John 11:51-52 - Exposition

The evangelist discerned the presence of a deeper meaning in his words not intended by himself. As Balaam and Nebuchadnezzar and even Pharaoh had uttered unconscious or unwilling prophecies, and as in all genuine prophecies there are meanings meant by God beyond what the utterer of them at all conceived possible. So here. This he spake not from himself: but being high priest that awful, critical year, he prophesied . The high priest was believed in ancient times to have the power of drawing from Urim and Thummim the Divine decisions as to future events: "He saved others; himself he cannot save!" ( Mark 15:31 ); when the people said, "His blood be upon us" ( Matthew 27:25 ); when Pilate, by unconscious prophecy, ironically declared him to be "King of the Jews" ( Matthew 27:37 ). Wunsche quotes a curious case of unconscious prophecy, which the rabbinical writers attributed to Pharaoh's daughter, when she forecast the future legislator in the infant derelict. The substance of the prophetic word extracted from his saying was that Jesus should die for the nation. Hengstenberg wisely says , " Caiaphas could not have spoken other than of the λαός ." When John wrote, the difference between the λαός and the ἔθνη had vanished away. Israel had become an ἔθνος , like the rest. And not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one ( λαόν ) the children of God scattered abroad —constitute a new center, life-giving and sacred in the covenant of his blood (cf. 1 John 2:2 , a very remarkable parallelism). Who are the τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ διεσκορπισμένα ? According to some, the dispersed Israelites, but surely the passage corresponds with the "other sheep," of John 10:16 , and refers to all who enter by living faith in him into the full realization of the Divine Fatherhood (see John 1:12 and Ephesians 2:14 ) and their own sonship. Christ is the true Union of Jew and Gentile.