The Feast of Dedication took place three months after tne Feast of Shelters, in December during the cold weather, as 10 :22 indicates. This Feast commemorated the re-dedication of the Temple in 164 B.C. after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes which led to the Jewish rebellion led by Judas Maccabeus. Those who came to Jesus to demand that he say clearly whether or not he was the Messiah, were apparently his opponents, the religious leaders; they tried again to arrest him (10:39). Jesus' reply to these men (10:25) was that what he had already said and done was sufficient witness to who he was; the unbelief of his opponents made them spiritually blind. Those who believed in Jesus knew who he was (10:27); they could never be forced away from him; they were in the Father's care (10:28-29). Then followed the most staggering claim of the many that Jesus had made about himself, but it brought together everything else that he had said; 'The Father and I are one' (10:30). Jesus, in his words and actions, was revealing God to the world. What Jesus said was either total madness or totally, uniquely true. His opponents understood it not only as madness but as blasphemy of the worst kind, demanding the death of the man who had said it (10:31-33). Jesus refused to modify his claim and- referred again to his actions which witnessed to who he was (10:32). His reply to the anger of his opponents (10:34-38) began in a way strange to us but intelligible to those used to the arguments of the rabbis. He quoted from Psalm 82:6 in which God spoke to the rulers and judges of Israel who were entrusted with maintaining justice amongst their people; because they were given a task by God to act as his earthly representatives, they were called 'gods', 'sons of the most High'. As the teachers of the Law believed that the Scriptures were the actual Word of God, how was it that the ancestors of the Jews accepted that they were the sons of the most High God, in the words of this Psalm, but the opponents of Jesus rejected his claim to be Son of God? They themselves had called themselves the sons of God (8:41). They should have been able to see the significance of his actions if they had not been spiritually blind.

After this confrontation, Jesus left Jerusalem for a time and went again to the Jordan valley, where many ordinary people believed in him (10:40-42). .

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