Verses 10-36
THIRD SECTION
Ferment in the Contest between the Elements of Light and Darkness. Formation of Parties, as a Prelude to the full Opposition between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness
IFermentation And Party Division Among The People In General
(A) Christ, The Teacher And The One Sent From Cod, In Opposition To The Human Rabbinical Office, And In Agreement With Moses. His Earthly Descent In Opposition To Descent From Heaven. His Opponents, Who Wished To Kill Him, In Contradiction With Moses, The Prophet Of God, Intending To Return To God
10But when his brethren [brothers] were [had] gone up [to the feast]13 then went he also [he also went] up unto the feast, not openly [as a festal pilgrim], but as it were in secret [as a private person, a non-participant spectator]. 11Then the Jews [The Jews therefore] sought him at the feast, and said, Where is he [that man, ἐκεῖνος]? 12And there was much murmuring among the people [the multitudes, ἐν τοῖς ὄχλοις] concerning him: for some said, He is a good man: [but]14 others said, Nay; but Hebrews 1:0; Hebrews 1:03deceiveth the people [the multitude, τὸν ὄχλον]. Howbeit, no man spake [Yet no one spoke] openly of him, for fear of the Jews.
14Now about the midst of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple and taught. 15And [Then]15 the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned [been schooled as a Rabbi].
16Jesus [therefore]16 answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his thatsent me. 17If any man [one] will do his will [is willing, desirous, anxious to do his will, θέλῃ τὸ θέλημα αὐτοῦ],17 he shall know of [concerning] the doctrine, whether it be of [is from] God, or whether I [in my doctrine] speak [make words, λαλῶ]of18[from] myself. He that speaketh of [from] himself, seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory [the glory of Him] that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness [i.e. no transgression of the law, see John 7:21] is in him. 19Did not Moses give you the law, [?] and yet none of you keepeth the law? [!]18 Why go ye about [Why do you seek] to kill me?
20The people [multitude—not the rulers] answered and said, Thou hast a devil [a demon, δαιμόνιον, a spirit of melancholy]: who goeth about [seeketh] to kill thee?
21Jesus answered and said unto them, I have done one work, and ye all marvel22[on account of it].19 Moses therefore [on this account, for this cause, see note7] gave unto you [the] circumcision (not because [that] it is of [from] Moses, but of23[from] the fathers;) and ye on the Sabbath-day [omit day] circumcise a man. If a man on the Sabbath-day [omit day] receive circumcision that the law of Moses should [may] not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath-day [because I have made sound, or, restored to health a whole man, ὅλον ἄνθρωπον (i.e. the entire body of a man, not only a single member as in circumcision) on a Sabbath]? 24Judge not according to the [omit the] appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
25Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he whom they seek to kill? 26But [And] lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him. Do the rulers27know indeed20 that this is the very [omit very, see note 8] Christ. Howbeit, we know this man [Still, as to this man, we know], whence he is: but when [the] Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is.
28Then [Therefore] cried Jesus in the temple, as he taught, saying [teaching in the temple and saying], Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am29not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. But21I know him; for I am from him, and he hath sent me.
30Then [Therefore] they sought to take [seize] him: but [and yet]22 no man [one] laid hands on him, because his hour was [had] not yet come. 31And many of the people [But of the multitude many]23 believed on him, and said,24 When Christ cometh, will he do25 more miracles [signs] than these26 which this man hath done? 32The Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things [heard the multitude murmuring these things] concerning him: and the Pharisees and the chief priests [the chief priests and the Pharisees]27 sent officers to take [seize] him.
33Then said Jesus [Jesus therefore said] unto them, Yet a little while am I with34you, and then I go unto him that sent me. Ye shall [will] seek me, and shall [will] not find me [me]:28 and where I [then] am, thither [omit thither] ye cannot come.
35Then said the Jews [The Jews therefore said] among themselves, Whither will he [this man] go, that we shall not find him? will he go unto the dispersed [the36Diaspora] among the Gentiles [Greeks] and teach the Gentiles [Greeks]? What manner of saying is this [What is this word] that he said, Ye shall [will] seek me, and shall [will] not find me [me]:16 and where I am, thither [omit thither] ye cannot come.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
John 7:10. Had gone up.—The ἀνέβησαν is pluperfect.
Ibid. Not openly.—That is, not in the festal train, not as a festal pilgrim; but not: by another road, De Wette, etc. (On the Docetism which Baur and Hilgenfeld would find in the words, see Meyer)—But as it were in secret.—This expression denotes a solitary journey, a quiet stay near Jerusalem (perhaps in Bethany), and a subsequent appearance at the feast not incognito, and not in the character of a festal pilgrim, but in the capacity of a prophet coming forth out of concealment to the feast, to point out the insufficiency of the festal symbols in contrast with their real fulfilment in His person. And because He did so appear it is said ὡς “as it were in secret.” This was the character in which He went up, not in which He continued. Meyer is incorrect in saying that this was the final departure of Jesus from Galilee. The present departure of Jesus from Galilee was entirely private; the final departure took place under a great convoy (Matthew 19:1-2; Mark 10:1; Leben Jesu, p. 928). More below, at John 10:22.
John 7:11. The Jews therefore sought him at the feast.—According to John 7:13 the hostile Jews are, of course, primarily intended here. They thought to continue unto death the persecution opened against Jesus in John 5:0. Hence also the expression ἐκεῖνος, “Where is that man?”
John 7:12-13. And there was much murmuring.—An expressive designation of the ferment in the popular mass, and the powerful working of the hostile rulers upon the sentiment of the people. In the division of opinion the friends of Jesus express themselves with timid reserve: He is a good man (ἀγαθός), kind, benevolent. According to the New Testament usage (see Matthew 20:15; Romans 5:7), the term no doubt means something more than “honest, a man of honor” (Meyer); though the attenuation of the confession of Jesus in the period of rationalism could go so far that some one wrote a pamphlet: Jesus and His Disciples were honest People. The confession is evidently suppressed also here. The others more boldly speak out their opposite opinion: He deceiveth the people.
But that the more favorable public opinion concerning Him was already under the terrorism of the hostile party spirit, is told us by the addition: Yet no one [i. e. of the friendly part] spoke openly of him, for fear of the Jews—According to Meyer this last verse includes literally all. “Even the hostile ones were afraid, because, so long as those (the hierarchy) had not yet officially decided, a reversion of their sentiment was conceivable. A faithful picture of bad, Jesuitical domination of the people”. The οὐδείς μέντοι will certainly have a meaning; though the opinion, “He deceiveth the people,” was open enough. The distinction between λέγειν and λαλεῖν must be observed here. Persons on both sides were expressing themselves in a scanty λέγειν; yet did not come to a λαλεῖν παῤῥησίᾳ a full, free talk, concerning Him, because any expression of acknowledgment could easily be communicated by heresy-hunters, and because an unfavorable opinion also might easily have something contrary to form. The bondage of conscience was such that no one ventured to utter fully the thoughts of his heart, before the hierarchy had spoken.
John 7:14. The midst of the feast.—In a seven or eight days’ feast three or four days were now past, and it became clear that He did not intend this time to take part in the observance. If Jesus had come earlier to the place, it is more probable that He lodged in the vicinity than in Jerusalem itself. See above, on John 7:10.
Up into the temple.—It might seem as if by this step He passed from extreme caution to extreme boldness. But even by this new manner of appearance He proves Himself the great Master in the knowledge of men. From this time forth He could safely appear in Judea and Galilee only by suddenly entering a great assembly of the people, and working there. The spirit of reverence for Him, which animated the people, still for a time shielded Him in these situations from His enemies. Thus He made the crown or halo of the popular assembly His faithful guard, so long as the better Messianic spirit of the people recognized in Him the Son of David. He was adorned in the presence of His enemies with the wreath of popular veneration, till this wreath too was torn and withered by the poisonous breath of their enmity. (Leben Jesu, II., p. 932).
And taught.—From the subsequent narrative we may suppose that His teaching related to the feast of tabernacles. So, in John 2:0, His teaching connected itself with the symbolical import of the temple, which He was then for the first time officially visiting; His conversation with the theocratic Nicodemus on the need of real regeneration in order to pass from the old theocracy to the new kingdom of heaven connected itself with the proselyte baptism; His conversation with the Samaritan woman took its turn from the holy wells in Israel; His discourse in John 5:0, from the medicinal spring and the healing; and even in His Galilean discourse in John 6:0 there is a manifest reference to the approaching passover in Jerusalem.
John 7:15. How knoweth this man letters [γράμματαοἶδεν].—First are heard the voices of the adversaries of Jesus. Their first objection is founded on the fact that He is not a promoted Rabbi; the second (John 7:27) on His origin.—The Jews here are evidently the Judaists, and probably, judging from their expressions, scribes, Rabbis. They [the hierarchical opponents, probably members of the Sanhedrin, as in John 11:13.—P. S.] marvelled; they cannot deny that He knows the books and has the gift of teaching; but, full of envy, school-bigotry and statutory zeal, they fall upon the circumstance that He has not studied [μὴ μεμαθηκώς], and is not a regular graduate of the Rabbinical schools. The γράμματα without ἱερά (2 Timothy 3:15) denotes not the Holy Scriptures (ἡ γραφή, according to the Peshito, Luther, Grotius), but literature, the field of learning (in the Vulgate, litteræ, see Acts 26:24).29 The passage is “important against the attempts, ancient and modern, to trace the wisdom of Jesus to human education” (Meyer). The words evidently grope in confusion half way between acknowledgment and denial of His wisdom. But the stress lies not on the concession, but on the questioning. Though He seems to know books, yet there must be some deception about it, since He has not, studied and advanced in the regular prescribed way. A young school-enthusiast trusts not his eyes, trusts not his cars, trusts not even his enthusiasm and his intellectual gain, when he meets a teacher who has the prejudice of the school against him; the old school-enthusiast is at once fully decided in his prejudice by the absence of school-endorsement. The point at which the teaching of Jesus came most in contact with Jewish learning, was the relation of His symbolical interpretation to the Jewish allegorizing (of the Old Testament and its types). It was indeed a relation as between a melon and a gourd; but the appearance of similarity must have struck the eyes of these people more than the difference. Yet, after their manner, regardless of the actual teaching of Jesus, they fell upon His want of legitimation. His doctrine is not delivered as the sacred tradition of the schools, not systematized according to the rules and practice of the school, not legalized as the production of a graduate.
[This testimony of enemies to a fact well known to them, strongly confirms what we otherwise know or must conjecture concerning Christ’s education, or rather the absence in His case of the ordinary ways and means by which other men receive their knowledge. He was neither school-taught [ἀλλο δίδακτος), nor self-taught (αὐτο δίδακτος), nor even God-taught (θεο δίδακτος like inspired prophets) in the usual sense of these terms. No doubt He learned from His mother, He went to the Synagogue, He heard and read the Scriptures, He studied nature and man, and the Holy Ghost descended upon Him at the baptism in Jordan; yet the secret fountain of His knowledge of God and man must be found in His mysterious and unique relation to the Father and derived from direct intuition into the living fountain of truth in God. He was and continued to be the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father who explained Him to us as no philosopher or prophet could do. I quote an appropriate passage from my book on the Person of Christ, p. 34 ff.: “Christ spent His youth in poverty and manual labor, in the obscurity of a carpenter’s shop; far away from universities, academies, libraries, and literary or polished society; without any help, as far as we know, except the parental care, the daily wonders of nature, the Old Testament Scriptures, the weekly Sabbath services of the Synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16), the annual festivals in the Temple of Jerusalem (Luke 2:42 ff.) and the secret intercourse of His soul with God, His heavenly Father … Christ can be ranked neither with the school-trained, nor with the self-trained or self-made men; if by the latter we understand, as we must, those who, without the regular aid of living teachers, yet with the same educational means, such as books, the observation of men and things, and the intense application of their mental faculties attained to vigor of intellect, and wealth of scholarship,—like Shakspeare, Jacob Bœhme, Benjamin Franklin, and others. All the attempts to bring Jesus into contact with Egyptian wisdom, or the Essenic theosophy, or other sources of learning, are without a shadow of proof, and explain nothing after all. He never quotes from books, except the Old Testament. He never refers to secular history, poetry, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, foreign languages, natural sciences, or any of those branches of knowledge which make up human learning and literature. He confined Himself strictly to religion. But, from that centre, He shed light over the whole world of man and nature. In this department, unlike all other great men, even the prophets and the apostles, He was absolutely original and independent. He taught the world as one who had learned nothing from it, and was under no obligation to it. He speaks from divine intuition, as one who not only knows the truth, but is the truth; and with an authority that commands absolute submission, or provokes rebellion, but can never be passed by with contempt or indifference.”—P. S.]
John 7:16. My doctrine (or, teaching) is not mine.—That is, I am no self-taught man in such a sense as to be an upstart and pretender; there is another in whose school I have regularly advanced. With cutting irony He off-sets His teaching against their Rabbinical teaching (both as to form and matter); His authority, the Father, against their authorities, the old Rabbinical masters. The first “My” therefore denotes His discourse (His system, the school He teaches); the second, His authority (the school He has learned in). Meyer: “Οὐκ—ἁλλά here also is not equivalent to tam—quam (Wolf, etc.), but is absolutely exclusive.” Hardly “absolutely,” but only so far as His person is regarded in its human aspect. Tholuck: “His human personality is viewed abstractly by itself, as in John 5:31; John 8:16.” The primary distinction is between the Son sent, who both in word and act executes the ἐντολή of the Father, who speaks what He hears of the Father, and does what the Father shows Him,—between this person and the Father Himself. And He so far views His personality abstractly by itself as He yields to their idea of an independent human person distinct from God.
But his that sent me.—That is, it is not only directly the doctrine of God, but also more than doctrine, the direct message of God to you, a doctrine of the most decisive words of life.
John 7:17. If any one is willing to do his will [ἐάντιςθέλῃτὸθέλημααὐτοῦποιεῖν].—The indispensable condition for understanding the doctrine of Christ. We must be truly turned towards God, in order to recognize the divine, which proceeds from God, as divine. And more particularly, we must be earnestly bent upon the divine in practice, if we would know it in theory as doctrine. Man’s moral θέλειν of the moral θέλημα of God is the condition of man’s intellectual γινώσκειν of the intelligible διδαχή of God. Without the earnestness of doing there is no truth in our knowing; and like cannot know like without a like bent of soul. Plato, Lys.: “Ὅτι τὸ ὅμοιον τῷ ὁμοίῳ . Comp. Matthew 10:40-42. This condition of willingness to do, that is, of practical effort, has its root in the doing of the truth, or moral sincerity (John 3:21), and develops into the love of God (John 5:42). The point cannot be the doing of the will of God, as against sinners and beginners in knowledge; it is only the θέλειν (which, of course, is the beginning of the doing according to the best of one’s knowledge and conscience, in the form of trying; Romans 7:0). Meyer: “The θέλῃ is not redundant (Wolf, Lösner, and many others), but is the very nerve of the matter; in θέλῃ—θέλημα the suavis harmonia (Bengel) has been noticed.”
His will: 1. The Old Testament revelation (Chrysostom, et al.). 2. The demand of faith in Christ (Augustine, Luther, etc.); or at least 3. In His doctrine (Semler, etc.). 4. Tholuck: “Still further from the truth is the interpretation which makes it even a requirement of faith for proof.” 5. Willing obedience to God in general (Lücke, Meyer).
It is a proposition which, in its universality, certainly refers not merely to believers of revelation; but which, on the other hand, has in view a universal revelation of the divine will. Therefore: He who strives to do the will of God according to the best knowledge he can get on his level of knowledge. This holds even for the heathen; but for the Jews it has special regard to the Old Testament revelation of the will of God (see John 5:38), and now for Christians to the fully developed Christian principles of life; always, however, putting the chief stress on full inward earnestness of moral endeavor (θέλῃ). Meyer: “This passage accordingly contains undoubtedly the testimonium internum, but not in the ordinary theological sense, as applying to persons already believers, but as applying to persons not yet believers, when the divine doctrine addresses them.” The testimonium internum, upon candid consideration, leads on from the subjective testimonium of calm conviction, as well as of unsatisfied doubt and longing, into the objective testimonium Spiritus Sancti, which by all means is promised in the γν̓ώσεται περί, κ. τ. λ. It is false to ask whether, in the conflict in Romans 7:7, the unconverted man, abstractly viewed, or the converted, is the subject; and it is equally false to introduce this division here. The subject is the actual living elect in their motion towards God under the drawing of His grace.30
He shall know concerning the doctrine, etc.—The γνώσεται is emphatic. He shall have not only assurance of faith, but living certainty of discernment. And if the demand was universal, so is the promise in the first instance: “He shall know concerning the doctrine,” indefinitely, of every sort of religious doctrine, whether, and how far, it be from God. But from this the other thing immediately follows: He shall know whether Jesus only speaks (λαλῶ) on His own authority (as an uncalled, self-taught individual), or whether, on the contrary, His word be not absolutely the doctrine (from God). Cameron is right, therefore, in making a distinction here between the moral demand and the theoretical doctrine (which Tholuck disputes); only the theoretical doctrine of Christ is as far from being merely theoretical, as an inward ethical bent or nisus is from being merely practical or in the ordinary sense moral. See John 3:12.
John 7:18. He that speaketh from himself seeketh his own glory, etc.—The proof that He does not speak from Himself. The mark of one who speaks from himself is ambition; ho would glorify himself. He, therefore, who would not glorify himself, but God, speaks not from himself; ho is true. The direct applying of the proof Christ leaves to themselves. The argument, however, has not an abstract, syllogistic form; it is enriched by a term of life. In the first place a second proof is inserted into the first. If the person sent seeks only the honor of the prince or lord who sends him, his message is to be trusted; he is true. And he is true, because no unrighteousness, no unfaithful conduct appears in his message. It may be depended upon, that what he says his master has said to him. Freedom from all assumption bespeaks the real teacher; if he had received nothing to teach, he could not possibly have taught. Personal disinterestedness bespeaks the commissioned agent; if he had received nothing to deliver, he would not have appeared. And freedom from all assumption and self-interest evince themselves in the undivided energy with which the one sent seeks the honor of the master who sends him. This therefore constitutes the difference between a false Messiah and the true. The motive and the centre of gravity of the false Messiah lie in self-glorification; those of Christ lie in the glorification of the Father, to whom He attributes everything He says and does.
Thus He has proved that He is true in His doctrine; even intellectually true, because there is no moral obliquity in Him, no self-seeking or unfaithfulness to the throne which sends Him. As in men the intellectual knowing of the truth comes as the reward of moral endeavor, so in Christ the truth of His doctrine is founded in the righteousness of His life. Ἀδικία therefore, is not. equivalent here to ψεῦδος (Grotius, et al.); though connected with it, inasmuch as ἀδικία would produce ψεῦδος. Self-seeking darkens knowledge.
John 7:19. Did not Moses give you the law?—The sudden transition of Jesus here from the defensive to the offensive has led to the hypothesis of an intermediate conversation (Kuinoel) or act between John 7:18-19; for which there is really no ground at all. We must remember: 1. That since the feast of Purim, at which “the Jews” had already begun capital process against Him, Jesus had not met them, but had on their account avoided Judea, and now re-encountered them for the first time. 2. That all their “assaults and negations” (Meyer), including their last attack on His right to teach, covered the design of bringing Him to a capital conviction. 3. That it perfectly accorded with the openness and wisdom of Jesus to draw out their hidden plan, and to make it a subject of talk before all the people in the temple. The only protection against secret adversaries is to expose their designs with the most relentless publicity. 4. That Christ has already in fact introduced the offensive by the last words of the defensive: “There is no unrighteousness in him” (as they had charged on the ground of the Sabbath cure).—Moses, quoting their highest authority.—Give you the law.—Of course the law in general; for he who breaks one commandment transgresses the whole law. It is not specifically the prohibition of murder (Nonnus), nor Sabbath law (Kuinoel), which is intended here by “the law.” But that the rebuke does particularly refer to the prohibition of killing, is shown by what follows.
And yet none of you keepeth the law.—A general address. Because there is in you no true striving to do the will of God, ye cannot know My divine mission. And how truly this is the case with you in general (the “none” representing the spirit of the people and its general aim) appears from the fact that ye (the [hierarchical] Judaists in the first instance) seek to kill Me. Yet the people are unconsciously implicated and included in this charge, because the highhanded conduct of the hierarchs has its occasion in the mental indolence of the laity. The people must know that they hate Him and “persecute Him without cause.”
John 7:20. The multitude answered and said, etc.—The [hierarchical] Judaists are speechless under the charge of Christ, because they consider it dangerous to have their plan so soon canvassed before the people. Their silence is a malicious reserve, like that of Judas in John 6:70. The people, however, take the accusation to themselves, thinking it wholly unfounded. As “they of Jerusalem,” who speak in John 7:25, very well knew of the project, which had already become notorious in Jerusalem, it must be the festal pilgrims who speak here, who were still far not only from the design announced, but even from any knowledge of it.
Thou hast a demon [δαιμόνιον.]—The term here is figurative, drawn from the belief in demoniacal possession. It was probably a proverbial expression in this general sense, especially to denote gloominess, melancholy, laboring under jealous, brooding suspicions. So it was compassionately said of John the Baptist: “He hath a demon” (Matthew 11:18). Men pitied a man otherwise so able and devout. Here also the reply seems to be not malicious [Hengstenberg and older commentators], but rather sympathizing. “Not an expression of malice, but of surprise that a man who could teach so finely, could think of a thing which they considered morally impossible and a mere hallucination” (Meyer). But the same expression in John 8:48; John 10:20 is shown by the connection to be evil-minded. Chrysostom and others take the ὁχλος to be the rulers, and their question to be a dissimulation. This obliterates the true sense of the transaction.
John 7:21. And said unto them, I have done one work.—Jesus, continuing His train of thought, advances as clearly beyond the reply of the people as He did in John 6:70 beyond the answer of Peter. His piercing and foreseeing knowledge contrasts with a stupidity which sets up against it, and which considers Jesus in this case even smitten with a pitiable delusion. It is not an inaccuracy (Tholuck) that John represents the ὄχλος [the multitude] as answering the Lord. Christ intends to bring before the ὄχλος the malicious inquisitorial conduct of the hierarchy. The ὄχλος must be made privy to the secret affair and shown their unconscious complicity in the wickedness.
The one work is the healing on the Sabbath, John 5:2. (Olshausen needlessly inserts here the subsequent murderous designs). The Lord cannot here mean that He has done only one miracle in Jerusalem (see John 3:1). The antithesis lies in the καὶ πάντες θαυμ. It is not the miracle, but the work that here bears the stress; and it is not wonder at a miracle that is meant, but surprise at one work, though not terror, as Chrysostom and others have it. And in the surprise of all an indignation (Grotius) on the part of many is also unquestionably implied. Offence at that work had therefore spread at least very generally in Jerusalem and among the people. And their morbid condition was manifest in the very fact that they all stared and made an ado over one act of a man who abounded with divine works. The supposed spot upon the one work threatens to eclipse in their view all that has ever filled them with wonder. And even this spot is only in their own vision.
Ye all marvel.—The διὰ τοῦτο is referred by Theophylact, etc., Lücke, [Olsh., De Wette, Stier, Hengstenberg, Ewald, Godet] etc., to the clause preceding (θαυμ.); by Chrysostom, Luther [Grot., Bengel, Luthardt, Meyer, Alford] and others to the clause following.31 But in the latter connection it has been considered by some redundant, by others elliptical (ye ought therefore to know). Meyer has attempted another explanation, which Tholuck considers “tortured.”32
John 7:22. (For this cause) Moses gave unto you the (rite of) circumcision, etc.—Jesus now proves to them from their own law that it is good to heal a sick man on the Sabbath. Moses ordained circumcision for you. Parenthesis: Yet he did not introduce it as strictly a Mosaic law, but confirmed it as a patriarchal law (coming down from the fathers, that is to say, a fundamental religious law of the Abrahamic covenant of promise, Genesis 17:0.) And this patriarchal Mosaic law so outweighs the mere Sabbath-law, that ye not only may, but must circumcise a man on the Sabbath, when the prescribed day (the eighth day, Luke 2:21; Rabbinical passages in Lightfoot; Rabbinical maxim: Circumcisio pellit Sabbatum) falls on a Sabbath. The reason of this higher superiority of the patriarchal law lies in the design of circumcision, to make the man partially (in a symbolical sense) whole. But if this is so, how much more is the Sabbath-law suspended (in the legal point of view suspended, in the higher view fulfilled) by the eternal law of God which enjoins the healing of a man wholly diseased; enjoins it even in legal form in the commandment: Thou shalt not kill.
Christ thus sets forth three sorts of laws: (1) Eternal principles of humanity, as enacted formally in the decalogue; among which is the law not to destroy life, but to preserve it, to heal. (2) Patriarchal fundamental laws of theocratic civilization; among which belongs circumcision. (3) Mosaic law in the narrower sense.To this last class belongs, not indeed that Sabbath-law which is the safe-guard of human nature with its need of rest (the humane and moral Sabbath [grounded in the very constitution of man, and hence dating from creation]), yet doubtless the symbolical and ritual Sabbath with its prohibition of every kind of work as a symbol of the legal theocracy. If, therefore, these Mosaic ordinances must be suspended by patriarchal practice, how much more by the primal laws of God. But just so far as they are suspended in the spirit of the law, they are only raised out of a prescribed symbolical meaning to their real truth; they are fulfilled. The Sabbath is fulfilled by doing good, by healing men (Matthew 12:12); circumcision is fulfilled by regeneration, according to the commandment: “Thou shalt not covet,” as it is written on the heart by faith as a law of the Spirit.
The observation that circumcision “is of the fathers,” has been interpreted by Euthymius Zig. and others as depreciating circumcision by showing it to be not a Mosaic institution. “It might rather express the superiority of circumcision, by virtue of its higher antiquity (and by virtue of its more fundamental character). Then the gradation is very piquantly expressed by Bucer: ‘Ye rank the fathers above the law, I the Father’ ” (Tholuck).—Circumcision had its origin not in Moses (ἐκ τοῦ Μ.), but in the fathers (ἐκ τῶν πατ).
John 7:23. If a man on the Sabbath receive circumcision, that, etc.—Circumcision is emphatic, in antithesis with the healing of the whole man in the next clause; hence placed [in the Greek] at the beginning of the sentence.—It is wrong to weaken the ἵνα μή so as to read: without breaking the law (Bengel, et al.). It is just by circumcising a man on the Sabbath, if that be the eighth day, that violation or nullification of the law is to be prevented. The idea in the prescription of the eighth day is that the circumcision should be performed as early as possible, the earlier the better. The higher import of the patriarchal ordinance appears also in the fact that what are called the Noachic commandments continued for a time to be morally binding in the Christian church, while the specifically Mosaic law, even in regard to circumcision, became extinct as a religious statute (Acts 15:0.) Hence, too, the parallel cited by Luthardt from Galatians 3:17, which subordinates the law to the promise, is not without force. Meyer thinks it is; and Tholuck (p. 216) here again fails to see the precedence given to the patriarchal dispensation, as brought out even by Lampe. He thinks that if that had been intended, the words would have been: ἵνα μὴ λυθῇ ἡ ἐντολὴ τῶν πατέρων that the statement is therefore inserted simply as matter of history. But the law of Moses had sanctioned anew even the usage of the patriarchs, and had soared above specific camp regulations.
Are ye angry at me because I have restored a whole man to health?—The ὅλος is emphatic in antithesis with περιτομή, which was the healing of a single member. Purport of the antithesis:
1. Wounding and healing (Kling, Stud. u. Kritik., 1836). This is against the notion of the particular healing, or of an argument a minori ad majus. Likewise unsuitable is the reference, by Lampe, etc., to the subsequent healing of the wound of circumcision.
2. The legal observance of circumcision, and the real mercy of the miraculous cure (Grotius).3. “Circumcision was a sanitary measure, purifying and securing against disease. If ye perform on a Sabbath the wholesome act of circumcision, which after all pertains only to one member, I will have a still better right to heal an entire man on a Sabbath. (Philo De circumcisione, ed. Mangey, Tom. II. Michaelis Mos. Recht, 4, § 186, particularly the article ‘Beschneidung’ [Circumcision] in Winer).” Lücke.33
4. Meyer: The sanitary purpose did not lie in the law, but in the religious notion of the people; the circumcision was performed only with a view to making the person pure and holy.34 (Tholuck also is of Meyer’s opinion. But of a “sacramental healing of the single member” one can hardly form an idea, though Kurtz is for it. Sensual lust has its seat in the heart. Of more account, is the argument of the Rabbi Eliezer quoted by Tholuck, and similar to the reasoning here in question). In support of this Meyer quotes the later sentiment from Bammidbar: “Præputium est vitium in corpore;” vitium in corpora, however, is put away, not by purification, but by a surgical or medical operation; i.e., the removal of it is an act of healing. And this must be intended; for circumcision in the symbolical sense also made the whole man pure and holy. The literal surgical healing of a part, therefore, which symbolically purified the whole man, is the thing intended. It is manifest that a symbolical act performed on a man in this form must be founded in a presumed need of physical healing, however temporary, local, or peculiar to antiquity this might be (the Lord puts Himself at His adversaries’ point of view, as in the Synoptical Gospels, Matthew 12:12, etc.); which is also true of the Jewish “laws of purity and purification.”
5. We have still to mention the antithesis of a healing performed only on the flesh (σάρξ), and a healing extending to the whole man, body and soul (Euthymius, Bengel, Stier, etc.). This antithesis does not come into view here, although the miraculous cures of the Lord did extend even to the soul. In truth the bodily circumcision also was intended to be the means of circumcision of the heart.
John 7:24. Judge not according to appearance [κατ’ ὄψιν]—1. Augustine, etc.: Not according to the person, but according to the fact. 2. Melanchthon, etc.: Not according to the outward form of the work, but according to its motives. 3. Not according to the startling appearance of things, but with a righteous and true judgment, which is expressed in the gradations of the ordinances, and executed in the actual healing of that sufferer.
John 7:25-26. Some of them of Jerusalem.—These are better instructed than the ὄχλος; they openly avow that the rulers have laid a plan to kill Jesus; yet cautiously, without directly naming them. The repetition of ἀληθῶς shows that they demanded in the Messiah qualifications which they did not find in Jesus. They seem, as an ultra party, to be solicitous even over the circumspection of the rulers, and to treat it with irony. They follow their ironical expression with their own judgment, which breathes the haughtiness of the citizens of a hierarchical capital. As the Rabbis reproach the Lord with His lack of a regular education and graduation, these Jerusalemites cast up against Him His mean extraction.
John 7:27. Whence he is.—This, no doubt, refers both to the despised town of Nazareth and to the family of the carpenter; not, however, by contrast with Bethlehem, as in John 7:42, but by contrast with the purely supramundane or mysterious origin which was claimed for the Messiah. Meyer’s restriction of the “whence” to the father and mother is arbitrary, and proceeds from a confounding of the different views here expressed.
As to the origin of the view that men should not know whence the Messiah is, there are different opinions.1. Lücke [Alford] and others, referring to Justin Martyr (Dialog. cum Tryph.): According to the Jewish view the Messiah should be ἄγνωστος, even unknown to Himself, until Elijah should have anointed Him. Against this Tholuck, after Meyer: In that case the earthly πόθεν of Christ would doubtless be known, but not His Messiah-ship. This dismisses the passage in question too cheaply; for a man who does not himself know whence he is till he is anointed, must have something mysterious about his origin.
2. Tholuck: From Daniel 7:13 they expected a sudden heavenly manifestation of the Messiah who, according to one of the various popular notions, lived in a secret place or in paradise (Targum Jonathan, Micah 4:8; Gfrörer, Jahrh. des Heils, II., p. 223). It must be remembered that Daniel’s doctrine of the Son of Man was but little known. On the contrary educated people in Jerusalem might very easily be familiar with Alexandrian ideas (as in cultivated regions gleanings of spiritualistic and rationalistic literature combine in various ways with reigning orthodoxy), and Philo taught (De exsecrat. 8) that the Messiah in the restoration of the people would appear and go before them as an ὄψις. Such people, too, can make up a view ex tempore, for the sake of an impudent denial; and the demand that for every opinion a previous origin must be shown, refutes itself as a scholastic pedantry. At all events these Jerusalemites think that Jesus ought to have at least as noble an extraction as themselves.
John 7:28. Therefore Jesus cried, teaching in the temple, and saying.—We do not think, with Meyer, that He raised His voice to a shout. The upstart loses confidence, when His origin is spoken of; Jesus purposely enters very emphatically into what they say of His origin. Even in the temple among the throng of people He makes no reserve. It is not without an ironical accordance that He takes up their own arrogant word (τοῦτον οἴδαμεν, which is with them quite equivalent to knowing πόθεν ἔστιν).
Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am.—He makes a difference, however, between Himself and His origin, because the latter implied in their view the utmost meanness, in His view His supreme dignity.
Different interpretations:1. Grotius, Lampe, and others take the words interrogatively (know ye me? etc.).
2. Calvin, Lücke, etc, ironically.
3. Chrysostom and others, as charging them that they did certainly know His divine person and origin, but denied them.4. Meyer (after De Wette), as a concession: “The people really had this knowledge.” But that they had with it nothing, and less than nothing, even an obstacle towards the knowledge of Himself, Christ asserts by the ironical tone of His words, when He says: Ye both know Me (by rote) and ye know (by rote) whence I am.35
And yet I am not come from myself.—Καί is emphatic and adversative: And yet I am not come, etc. These words briefly designate His higher nature, which these adversaries do not know. An ordinary extraction elevates itself only by ambition, which comes from itself and has no higher descent at all; Christ is, in the first place, simply come, and in the second place not from Himself. This introduces the declaration of His descent from God.
But he that sent me is true.—The ἀληθινός is variously explained. 1. In the sense of ἀληθής, a true person, verus, one who speaks the truth (Luther, Grotius). 2. A reliable person, firmus, verax (Chrysostom, Lampe), John 8:26. John 8:3. A real, genuine person, fulfilling the idea (Lücke, Tholuck, 7th ed.). 4. As used absolutely, for the true, essential God (Olshausen, Kling); against which Meyer observes that ἀληθινός, without a particular subject, forms no definite idea. But certainly we have a particular subject in ὁ πέμψας με. Still we stop with the idea of the real, the living One. The Jews, in their legalistic spirit, live only in symbols, figures, marks of distinction; the Jews of Jerusalem, doubly so: they have a typical, painted religion, painted sins, painted forgiveness, a painted nobility of lineage, a painted God. The real, living God, who has sent the real living Christ, they do not know.36
John 7:29. But I know him.—Intensely significant contrast to their ignorance. Founded both on (1) real, ideal descent from Him, and on (2) formal, historical commission from Him.
John 7:30. Then they sought to seize him.—As the Jerusalemites previously named show themselves Judaists in the strictest sense, it is unnecessary here to think of Jews distinct from them. Because his hour had not yet come.—John gives the ultimate and highest reason why they could not take Him, passing over secondary causes, like fear of the people and political considerations.
John 7:31. And many of the people believed in him.—A mark of the increasing ferment in the people, working towards separation. This believing in Him undoubtedly means faith in the Messiah, not merely in a prophet or a messenger of God; yet we must distinguish between their faith and their timid confession. Hence the words: “When Christ cometh, will He do,” etc.—are to be taken not simply as referring to the doubt of the opposing party (Meyer), but as double-minded. Hence the mention of a “murmuring” further on. That the people regard the miracles as Messianic credentials, accords with the expectation of the Messiah.
John 7:32. The Pharisees heard.—Pharisees by themselves alone hear the sly murmuring of the people, which betrays an inclination to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. They then get the chief priests to join with them in ordering the official arrest of Jesus. The officers who are sent to take Jesus are to be distinguished from the Jerusalemite Judaists before mentioned as wishing to take Him. Under a despotic system the absolutist party of the people are always in advance of the absolutist government: more royalist than the absolute king, more papist than the pope. There was no need of the Sanhedrin being just now assembled (as at the moment at which the chapter closes). An acting authority which could issue hierarchical warrants, was permanent in the chief priests; and the process for the healing at the pool of Bethesda was here still pending.
John 7:33. Jesus therefore said unto them, yet a little while, etc.—To whom? 1. Euthymius Zig.: To the officers. 2. Tholuck: To those Pharisees who gave the information. 3. Meyer: To the whole assembly, but with the chief priests mainly in view. As the officers at first enter the assembly of hearers clandestinely, waiting the proper moment to secure Jesus, and Jesus knows their design, He speaks these words primarily to them; for He fixes them, and they feel themselves hit; while the multitude take His words to themselves. The sentence has evidently a more special and a more general sense. The words: “Yet a little while I am with you,”—uttered with majestic emphasis, mean primarily to the officers: Ye must let Me freely speak a little longer here! (see Luke 13:32-33); and then also to the assembly: My work among you draws to a close. The words “And then I go to Him that sent Me,” mean primarily: I then withdraw into the protection of a mightier One, who has sent Me in a power different from that in which ye are sent; in the more general sense: I go home to God. The words “Ye will seek Me, and not find Me” (John 7:24), were likewise capable of a special and a general interpretation, but in all these cases the two meanings lay in the same line, so that the more general included the special. This explains the conduct of the officers, and their expression, in John 7:46.
I go unto him that sent me.—According to Paulus and Meyer this would be an addition of John’s because according to John 7:35 Jesus could not have said definitely whither He was going. But His first expression was made enigmatical to the Jews by the second. To go to God does not necessarily mean to them to die; still less, more definitely, to go to heaven. The Christian heaven of the blessed is first disclosed by the parting discourses of Christ and His ascension. It would have been most natural to them to think of the paradise in Sheol. But if they did suspect this, they did not dwell upon it, because they could not themselves renounce the hope of going into Abraham’s bosom. And hence perhaps the remote evasive conjecture: “Will He go … among the Greeks,” etc. This explanation is confirmed by John 8:22, where the evasion is still more malicious than here. The expression of Christ, therefore, is a dark hint of an unknown ποῦ (Lücke), the import of which they might feel, but not understand (Luthardt).
John 7:34. Ye will seek me, and not End (me).—Comp. John 8:21; John 13:33. Interpretations:
1. A hostile seeking (Origen, Grotius, etc.) This applies only in the immediate reference of the words to the officers.
2. A seeking of the Redeemer for redemption, too late. Two sorts of turning to Him: (a) After the terminus peremptorius gratiæ (Augustine, et al.); which, however, can be known in fact only by the cessation of that seeking, (b) With a false, Esau-like repentance, which only trembles before the damnum peccati (Calvin).
3. A seeking for the saving Messiah, whom in My person ye have rejected, especially in the catastrophe of Jerusalem [Luke 20:16 ff; Luke 19:43] (Chrysostom, Lampe [Hengstenberg] etc.).
4. “And that, Himself, the rejected Jesus, not the Messiah in general.” Meyer.37
Jesus, however, is found of those who seek. When it is said; “Seek, and ye shall find,” it is implied that seeking without finding proves a vitium in the seeking; though we cannot, with Maldonatus and others, consider the seeking to be placed here merely for an aggravation of the not finding, as if the Lord would say, by a Hebraism: Ye shall be utterly unable to find Me, Psalms 10:15; Psalms 37:10; Isaiah 41:12. The mere inability to find itself points back to a kind of seeking; and seeking is the emphatic thing in John 8:21; John 13:33; but a false seeking, in which Israel has continued through all the centuries since. Of the mass the word is spoken, and to the mass Jesus speaks; individuals, therefore, who turned, even though in a mass, to Jesus after the destruction of Jerusalem, are exceptions, and do not here come into view. That mass of the Jews has incessantly sought its delivering Messiah, but (1) in another person, (2) in a secular majesty, (3) in the spirit of legal religion, and (4) with earthly, political, revolutionary prospects.
And where I am.—“To explain the present εἰμί, metaphysically, like Augustine: Nec dicit, ubi ero, sed ubi sum; semper enim erat, quo fuerat rediturus (John 3:13),—there is no reason; like ὑπάγω, it is the present of vivid representation.” Tholuck. The thought that His heaven is not merely local, but also inward, and that He therefore is always at His goal, is not entirely out of sight, though undoubtedly His estate of glory is chiefly in view.
John 7:35. The Jews therefore said among themselves.—The mocking malice of their reply (in vain questioned by Meyer) rises in a climax of three clauses: 1. Whither will He go, that we might not follow Him? (into Paradise?) 2. Will He seek His fortune among the Jewish dispersion among the Gentiles, with the less orthodox, less respectable and intelligent Jews? 3. Or will He even teach the Greeks (to whom, indeed, judging from His conduct towards the law and His liberal utterance, He seems rather to belong than to us)? But what they say in mockery, must fulfil itself in truth; they prophesy like Caiaphas (John 11:50-51) and Pilate (John 19:19).—Unto the dispersed among the Greeks.—The διασπορὰ (dispersion, abstract, pro concret.) τῶνἙλλήνων (genitive of remoter relation), not the dispersed Gentiles (Chrysostom), or Hellenists or Greek Jews (Scaliger), but, according to specific usage (James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1), the Jews dispersed in the Gentile world.
John 7:36. What is this saying that he said?—Indicating that they cannot get away from this saying. They seem to feel the dark, fearful mystery in the words, but are inclined to persuade themselves that it is sheer nonsense.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. See the preceding exegesis.2. The whispering concerning Jesus from fear of the Jews is a type of the whole spirit of hierarchy in the Church, and absolutism in the State, with its tyranny over opinion and conscience, its censorship, heresy-hunting, and inquisition; and an example of the fact that under such systems the enemies of the truth always venture to speak rather more boldly than its friends.
3. The appearance of Jesus at the first feast of the Jews (the passover of 781) was a reformation of it. His appearance at the second (Purim of 782) was a completing of it. His appearance at the third (the feast of tabernacles of 782) was a contrast or counterpart to it. (Even His being sent to the people and His going forth to the Father seem to allude to the sending of Moses to their fathers and the pilgrimage of those fathers through the wilderness to Canaan, which they were celebrating.) His appearance at the fourth (feast of the dedication, 782) is the following up of this contrast. His appearance at the last passover (783) was the fulfilling of the typical feast of the passover with the reality, the abolition of it thereby.
4. The two reproaches which the Jews cast upon the Lord, and His answers, in their permanent import. The reproach of Rabbinism that He was not regularly educated, and His answer that He was not self-taught, but taught of God. The reproach of the court aristocracy that He was of mean birth, and His appeal to the fact that His person and His mission are a mystery of heavenly descent; carrying with it the intimation that, as the Messenger of God, He bears the dignity of God Himself.
5. The test of true doctrine, of the true course of study in order to come to the knowledge of the truth, and of the true capacity to judge of doctrine, John 7:16-18. Tradition and originality. The tracing of the wisdom of Christ to the schools of the Essenes or other educational institutions, is also a soulless Rabbinism, which is perfectly blinded to the original resources of His mind.
6. The public appearance of Christ and the unveiling of the secret designs of His hierarchical adversaries before the people, a parallel to His turning to the people in Galilee (Matthew 15:10), a permanent type and a spiritual rule, followed in appeals from the pope to a general council, from the general council under trammels to the Christian people; and yet especially different from all democratic solicitation of the people, Christ treats the laity as accomplices of the hierarchy. The mental indolence of the former supports the mental tyranny of the latter.
7. Heubner: “How is it possible that after so strong and plain a declaration of Jesus, men should continually persist in thrusting human means of education upon Him, as Ammon, for example, does (Fortbildung des Christenthums zur Weltreligion, I. p. 220). Comp. Storr’s explanation in Flatt’s Magazin, I. p. 107 sqq.; IV. p. 220; Süsskind: In welchem Sinn hat Jesus die Göttlichkeit seiner Lehre behauptet? p. 25–47; Weber’s Programme: Interpretatio judicii, quod Jesus John 7:14-18 de sua ipsius doctrina tulisse legitur, Wittenb., 1797.”
8. Circumcision as healing; or, the symbolical ordinances in Israel founded on real conditions of life at the time. Gradation of ordinances. Jewish fundamental articles. A hint of the eternal fundamental laws of religious and moral life.
9. Earthly, historical descent and heavenly, personal originality. Contrast of a polite world lost in symbolical mummery, usage, conventionalism, titles, and privileges, and a real, personal life coming from God and standing in God’s word and Spirit, John 7:27; John 7:29.
10. The Jews of Jerusalem sought to take Jesus,—the ultra-hierarchical and ultra-imperial party, which always in its fanatical zeal outdoes the hierarchical and absolutist government.
11. The various Christological systems of the Jews in this chapter (John 7:15; John 7:27; John 7:42), a type of the deep and confused divisions of opinion under an apparently uniting constitution.
12. The officers and their arrest by the word of Jesus, a single point in the line of Christ’s ethico-psychological miracles. See John 2:0. Discussion of the miracles.
13. The expression of Christ concerning His going to Him that sent Him, the first gleam of the Christian doctrine of heaven.14. Ye will seek Me and will not find Me. A great prophecy of Christ respecting the tragic retribution of the Jewish people. Seek and not find. To seek salvation and not find it, is the lot of a world lost in vanity; to seek and not find the Messiah, the lot of wretched Israel sunk in the vanity of the letter and of chiliastic worldliness. An ultimate rectification of the false seeking into the true seeking and finding, is not forbidden. See Rom. chs. 9 and 11.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See the previous heads.
Even in the Lord’s wise distinction between His brethren’s legal observance of the feast and His own voluntary appearance at the feast (as the personal truth of the feast), no guile is found in His mouth, 1 Peter 2:22.—The wonderful wisdom with which Christ prolonged His life more than a year (from the feast of Purim in John 5:0) after it had fallen under the deadly hostility of the Jews.—The ferment of popular opinion concerning the Lord in Jerusalem, a token of the approaching separation between His friends and enemies.—Fear of the Jews, or of the despotism of the letter an ancient and modern hindrance to faith and knowledge.—The gospel’s victorious piercing of the old Jewish hierarchy, a presage of its ever fresh piercing of all hierarchical incrustations.—The fear of man in the adherents of Jesus, over against the fearlessness in Himself.—The example of Jesus in relying on the utmost publicity against the secret plottings of a wicked party spirit.—In the midst of the feast, in the midst of the temple, the Lord appears—appears yet for a long while, though both seem already fallen into the possession of His enemies.—The lion-like spirit of the Lord, in which He seeks His lion enemy in His den: 1. Proved (a) by this incident; (b) by His previous going into the wilderness; (c) by His subsequent surrender to the judgment of the high council. 2. Again proved in the life of His apostles and in the course of the Church (the apostles in Jerusalem, Peter in Babylon, Paul in Rome, missions to the heathen).—The wisdom of the Lord in bringing before the people the secret design of the Jewish court to kill Him.—The offence of Jewish pride at the Lord’s call to teach: 1. The phases of it; (a) Rabbinical offence at His want of a Rabbinical education; (b) Offence of metropolitan people at His obscure birth. 2. Its self-contradiction in its expression: (a) He knows letters; (b) He speaks boldly, though they seek to kill Him. 3. Christ’s declaration in the face of it; (a) As to His school and His doctrine; (b) As to His origin.—The alliance of ecclesiastical and secular party spirit against the Lord.38—The fanaticism of the hierarchical party, always in excess of the fanaticism of the hierarchical authorities.—The words of Jesus concerning the heavenly tradition of His doctrine. 1. It, is not a word of man (of human invention), but a message of God, of eternal and heavenly origin. 2. It attests itself by the fact that whosoever desires to do the will of God must find in this doctrine the goal of his effort. 3. It attests the Lord who teaches it, by its looking solely to the glorifying of God, and thereby proving the freedom of Jesus from human ambition and human self-deception.—If any man will do His will, etc.; or: Christ the goal of all really sincere, devout striving.—Sincerity of will, the first and last condition of true knowledge.—The mark of a genuine witness of God, John 7:18.—The true purity of doctrine dependent on the purity of the mind in its endeavors; or, the word of truth dependent on the truth of the word.—Why go ye about to kill Me? So Christ ever turns His defence into attack.—How He unveils to the people the fearful thought of murder against the Messiah, which is germinating in them while yet they themselves think not of it.—“Thou hast a devil (demon);” so unbelief has at all times represented the Lord’s stern, cutting insight into human corruption as a morbid, melancholy conceit of His own mind.—They charge Him now with bright heedlessness, now with gloomy, demoniacal despondency or madness, because they understand not His holy mind.—Jesus often taken for crazy.—How far are the words of Jesus in John 7:21 an answer to the charge in John 7:20? They had taken offence at His work; that is the beginning of the hatred of Christ, which afterwards developed into the murder of Christ.—Christ’s vindication of His healing on the Sabbath by appeal to the circumcision which was lawful on the Sabbath.—They condemned themselves in their judgment of Jesus: 1. They vexed themselves over one work of the Lord on the Sabbath, while in circumcision they continually performed works on the Sabbath. 2. They broke the Sabbath for the sake of a slight necessity, while they charged the Lord’s healing of a whole sufferer as a transgression.—Law contends with law, knowledge with knowledge, letter with letter, when they are not interpreted and reconciled by the Spirit.—Christ, like Paul, overpowered the Jews with their own weapons, with their own art of Rabbinical logic.—Why Jesus did not openly reveal to the people who were troubled over His descent, the mystery of His miraculous human birth and His eternal divine nature.—How He represents the law of circumcision as a law of healing.—How He discloses as the kernel of it, a law of love, of mercy, of liberty.—“Judge not according to appearance;” or, judging according to the letter a judging according to exterior looks.—The proud contempt with which the people of quality in Jerusalem express themselves respecting the Lord, in its spiritual imbecility: (1) More fanatical than the Jewish authorities; (2) more ignorant in regard to Christ’s descent than the people; (3) wholly incapable of appreciating His spiritual greatness.—The mocking wit of the polite adversaries of the Lord in union with gross ignorance.—The testimony of Christ concerning His heavenly origin hardens the proud.—The divine origin of the doctrine of Christ in its connection with the divine origin of His being.—How imagined greatness is embittered and enraged before the evidences of true greatness.—They sought to take Him: but no man, etc.—Impotence of the adversary against the Lord: 1. His impotence in the most diverse designs (they sought to take Him themselves, they sought to take Him through instruments). 2. Its impotence in the presence of true power: (a) of the faithful adherents of Christ; (b) of the Lord Himself; (c) of the overruling of God (His hour not yet come). 3. His impotence fully displayed just when His hour is come, when it seems almighty.—With the enmity of unbelief ripens also the heroism of faith, John 7:30-31.—The first decided attempt of the Jewish rulers upon the life of the Lord, brought on by the whispering of the people that He was the Christ.—This first attempt at the feast of tabernacles in the autumn related to the last attempt at the passover of the next year. The exalted words of Christ to the people, addressed to the servants of the chief priests in particular, John 7:33–35:1. An expression of His security in the full presentiment of His insecurity. 2. The language of simplicity, and yet of double meaning. 3. To the Jews an occasion of mockery, and yet at the same time a momentous riddle.
Yet a little while am I with you (John 7:33): the great importance of the little while: 1. The period of grace. 2. The year of grace. 3. The day of grace. 4. The hour of grace.—The death of the Lord and of His people, a voluntary going home.—Killed at last, and yet even thereby escaped from His murderers.—How the Jews cannot get away from the word of Jesus: “Ye shall seek Me,” etc.—The divergent paths which separate the Lord from His despisers: 1. The path upward. 2. The path downward.—Christ perfectly inaccessible to His adversaries: 1. They seek Him and do not find Him. 2. They find Him, and bind Him, and have Him not. 3. They nail Him up, and bury Him, and seal the stone, and keep Him not.—Acts 26:7. The tragical hope of Israel for the Messiah: 1. How noble in its truth. 2. How vain in its perversion. 3. How prophetic in spite of its delusion.
Starke: God knows the true and better time to appear and help.—That neither He nor His apostles were instructed by men, shows the heavenly origin of His doctrine.—Cramer: In Christ are hidden all treasures of wisdom; but we must go the ordinary way, go to school, study, ask, etc., that we also may be wise.—His that sent me: 1. Because it [His doctrine] contains the whole counsel and pleasure of the Father, John 6:39-40. John 6:2. Because it was in substance one with Moses and the prophets, through whom the Father had spoken, Hebrews 1:1. Hebrews 1:3. Because Christ was filled with the Spirit of the Father, John 17:8. John 17:4. Because His doctrine aimed at the glory of the Father.—Zeisius: The test of orthodox and righteous teachers: 1. Their being able to say with Christ in some measure and truth: My doctrine is not mine, but, etc.; taking their doctrine not from their own reason, but from the holy, revealed word of God. 2. Their seeking therein not their own glory, but the glory of God and of Christ, and directing everything towards this purpose of glorifying the name of God. Hearers also are bound on their part to obey them, on peril of their salvation.—If any man will, etc. As much as to say: I appeal to the experience of all the devout.—Majus: He who uses not the word of God with the true purpose of learning and doing it, will not be sure of its divinity.—In divine and spiritual things we must believe no one absolutely (blindly), but try every one’s doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether the man speak of himself.—Hedinger: Many are ever learning, and yet cannot come to the knowledge of the truth. Why? They hear much, and do it not.—Quesnel: A preacher must seek not his own glory, but only God’s.—Majus: He whose words and works aim only to honor God, is faithful and true, and worthy to be believed.—It is good to remind people of their evil deeds, and convince them of them: perchance some will lay it to heart and be converted, Mark 2:27.—Nova Bibl. Tab.: It is a sure mark of envy and malice, when a man censures in others, and condemns others for, what he does himself.—Ibid.: Whence come so many uncharitable, false judgments of our neighbor’s conduct? From our not seeing to the bottom of the heart, etc.—Zeisius: How can preconceived opinions but blind us, and prevent our true understanding of the Scriptures?—To the pretentious and fine-talking, who boast so much of their knowledge, we must show that they lack the best.—Ibid.: Satan with his tools cannot hurt a hair, without the will of God.—Quesnel: Simplicity and humility open the heart to divine truth, but pride and boastfulness close it.—When Christians are persecuted, openhearted confessors are commonly very few; men keep themselves so concealed, that the confession of Christ is rather a murmuring than a true confessing.—Shame, that in spiritual things carnal means are thought of, and the power of the Spirit is opposed by the arm of secular authority.—Hedinger: The season of grace lasts not forever: follow its drawing!—Canstein: It is but a little while that the pious are in the world; afterwards they will be forever separated from it by death. Therefore they can for the little time bear a little from the wicked world.—Quesnel: The death of believers is a return to their Father.—Majus: In heaven there is peace for all trouble and rest from all labor.—What the world says in mockery will often prove true to its hurt.
Von Gerlach: A sublime disposition would enable them to know divine things.—This is still the proper way to attain to the knowledge of the divine origin and matter of Christianity; to follow with the heart all traces of the divine, and thus with honest purpose to endeavor to do what God requires.—Jesus implicated the whole people, because Ho made all responsible for these purposes and acts of the rulers; without the consent of the people, the rulers, even afterwards, could not have put Jesus to death.—Penetrate to the spirit of my words, and contradictions resolve themselves!
Lisco: Obedience to Jesus leads to experience of the divine virtues of His doctrine and His gospel (Romans 1:16), of which there are three, corresponding to the three principal faculties of the human spirit: power to enlighten (mind), to sanctify (will), to bless (heart). (From Pascal). Human things we must know in order to love (only conditionally true), divine we must love in order to know.—The Jews know indeed the true God, but they knew Him not as the true and real (they knew Him not truly in His true nature).—The lost opportunity of grace cannot be regained.—Braune: Therefore not the doing of the will of God, but even before that, the will to do the will of God, enables one to experience the truth of Christ’s assertion that His doctrine is of God. If thou only hast the will, art decided in thy wish, to do the will of God as thou know-est it from conscience, nature, education, Scripture,—this leaning of will and heart to the will of God gives (as a condition) the knowledge of the truth.—Ambition makes a man dull and unsusceptible to knowledge.
Gossner: Where is He? might one often ask in bustling church-solemnities, or in learned, flowery sermons. Where is He, the chief person?—There was much murmuring among the people concerning Him.—So Christ and His truth must be canvassed by perverse opinions. This is so to this day.—How men must avoid speaking evil of any other, but speak as much evil as possible of Jesus.—Christ comes forth at the right moment.—The world calls it learning and education, only when one has passed through many classes in a school; of another way of learning it knows nothing.—The doctrine of Jesus puts us already in heaven, and thereby evinces clearly and visibly enough its divine origin.—Those who would banish the Spirit from it, most sadly break the law and the form.
Heubner: Humanly speaking, Jesus was an uneducated man, but He towers infinitely above all the educated.—If any man will, etc. Without religious need, without longing for God and salvation, no conviction of the truth of Christianity, no faith in Christ, is possible. To the conscience all proofs must appeal.—And it follows—which few think of—that this declaration of Jesus contains rebuke and condemnation of the strongest kind: He who cannot be convinced of the divinity of the doctrine of Jesus, etc., has no earnestness in regard to his salvation. The proposition of Christ is universal; here the universio logica holds.—Ambition is a betrayer of a calling not divine, of a self-commissioned prophet, Deuteronomy 18:15.—Thou hast a devil. How those who now so impudently clear themselves, soon after convict themselves of falsehood; for the people loudly demanded His death.—Wickedness, enmity, always judges according to appearances. Righteous judgment is only with the friends of God.—All religion is indifferentism, when men govern themselves in it by the authority of rulers; this is contrary to the principle of Protestantism.—But I know Him. The heart of the believer is an inaccessible sanctuary, from which the world cannot tear out the consciousness of salvation.—Schleiermacher: Having never learned. Literally taken, this is certainly false; for from the beginning of our Lord’s life the history informs us that He increased in wisdom, which means that He learned. They think there were at that time particular institutions, etc. In such a school the Lord had not learned.—We also can make a distinction between what is brought into our souls by others and developed from their own power, and what in them is the gift of the Spirit of God.—Unless man hears the voice of the divine will, he cannot know whether the doctrine of Christ is of God or not.—There is no more dangerous enemy of the true welfare of man, of the pure salvation which we have in Christ, than spiritual pride.
Footnotes:
John 7:10; John 7:10.—[The text. rec. transfers εἰς τὴν ἑορτήν after ἀνέβη. But the position indicated in brackets is maintained by א. B. K. L., etc., and the best critics.—P. S.]
John 7:12; John 7:12.—Δέ after ἅλλοι is wanting in [א] D. G. F., etc., and in Tischendorf. [Inserted in B. L., Alf., W. and H.—P. S.]
John 7:15; John 7:15.—Lachmann and Tischendorf: οὖν instead of καί, after many authorities. Also after ἀπεκρ., John 7:16.
John 7:16; John 7:16.—[The οὖν which is wanting in the text. rec. and ignored by Lange, is well supported by א. B. T., etc. Alf., W. and H., etc.—P. S.]
John 7:17; John 7:17.—[The E. V. disregards the θέλῃ and the implied harmony of man’s will with God’s will, and might convey the idea that the mere performance of God’s commandments will lead men to a knowledge of Christ, which is not necessarily the case. Comp. Alf. in loc.—P. S.]
John 7:19; John 7:19.—[The interrogation mark should be put after the first τὸν νόμον. The question is followed by a categorical charge. So Lachm., Tischend., Meyer, Lange.—P. S.]
[19]Vera. 21 and 22.—[Dr. Lange not only connects the διὰ τοῦτο with θαυμάζετε instead of δὲδωκεν, but divides the verses between τοῦτο and Μωϋσ. The latter is not done even by some editors who connect the διὰ τοῦτο grammatically with the preceding verse; but of course it should be done. The Cod. Sin. lacks the δ.τ. altogether, and reads: θαυμάζετε Ὁ Μωϋσ—E. D. Y.]
John 7:26; John 7:26.—Ἀληθῶς in most MSS., B. D. K. L., etc., occurs only once, and that before ἕγνωσαν Tischendorf. Yet it is probable that the second ἀληθ has been dropped on account of the striking repetition, which, however, is very expressive and significant.
John 7:29; John 7:29.—[Text. rec. with א. D. insert δέ after ἐγώ, B. T., Vulg., Tert., Orig., Alf., W. and H. omit it.—P. S.]
John 7:30; John 7:30.—[Καί here, as in John 7:13; John 7:28 and often in John, adds an opposite thought=atque, und doch, and yet. Comp. Hartung, Partikellehre, I. p. 147 f. Meyer on John 7:28 : “Pronounce and emphatically, and imagine a dash after it.”—P. S.]
John 7:31; John 7:31—Ἐκ τοῦ ὅχλου δέ πολλοί Lachmann, Tischendorf, [Alf., W. and H., with B. K. L., etc. This position puts the ὅχλος in stronger contrast to the subject of ἐζήτουν, John 7:30, and is preferable to the πολ. δ. ἐκ. τ. ὅχλ. of the Rec., which is backed here by א. D.—P. S.]
[24]Ibid.—Ὄτι [after ἔλέγον] before ὁ Χρ ὅταν, is lacking in B. D. L. etc., and Lachmann [and Cod. Sin.]
[25]Ibid—Instead of μήτι [text. rec.] Lachmann and Tischendorf [Alf., W. and H.] read μή [doch nicht].
[26]Ibid.—The τούτων must be considered an explanatory addition. [Lachmann, Tischendorf, Alford, etc., omit it on the authority of the uncial MSS.—P. S.]
John 7:32; John 7:32.—[Οἱ is sustained by the uncial MSS. against the reverse order of the text. rec.—P. S.]
John 7:34; John 7:34.—[The second με here and John 7:36 is omitted by the text. rec. and hence italicised in the E. V., but sustained by B. T. X.—P. S.]
[29][As in the English phrase: A man of letters. Yet here it means chiefly Scripture-learning, almost the only kind of learning known among the Jews.—P. S.]
[30][Just the position denoted by the covenant. The historical covenant, the field of the gratia præveniens.—E. D. Y.]
[31][Cod. Sin.* omits διὰ τοῦτο altogether, and so does Tischendorf in the 8th ed. He reads ὁ Μωϋστῆς with the article. The phrase διὰ τοῦτο in John usually stands at the beginning, not at the close of a sentence, comp. John 5:16; John 5:18; John 6:65; John 8:47; John 10:17; Revelation 17:7.—P. S.]
[32][In Exodus 5:0 (p. 301) Meyer connects διὰ τοῦτο with the following οὐχ ὅτι (as Bengel), and explains: Moses on this account gave yon circumcision, not because it is from Moses but because it is from the father’s (the patriarchs). Similarly Alford in the 6th ed.—P. S.]
[33][Similarly Alford: The distinction is between circumcision which purified only part of a man, and that perfect and entire healing which the Lord bestowed on the cripple.—P. S.]
[34][According to Meyer (5th ed. p. 303] the antithesis is between the healing of a single member of the body, and the whole body (but not body and soul).—P. S.]
[35][Alford: “It has been questioned whether these words are to be taken ironically, interrogatively, or affirmatively. I incline to the last view for this reason: obviously no very high degree of knowledge whence He was, is implied, for they knew not Him that sent Him; see also John 8:14; John 8:19, and therefore could not know whence He was, in this sense. The answer is made in their own sense:—they knew that He was from Nazareth in Galilee, see John 7:41,—and probably that lie was called the son of Joseph. In this sense they knew whence He was, but further than this they knew not.”—P. S.]
[36][Alford: “The matter here impressed on them is the genuineness, the reality of the fact: that Jesus was sent, and there was one who sent Him, though they know Him not, and consequently knew not πόθεν ἐστίν. The nearest English word would be real: but this would not convey the meaning perspicuously to the ordinary mind;—perhaps the E. V. true is better, provided it be explained to mean objectively, not subjectively, true: really existent, not ‘truthful’ which it may be questioned whether the word ἀληθίνος will bear, although it is so maintained by Euthym., Cyril, Chrys., Theophylact, Lampe, Baumgarten-Crusius, Tholuck, and many others.”—P. S.]
[37][Still others: My bodily presence will be withdrawn from you; I shall be personally in a place inaccessible to you. So Alford.—P. S.]
[38][A recent example: Napoleon III. and Pope Pius IX.—P. S.]
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