaning here is this passage of Scripture cannot be set aside as irrelevant to the matter under discussion'."375
Jesus did not use this argument to claim that He was God. He used it to stall His critics. He wanted them to see that the divine terms that He was using to describe Himself were terms that the Old Testament itself also used of human beings. They could not logically accuse Him of blasphemy because the Father had set Him aside and sent Him into the world with a special mission. He was a legitimate Son of God for this reason.
As the Jews had sanctified their temple after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanies, so God had sanctified His Son. The Jews celebrated the sanctification of their physical temple with the feast of Dedication, but they were unwilling to accept the spiritual temple that replaced it, namely Jesus.
10:37-38 Jesus next identified the evidence that His critics should consider, namely His works, including His miracles (cf. v. 25). He acknowledged that verbal claims were not sufficient in themselves. The Jews should learn from them and continue to learn from them that He was doing the same kinds of good works that God did. Jesus manifested divine compassion and divine power in His works. These traits also marked God's works.
10:39 Jesus' critics correctly understood His latest words (v. 38) as a claim to equality with the Father. Therefore they again tried to seize Him. Jesus eluded them again because it was not yet time for His passion (cf. 7:30; 8:20). This act was the climax of official antagonism during this period of Jesus' ministry so far.
