“This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them.”
Jesus used this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them — John notes that the Pharisees to whom Jesus speaks do not grasp the parabolic teaching, marking another moment in John's theme of spiritual blindness among Israel's leaders. The 'figure of speech' (paroimia) is a veiled teaching that requires spiritual perception to understand. This incomprehension sets up Jesus' more direct I-Am statements that follow, moving from parable to explicit self-declaration.
Church Fathers on John 10:6
Our Lord feeds by plain words, exercises by obscure. For when two persons, one godly, the other ungodly, hear the words of the Gospel, and they happen to be such that neither can understand them; one says, What He said is true and good, but we do not understand it: the other says, It is not worth attending to. The former, in faith, knocks, yes, and, if he continue to knock, it shall be opened to him. The latter shall hear the words in Isaiah, If you will not believe, surely…
Catena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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