Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 7:10
But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.
10. unto the feast ] These words have become transposed; they belong to the first clause, not to the second; Now when His brethren were gone up to the feast, then He also went up. This being so, it becomes possible, if not probable, that Christ’s declaration ‘I go not up to this Feast’ is true, even when made to mean ‘I shall not go up at all.’ All that is certain is that Christ appeared when the Feast was half over ( Joh 7:14).
not openly ] Not in the general caravan, but either by a different route (e.g. through Samaria, as in Joh 4:4, instead of down the eastern bank of Jordan), or several days later. One suspects that traces of Docetism are difficult to find in this Gospel when it is maintained that this verse contains such.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
10 39. The Discourse at the Feast of Tabernacles
Of this section Joh 7:10-15 form a sort of introduction.
“An equal degree of authenticity belongs to the verses which follow, 10 15. The whispered enquiries and debatings among the people, the secret journey, the sudden appearance in the temple in the midst of the Feast, and in particular the question that alludes to the Rabbinical schools and the custom of professed teachers to frequent them, compose a varied, clear, and graphic picture that has every circumstance of probability in its favour.” S. pp. 145, 146.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 10. But when his brethren were gone up] Having despatched his business, and the concourse of people being now past, he went up also.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
He went up to show his obedience to his Fathers commands, Exo 23:17. The feast of tabernacles was the same with the feast of ingathering in the end of the year, when they had gathered their labours out of the field, mentioned Exo 23:16; and that was one of those three times (as appears from that chapter) when all the males in Israel were to appear before the Lord, Joh 7:17. Christ being born under the law, showeth a punctual obedience to it; and therefore, in obedience to it, he would go up: but his wisdom dwelt with prudence; and therefore he did not go up openly, not in any crowd of company, so as a public notice could be taken of him; but secretly, to teach us that we are not so strictly tied up to ritual precepts, which concern only rites and circumstances of worship, that we may not abate them sometimes for the performance of moral duties. It was a moral duty incumbent upon our Saviour to preserve himself, with what wisdom and prudence he could, from the rage of his enemies, till his time should fully come to yield up himself to their rage; which was the reason why he, who went up now singly, without any company, when he went up to the last passover, where he was to suffer, went up with all imaginable boldness and alacrity, leading the way, to their amazement, Mar 10:32.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
10. then went he . . . notopenlynot “in the (caravan) company” [MEYER].See on Lu 2:44.
as it were in secretrather,”in a manner secretly”; perhaps by some other route, and ina way not to attract notice.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
But when his brethren were gone up,…. To the feast, as all the Oriental versions read, from the next clause:
then went he also up unto the feast; the Ethiopic version reads, “he went up that day”; which is very likely, and no ways contrary to what is said, in Joh 7:14; for though he did not go up to the temple to teach, till the middle of the feast, he might be up at the feast sooner: and according to the law, it was necessary that he should be there on the first and second days, and keep the Chagigah, and make his appearance in the court; though there was a provision made for such that failed, the canon runs thus m;
“he that does not make his festival sacrifice, on the first good day of the feast, may make it throughout the whole feast, and on the last good day of the feast; and if the feast passes, and he has not made the festival sacrifice, he is not obliged to a compensation; and of this it is said, Ec 1:15: “That which is crooked cannot be made straight”; c.”
But however, whatever day he went on, he went up
not openly, but as it were in secret: as he was made under the law, and came to fulfil all righteousness, it was necessary that he should observe every precept, and fulfil the whole law: and therefore he went up to this feast yet in the most private manner, that he might escape those who would lie in wait for him, and sought to kill him: and this he did, not through fear of death, but because his hour was not yet come; this was not the feast he was to suffer at, but the passover following; which when near at hand, he went up to it, and entered Jerusalem in the most public manner.
m Misn. Chagiga, c. 1. sect. 6. Maimon. Hilch. Chagiga, c. 2. sect. 4, 5, 6, 7.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Were gone up (). Second aorist active indicative of , not past perfect though the action is antecedent in fact to the following . The Greek does not always draw the precise distinction between the merely punctiliar (aorist) antecedent action and the past perfect (John 2:9; John 4:45).
He also ( ). As well as the brothers.
Not publicly ( ). Against their advice in verse 4, using (the very same word stem).
But as it were in secret ( ). “Not with the usual caravan of pilgrims” (Bernard). Just the opposite of their advice in verse 4 with the same phrase . Plainly Jesus purposely went contrary to the insincere counsel of his brothers as to the manner of his Messianic manifestation. This secrecy concerned solely the journey to Jerusalem, not his public teaching there after his arrival (John 7:26; John 7:28; John 18:20).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
HIS FINAL DEPARTURE FROM GALILEE, v. 10-13
1) “But when his brethren were gone up,” (hos de anabesan hoi adelphoi autou) “Then when his brothers had gone up,” up to Jerusalem, to the feast of tabernacles, Joh 7:2.
2) “Then went he also up unto the feast,” (eis ten heorten tote kai autos anebe) “Then he went up also into the feast,” not with the kind of publicity His brothers had suggested, Joh 7:3-4. Not in a pilgrim caravan, but as a quiet wayfarer, blessing and comforting souls as He went, till He reached a certain village, at the entrance of Jerusalem.
3) “Not openly, but as it were in secret.” (ou phaneros alla hos en krupto) “Not manifestly but as in secret,” keeping a low profile, without fanfare. He went up seeking to do the will of the Father who sent Him, Joh 5:30.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
VARING IDEAS OF THE MULTITUDES
Text 7:10-13
10
But when his brethren were gone up unto the feast, then went he also up, not publicly, but as it were in secret.
11
The Jews therefore sought him at the feast, and said, Where is he
12
And there was much murmuring among the multitudes concerning him: some said, He is a good man; others said, Not so, but he leadeth the multitude astray.
13
Yet no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews.
Queries
a.
Why did Jesus go up to the feast in secret?
b.
What is the significance of the varying opinions concerning Him?
Paraphrase
But after His brothers had gone up to the feast in Jerusalem, then Jesus went up to Jerusalem and the feast also, but Jesus traveled in secret and not openly with the crowds going to the city. Consequently, the Jewish rulers kept searching for him at the feast, asking, Where is that fellow? There was much whispering and guarded murmuring among the multitudes of people concerning Him: some whispered, He is a good man, while others said, No, He is not good for He deceives and misleads the people. But none of the people dared speak with boldness their convictions concerning Him on account of their fear of the Jewish rulers.
Comment
It should be plain from Joh. 5:18; Joh. 7:25 the reason for Jesus secrecy. The Jewish rulers were constantly dispatching officers to search Him out to arrest Him. Therefore, He waited until His brothers had departed and then, beckoning His twelve disciples to follow, He took a road through Samaria that would not be traveled by Jews on their way to the feast. Luk. 9:51 ff. informs us that Jesus went through Samaria on His way to Jerusalem at this particular time. It also shows the hostility of the Samaritans toward the Jewish worshippers. Jesus and His disciples could travel here without being discovered by the Jewish rulers. He probably did not let anyone know of His departure from Galilee or His arrival in Jerusalem. The word secret is krupto in the Greek and our English word crypt is derived from ithence cryptograph means secret writing.
We will soon find Jesus teaching publicly and boldly in the Temple at the feast. Why does He not remain incognito? It is relatively safe for Him to reveal His identity as He is surrounded by the great throngs of well-wishers, for some believe Him to be a prophet. The rulers of the Jews are themselves afraid of being stoned should they harm Jesus in public.
The sullen contempt of the rulers is brought out vividly in the Greek as it reads literally, Where is that one? They will not so much as do Him the honor of mentioning His name. The imperfect tense of asking indicates that these rulers were continually questioning the multitudes as to His whereabouts, They seemed to have been expecting Him.
The hundreds of thousands of worshippers were also on the tiptoes of expectancy concerning the man of Galilee. They were probably gathering in small groups whispering their opinions and discussing Him and His teachings and works.
Some were whispering that they thought Him to be a good man. He had healed lepers, made the lame to walk and had even raised the dead in Nain; He had just miraculously fed multitudes in Galilee, Others, however, murmured that He was a false prophet and was leading the people astray. They could remember Theudas and Judas of Galilee (Act. 5:36-37) and other false Christs who deceived the people and brought Roman retaliation and punishment upon the whole Jewish nation.
Whatever their attitude, not one of the multitude was willing to declare openly and boldly just what he thought of Jesus. It is plain from the text that their secrecy was due to fear. Everyone preferred to remain in the good graces of the hierarchy. To say the wrong thing would mean excommunication from the synagogue which would in turn ostracize one from all other social contacts. Barnes has a comment worthy of repetition here: There are always many such friends of Jesus in the world who are desirous of saying something good about Him, but who, from fear or shame, refuse to make a full acknowledgment of Him. Many will praise His morals, His precepts, and His holy life, while they are ashamed to speak of His divinity or His atonement, and still more to acknowledge that they are dependent upon Him for salvation.
Quiz
1.
What route did Jesus take on His way up to the feast?
2.
Why would He be relatively safe from discovery on this route?
3.
How could Jesus drop His secrecy and teach publicly in the midst of the feast?
4.
Why would some of the multitude say that Jesus was leading people astray?
5.
What kept the people from speaking openly and boldly of Jesus?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(10) But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast.The words unto the feast are misplaced in the Received text, upon which our version is based. The right reading is, But when His brethren were gone up unto the feast, then went He also up; and the difference is not unimportant. We have seen that, even with the ordinary reading, there is no ground for the frequent objection (Joh. 7:8), but it is really nowhere said that He went up to the feast at all. As a matter of fact, the special feast daythe day of Holy Convocationwas on the 15th of Tishri, the 14th being the preparation day. From the 16th to the 20th was what was called The Lesser Festival, or The Middle of the Feast (Joh. 7:14), and it is at this we find Him present. (Comp. also Joh. 7:37.)
Not openly, but as it were in secreti.e., not with the usual company. Judging from His practice at another time (Joh. 4:4), He would go through Samaria, while the caravan would go on the Eastern side of the Jordan.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
10. Not openly Not with the ordinary pilgrim caravans by the ordinary route on the east side of Jordan.
As it were in secret Not by any actual concealment; but informing no one except his apostles, and taking the cross route through Samaria. See map.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘But when his brothers were gone to the Feast, then he also went up, not publicly but as it were in secret.’
Once His brothers and the Galilean party had gone up to the feast, however, no doubt to be given the onceover by the Judaiser’s spies, Jesus followed quietly and without any fuss. He did not want to draw attention to Himself until He was ready. This suggests that He knew that the authorities would be watching the road for the arrival of His family and their fellow Nazarenes, expecting Him to be with them. No doubt He took a circuitous route so as to avoid their attention.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jesus Offers His Doctrine to the Jews In Joh 7:10-36 Jesus offers His doctrine to the Jews. Although it is rejected by many of them, He continues to reveal great revelations of Himself in this feast for those who do believe in Him.
Joh 7:10 But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.
Joh 7:10
Joh 7:11 Then the Jews sought him at the feast, and said, Where is he?
Joh 7:11
Joh 7:12 And there was much murmuring among the people concerning him: for some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay; but he deceiveth the people.
Joh 7:12
Joh 7:13 Howbeit no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews.
Joh 7:13
[194] Andreas J. Ksterberger, John, in Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2004), 232.
Joh 7:13, “Howbeit no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews.”
Joh 9:22, “These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.”
Joh 12:42, “Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue:”
Joh 19:7-8, “The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid;”
Joh 19:38, “And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus.”
Joh 20:19, “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.”
Joh 7:15 Comments When the Jewish leaders heard Jesus teach, they marveled, saying, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” (Joh 7:15) Because Jesus did not rise up through the rabbinical educational system, He was unknown to the educated Pharisees and Jewish leaders. Andreas J. Ksterberger notes that the rabbis of the first century often cited other rabbinical authorities in their teachings. [195] Thus, the rabbis considered those who taught without such rabbinical authorities to lack credibility. [196] They themselves referred back to a long history of traditional interpretation of the Mosaic Law as their authority. Jesus, however, offered Himself as the sole authority in His teachings on twenty-five occasions in John’s Gospel, saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you” (Joh 1:51; Joh 3:3; Joh 3:5; Joh 3:11; Joh 5:19; Joh 5:24-25; Joh 6:26; Joh 6:32; Joh 6:47; Joh 6:53; Joh 8:34; Joh 8:51; Joh 8:58; Joh 10:1; Joh 10:7; Joh 12:24; Joh 13:16; Joh 13:20-21; Joh 13:38; Joh 14:12; Joh 16:20; Joh 16:23; Joh 21:18) Throughout the Synoptic Gospels Jesus says, “Verily I say unto you” When pressed by the Jews for His source of authority, Jesus refers to His Father as the source of His doctrine (Joh 5:17-26; Joh 5:36-37; Joh 6:44-46; Joh 7:16; Joh 8:28; Joh 8:38; Joh 10:18; Joh 10:37-38; Joh 12:49-50; Joh 14:31; Joh 15:15). Jesus’ response of elevating Himself above rabbinic authority incited the Jews to anger, as they accused Him of blasphemy because He made Himself equal to God, while the common rabbi lowered himself below rabbinical authorities in his teachings. Perhaps the best example of the Jew’s scholar’s dependence upon the long tradition of rabbinical authority is found in the Babylonian Talmud, which consists of lengthy discussions of the views of renowned rabbis regarding particular interpretations of the Law.
[195] Andreas J. Ksterberger, John, in Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2004), 232-233.
[196] Scholars cite Sotah 22a from the Babylonian Talmud as an example of the negative rabbinical attitude towards those who do not appeal to other authorities in their teachings, which says, “It has been reported, If one has learnt Scripture and Mishnah but did not attend upon Rabbinical scholars, R. Eleazar says he is an ‘Am ha-arez’ [lit. a people of the land].” (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 22a) The rabbis equated such teachers to “people of the land,” meaning such teachers were like the common, uneducated person. See Isidore Epstein, ed., Contents of the Soncino Babylonian Talmud, trans. Jacob Shachter and H. Freedman (London: The Soncino Press) [on-line]; accessed 3 July 2010; accessed from http://www.come-and-hear.com; Internet.
Joh 7:16 Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
Joh 7:16
Joh 7:17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.
Joh 7:17
Pro 1:7, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
We are told to incline our ears unto His Sayings. We cannot do that without the right attitude, which is an attitude of reverence for God’s Word and the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Once we have reverence, we are in a position to recognize His voice. When we recognize His voice, we are to respond in obedience. [197]
[197] Keith Moore, interviewed by Kenneth Copeland, Believer’s Voice of Victory (Kenneth Copeland Ministries, Fort Worth, Texas), on Trinity Broadcasting Network (Santa Ana, California), television program, Lighthouse Television Uganda, May 13, 2004.
Joh 7:18 He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.
Joh 7:18
Est 5:10-12, “Nevertheless Haman refrained himself: and when he came home, he sent and called for his friends, and Zeresh his wife. And Haman told them of the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and all the things wherein the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king. Haman said moreover, Yea, Esther the queen did let no man come in with the king unto the banquet that she had prepared but myself; and to morrow am I invited unto her also with the king.”
Est 6:6, “So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour? Now Haman thought in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself?”
Joh 7:21 Comments – The one miracle that Jesus was referring to in Joh 7:21 is most probably the healing of the lame man by the pool of Bethesda (Joh 5:1-9).
Joh 7:22 Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man.
Joh 7:22
Joh 7:23 Comments Lev 12:3 says a Jewish male infant is to be circumcised on the eighth day; yet, Exo 31:14 tells the Jews to do not servile work on the Sabbath.
Lev 12:3, “And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.”
Exo 31:14, “Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.”
According to ancient rabbinic scholarship, the Jews believed that it was more important to fulfill circumcision on the eighth day than to rest on the Sabbath. One rabbi of the second century A.D. wrote, “Great is circumcision which overrides even the rigor of the Sabbath.” ( Nedarim 3.11 , see also m. habbalh Joh 18:3; Joh 19:1-3; the midrash Tanhuma 19b) [198]
[198] Andreas J. Ksterberger, John, in Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2004), 234.
“From what we have learned above, we see, that for the circumcision itself and all its necessary accessories the Sabbath maybe violated, according to the dictum of R. Eliezer. Whence does he deduce this? This is the reasoning of R. Eliezer: It is written [Leviticus xii. 3]: ‘And on the eighth day shall the flesh of his foreskin be circumcised.’; Thus, as it says distinctly the eighth day, it makes no difference what day the eighth falls on, whether it be Sabbath or not. Eet us see: The rabbis and R. Eliezer differ only as far as the preparations for circumcision on the Sabbath are concerned, but not as to the circumcision itself.” (Babylonian Talmud, Sabbath 18) [199]
[199] Michael L. Rodkinson, New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, vol. 2 (New York: New Talmud Publishing Company, 1902), 292.
“Hence R. Johanan s explanation is the most acceptable; and we have learned in a Boraitha in support of R. Johanan s explanation, and not of that of R. A ha bar Jacob, as follows: ‘On the eighth day shall he be circumcised, even though it be Sabbath.’” (Babylonian Talmud, Sabbath 19) [200]
[200] Michael L. Rodkinson, New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, vol. 2 (New York: New Talmud Publishing Company, 1902), 293-294.
Joh 7:23 If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?
Joh 7:23
Joh 7:24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
Joh 7:21-24
Joh 7:25 Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he, whom they seek to kill?
Joh 7:26 Joh 7:27 Joh 7:27
Joh 7:28 Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not.
Joh 7:29 Joh 7:30 Joh 7:30
Joh 2:4, “Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.”
Joh 7:6-8, “Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come : but your time is alway ready. The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come.”
Joh 7:30, “Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come .”
Joh 8:20, “These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not yet come .”
Joh 12:23, “And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come , that the Son of man should be glorified.”
Joh 12:27, “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour : but for this cause came I unto this hour.”
Joh 13:1, “Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.”
Joh 7:35 “will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles” Comments – The English word “dispersed” in Joh 7:35 is the Greek word , from which we derive the English word “Diaspora.” This Greek word occurs three times in the New Testament, being found in two other New Testament passages.
Joh 7:35, “Then said the Jews among themselves, Whither will he go, that we shall not find him? will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?”
Jas 1:1, “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad , greeting.”
John Calvin writes, “When the ten tribes were banished, the Assyrian king placed them in different parts. Afterwards, as it usually happens in the revolutions of kingdoms (such as then took place,) it is very probable that they moved here and there in all directions. The Jews had been scattered almost unto all quarters of the world. He [James] then wrote and exhorted all those whom he could not personally address, because they had been scattered far and wide.” [201]
[201] John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of James, trans. John Owen, in Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1855), 278.
God was able to use the dispersion of the Jews across the known world as a foothold of faith to spread the Gospel. Every city that Paul the apostle entered, he first found the synagogues and preached to the Jews. It was only after the Jews rejected the message of Jesus that Paul went to the Gentiles. God had prepared an ideal time when the Greek language was universally known, the Romans had built the infrastructure of roads, and the Jews had spread the synagogues throughout the civilized world.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles. The murmuring concerning Jesus:
v. 10. But when His brethren were gone up, then went He also up unto the feast, not openly, but, as it were, in secret.
v. 11. Then the Jews sought Him at the feast and said, Where is He?
v. 12. And there was much murmuring among the people concerning Him; for some said, He is a good man; others said, Nay; but He deceiveth the people.
v. 13. Howbeit no man spake openly of Him for fear of the Jews. Jesus let His brothers, with their peculiar ideas concerning Messianic revelations, go up to the capital alone. But after they were gone, He started out on His journey to the feast, with none of the publicity which they had recommended. It was for that reason that He had refused to go with them openly, because the attention which it would draw on the way and on His arrival in Jerusalem would not be beneficial to the cause. He went secretly, in order not to cause excitement and to irritate the Jews into such a mental condition that they would carry out their murderous design at once. The object of His journey was only to teach in Jerusalem once more, to preach the Gospel of redemption through His Word and work. But many of the Jews were expecting Him; they were making inquiries concerning Him and His whereabouts. But all this was done quietly, in order not to arouse attention. Even the disputatious murmuring and wrangling concerning Him and His work was done under cover. Some in the multitude took His part, considering Him’ a good man, whose intentions could not be bad; others just as vehemently denounced Him as a seducer and deceiver of the people. But all this had to be done in strict secrecy; their discussions had to be suppressed and be carried on in low tones. All waited for the authorities of the Church to give their decision. Note: The unbelievers of all times may be classified in much the same manner as in this passage. The one class believes Jesus to be a champion of virtue, the other holds the opinion that He is a deliberate liar and cheat.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Joh 7:10. Not openly, This suggests another reason for our Lord’s delay. Had he taken his journey at the usual time, the multitudes who were on the road gathering round him, and accompanying him to Jerusalem, might have given fresh matter of offence to his enemies; for which reason he did not set out till the greater part of the people were gone; and then he went up not publicly, but as it were in secret; that is, he neither preached nor wrought miracles by the way, nor had any crowd attending him.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Joh 7:10 . .] Aor. pluperfect; Winer, p. 258 [E. T. p. 343].
] He went not openly ( ; comp. Xen. Anab . v. 4. 33: , instead of which follows), but so to speak secretly ( incognito ), not in the company of a caravan of pilgrims, or in any other way with outward observation, but so that His journey to that feast is represented as made in secrecy, and consequently quite differently from His last entry at the feast of the Passover. On , comp. Bernhardy, p. 279; Ellendt, Lex. Soph . II. p. 1004. Otherwise in Joh 1:14 (against B. Crusius). The context does not intimate whether Jesus took a different road (through Samaria , for instance, as Hengstenberg with Wieseler, according to Luk 9:51 ff., supposes), De Wette, Krabbe, and early writers, but shows only that He was without any companions (except His disciples, Joh 9:2 ). Baur (also Hilgenfeld) finds in ., , something Docetic , or at least ( N. T. Theol . p. 367) bordering upon Gnosticism (besides Joh 8:59 , Joh 10:39 , Joh 6:16 ), which it is easy enough to find anywhere if such texts are supposed to be indications. See, on the contrary, Brckner.
This journey finally takes Jesus away from Galilee ( i.e . until after His death), and thus far it is parallel with that in Mat 19:1 , but only that far. In other respects it occurs in quite a different historical connection, and is undertaken with a different object (the Passover). The journey, again mentioned in Luk 9:51 ff., is in other respects quite different . The assumption that Jesus returned to Galilee between the feast of Tabernacles and the feast of the Dedication (Ammon, Lange; see on Joh 10:22 ), is the result of a forced attempt at harmonizing, which exceeds its limits in every attempt which it makes to reconcile the Johannean and the synoptic accounts of the last journey from Galilee to Judaea. Comp. also Ewald, Gesch. Chr . p. 491, Exo 3 .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
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
Joh 7:10 to Joh 10:21
I
Fermentation 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
Joh 7:10-36
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, ]? 12And there was much murmuring among the people [the multitudes, ] concerning him: for some said, He is a good man: [but]14 others said, Nay; but he13deceiveth the people [the multitude, ]. 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, ],17 he shall know of [concerning] the doctrine, whether it be of [is from] God, or whether I [in my doctrine] speak [make words, ]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 Joh 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 [multitudenot the rulers] answered and said, Thou hast a devil [a demon, , 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, (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
Joh 7:10. Had gone up.The 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 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 (Mat 19:1-2; Mar 10:1; Leben Jesu, p. 928). More below, at Joh 10:22.
Joh 7:11. The Jews therefore sought him at the feast.According to Joh 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. Hence also the expression , Where is that man?
Joh 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 (), kind, benevolent. According to the New Testament usage (see Mat 20:15; Rom 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 JewsAccording 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 will certainly have a meaning; though the opinion, He deceiveth the people, was open enough. The distinction between and must be observed here. Persons on both sides were expressing themselves in a scanty ; yet did not come to a 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.
Joh 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 Joh 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, 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, from the medicinal spring and the healing; and even in His Galilean discourse in John 6 there is a manifest reference to the approaching passover in Jerusalem.
Joh 7:15. How knoweth this man letters [].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 (Joh 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 Joh 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 [ ], and is not a regular graduate of the Rabbinical schools. The without (2Ti 3:15) denotes not the Holy Scriptures ( , according to the Peshito, Luther, Grotius), but literature, the field of learning (in the Vulgate, litter, see Act 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 Christs 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 [-), nor self-taught (-), nor even God-taught (- 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 carpenters 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 (Luk 4:16), the annual festivals in the Temple of Jerusalem (Luk 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 Bhme, 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.]
Joh 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: here also is not equivalent to tamquam (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 Joh 5:31; Joh 8:16. The primary distinction is between the Son sent, who both in word and act executes the 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.
Joh 7:17. If any one is willing to do his will [].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. Mans moral of the moral of God is the condition of mans intellectual of the intelligible 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.: . Comp. Mat 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 (Joh 3:21), and develops into the love of God (Joh 5:42). The point cannot be the doing of the will of God, as against sinners and beginners in knowledge; it is only the (which, of course, is the beginning of the doing according to the best of ones knowledge and conscience, in the form of trying; Romans 7). Meyer: The is not redundant (Wolf, Lsner, and many others), but is the very nerve of the matter; in 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 (Lcke, 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 Joh 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 (). 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 , . . . It is false to ask whether, in the conflict in Rom 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 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 () 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 Joh 3:12.
Joh 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. therefore, is not. equivalent here to (Grotius, et al.); though connected with it, inasmuch as would produce . Self-seeking darkens knowledge.
Joh 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 Joh 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.
Joh 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 Joh 6:70. The people, however, take the accusation to themselves, thinking it wholly unfounded. As they of Jerusalem, who speak in Joh 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 [.]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 (Mat 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 Joh 8:48; Joh 10:20 is shown by the connection to be evil-minded. Chrysostom and others take the to be the rulers, and their question to be a dissimulation. This obliterates the true sense of the transaction.
Joh 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 Joh 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 [the multitude] as answering the Lord. Christ intends to bring before the the malicious inquisitorial conduct of the hierarchy. The 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, Joh 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 Joh 3:1). The antithesis lies in the . 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 is referred by Theophylact, etc., Lcke, [Olsh., De Wette, Stier, Hengstenberg, Ewald, Godet] etc., to the clause preceding (.); 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
Joh 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.) 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, Luk 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 (Mat 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 ( .), but in the fathers ( ).
Joh 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 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.) Hence, too, the parallel cited by Luthardt from Gal 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: 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 is emphatic in antithesis with , 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). Lcke.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 Meyers 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: Prputium 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, Mat 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 (), 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.
Joh 7:24. Judge not according to appearance [ ]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.
Joh 7:25-26. Some of them of Jerusalem.These are better instructed than the ; they openly avow that the rulers have laid a plan to kill Jesus; yet cautiously, without directly naming them. The repetition of 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.
Joh 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 Joh 7:42, but by contrast with the purely supramundane or mysterious origin which was claimed for the Messiah. Meyers 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. Lcke [Alford] and others, referring to Justin Martyr (Dialog. cum Tryph.): According to the Jewish view the Messiah should be , even unknown to Himself, until Elijah should have anointed Him. Against this Tholuck, after Meyer: In that case the earthly 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 Dan 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, Mic 4:8; Gfrrer, Jahrh. des Heils, II., p. 223). It must be remembered that Daniels 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 . 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.
Joh 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 ( , which is with them quite equivalent to knowing ).
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, Lcke, 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. 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 is variously explained. 1. In the sense of , a true person, verus, one who speaks the truth (Luther, Grotius). 2. A reliable person, firmus, verax (Chrysostom, Lampe), Joh 8:26. 3. A real, genuine person, fulfilling the idea (Lcke, Tholuck, 7th ed.). 4. As used absolutely, for the true, essential God (Olshausen, Kling); against which Meyer observes that , without a particular subject, forms no definite idea. But certainly we have a particular subject in . 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
Joh 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.
Joh 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.
Joh 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.
Joh 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.
Joh 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 Luk 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 (Joh 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 Joh 7:46.
I go unto him that sent me.According to Paulus and Meyer this would be an addition of Johns because according to Joh 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 Abrahams bosom. And hence perhaps the remote evasive conjecture: Will He go among the Greeks, etc. This explanation is confirmed by Joh 8:22, where the evasion is still more malicious than here. The expression of Christ, therefore, is a dark hint of an unknown (Lcke), the import of which they might feel, but not understand (Luthardt).
Joh 7:34. Ye will seek me, and not End (me).Comp. Joh 8:21; Joh 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 grati (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 [Luk 20:16 ff; Luk 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, Psa 10:15; Psa 37:10; Isa 41:12. The mere inability to find itself points back to a kind of seeking; and seeking is the emphatic thing in Joh 8:21; Joh 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 , metaphysically, like Augustine: Nec dicit, ubi ero, sed ubi sum; semper enim erat, quo fuerat rediturus (Joh 3:13),there is no reason; like , 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.
Joh 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 (Joh 11:50-51) and Pilate (Joh 19:19).Unto the dispersed among the Greeks.The (dispersion, abstract, pro concret.) (genitive of remoter relation), not the dispersed Gentiles (Chrysostom), or Hellenists or Greek Jews (Scaliger), but, according to specific usage (Jam 1:1; 1Pe 1:1), the Jews dispersed in the Gentile world.
Joh 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, Joh 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 (Mat 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. Storrs explanation in Flatts Magazin, I. p. 107 sqq.; IV. p. 220; Ssskind: In welchem Sinn hat Jesus die Gttlichkeit seiner Lehre behauptet? p. 2547; Webers Programme: Interpretatio judicii, quod Jesus Joh 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 Gods word and Spirit, Joh 7:27; Joh 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 (Joh 7:15; Joh 7:27; Joh 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 Christs ethico-psychological miracles. See John 2. 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 Lords wise distinction between His brethrens 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, 1Pe 2:22.The wonderful wisdom with which Christ prolonged His life more than a year (from the feast of Purim in John 5) 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 gospels 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 appearsappears 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 Lords 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. Christs 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.38The 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, Joh 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 Lords 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 Joh 7:21 an answer to the charge in Joh 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.Christs 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 Lords 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 Christs 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, Joh 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 7:3335:1. 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 (Joh 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.Act 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, Joh 6:39-40. 2. Because it was in substance one with Moses and the prophets, through whom the Father had spoken, Heb 1:1. 3. Because Christ was filled with the Spirit of the Father, Joh 17:8. 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 ones 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 Gods.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, Mar 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 neighbors 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 (Rom 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 Christs 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 followswhich few think ofthat 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, Deu 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 Lords 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:
[13]Joh 7:10.[The text. rec. transfers after . But the position indicated in brackets is maintained by . B. K. L., etc., and the best critics.P. S.]
[14]Joh 7:12. after is wanting in [] D. G. F., etc., and in Tischendorf. [Inserted in B. L., Alf., W. and H.P. S.]
[15]Joh 7:15.Lachmann and Tischendorf: instead of , after many authorities. Also after ., Joh 7:16.
[16]Joh 7:16.[The which is wanting in the text. rec. and ignored by Lange, is well supported by . B. T., etc. Alf., W. and H., etc.P. S.]
[17]Joh 7:17.[The E. V. disregards the and the implied harmony of mans will with Gods will, and might convey the idea that the mere performance of Gods commandments will lead men to a knowledge of Christ, which is not necessarily the case. Comp. Alf. in loc.P. S.]
[18]Joh 7:19.[The interrogation mark should be put after the first . 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 with instead of , but divides the verses between and . The latter is not done even by some editors who connect the grammatically with the preceding verse; but of course it should be done. The Cod. Sin. lacks the .. altogether, and reads: E. D. Y.]
[20]Joh 7:26. in most MSS., B. D. K. L., etc., occurs only once, and that before Tischendorf. Yet it is probable that the second has been dropped on account of the striking repetition, which, however, is very expressive and significant.
[21]Joh 7:29.[Text. rec. with . D. insert after , B. T., Vulg., Tert., Orig., Alf., W. and H. omit it.P. S.]
[22]Joh 7:30.[ here, as in Joh 7:13; Joh 7:28 and often in John, adds an opposite thought=atque, und doch, and yet. Comp. Hartung, Partikellehre, I. p. 147 f. Meyer on Joh 7:28 : Pronounce and emphatically, and imagine a dash after it.P. S.]
[23]Joh 7:31 Lachmann, Tischendorf, [Alf., W. and H., with B. K. L., etc. This position puts the in stronger contrast to the subject of , Joh 7:30, and is preferable to the . . . . . of the Rec., which is backed here by . D.P. S.]
[24]Ibid. [after ] before ., is lacking in B. D. L. etc., and Lachmann [and Cod. Sin.]
[25]IbidInstead of [text. rec.] Lachmann and Tischendorf [Alf., W. and H.] read [doch nicht].
[26]Ibid.The must be considered an explanatory addition. [Lachmann, Tischendorf, Alford, etc., omit it on the authority of the uncial MSS.P. S.]
[27]Joh 7:32.[ is sustained by the uncial MSS. against the reverse order of the text. rec.P. S.]
[28]Joh 7:34.[The second here and Joh 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 prveniens.E. D. Y.]
[31][Cod. Sin.* omits altogether, and so does Tischendorf in the 8th ed. He reads with the article. The phrase in John usually stands at the beginning, not at the close of a sentence, comp. Joh 5:16; Joh 5:18; Joh 6:65; Joh 8:47; Joh 10:17; Rev 17:7.P. S.]
[32][In ed. 5 (p. 301) Meyer connects with the following (as Bengel), and explains: Moses on this account gave yon circumcision, not because it is from Moses but because it is from the fathers (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 Joh 8:14; Joh 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 Joh 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 . 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 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.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. (11) Then the Jews sought him at the feast, and said, Where is he? (12) And there was much murmuring among the people concerning him. For some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay; but he deceiveth the people. (13) Howbeit, no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews. (14) Now, about the midst of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple and taught. (15) And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? (16) Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. (17) If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. (18) He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. (19) Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me? (20) The people answered and said, Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee? (21) Jesus answered and said unto them, I have done one work, and ye all marvel. (22) Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision, (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers,) and ye on the sabbath-day circumcise a man. (23) If a man on the sabbath-day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day? (24) Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. (25) Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he whom they seek to kill? (26) But lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him, do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ? (27) Howbeit, we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is. (28) Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not, (29) But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me. (30) Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come. (3l) And many of the people believed on him, and said, When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done? (32) The Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things concerning him; and the Pharisees and chief priests sent officers to take him. (33) Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me. (34) Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come. (35) Then said the Jews among themselves, Whither will he go, that we shall not find him; will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles? (36) What manner of saying is this that he said, Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come?
It is very blessed to behold Christ going up to keep this ordinance, in the fulfilling the whole law. And we have abundant reason to bless him that he did, for the Church would have lost this divine Sermon, which this chapter records, had he not gone there. Yea, indeed, as this was the last public preaching of Jesus, at the feast of tabernacles, it merits the attention of his people the more, as being decisive to the great points of his doctrine.
I need not go over the several features of it. The language of our Lord is designed, as it was delivered, for popular use; and, like the Prophet’s vision, he that runs may read it. But I beg to make one observation upon it, which I hope may not be unprofitable. It is blessed to see that then, as now, though Christ himself was the preacher, the same effects always follow. To some it is the savor of life unto life; to others of death unto death. And Jesus himself hath assigned the cause. My sheep (saith he) hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. Joh 10:27 . But to the ungodly, the Lord saith, Ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. Joh 8:47 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
10 But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.
Ver. 10. Not openly, but as it were in secret ] To kindle the desire of seeing and hearing him so much the more; or to discover whether there were any numbers disposed by his first preaching to receive him, to the end he might not show himself in vain. He had lost most of his hearers, who thenceforth walked no more with him, Joh 6:66 ; yet might haply afterwards have a better mind to him.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
10. ] . , i.e. not in the usual caravan-company, nor probably by the usual way. Whether the Twelve were with Him, we have no means of judging: probably so, for they appear ch. Joh 9:2 ; and after their becoming once attached to the Person of our Lord as Apostles, we find no trace of his having been for any long time separated from them, except during their mission Mat 10 , which was long ago accomplished.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Joh 7:10 . . “But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the Feast, not openly, but, as it were, in secret.” That is to say, He went up, but not at His brothers’ instigation, nor with the publicity they had recommended. [Of course if we read in Joh 7:8 a change of mind must be supposed, although not the “inconstantia” alleged by Porphyry.]
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Joh 7:10-13
10But when His brothers had gone up to the feast, then He Himself also went up, not publicly, but as if, in secret. 11So the Jews were seeking Him at the feast and were saying, “Where is He?” 12There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, “He is a good man”; others were saying, “No, on the contrary, He leads the people astray.” 13Yet no one was speaking openly of Him for fear of the Jews.
Joh 7:11 “the Jews” There are four separate groups in this chapter who interact with Jesus.
1. His brothers
2. “the Jews,” which refers to the religious leaders
3. “the crowd,” which refers to the pilgrims making their way to the Feast of Tabernacles
4. “the people of Jerusalem,” who were local folks who knew the Sanhedrin and their plans to kill Jesus
Joh 7:12 “There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him” This is typical of what the gospel does in every crowd. It shows the differing spiritual abilities and levels of understanding present within mankind (cf. Joh 7:40-44).
“He leads the people astray” The verb plana is used of
1. false teachers (i.e., Mat 24:11; 2Ti 3:13; 1Jn 1:8; 1Jn 2:26; 1Jn 3:7)
2. false Messiahs (i.e., Mat 24:4-5; Mat 24:24; in John of what the Jews thought Jesus was (cf. Joh 7:12; Joh 7:47; Mat 27:63)
3. people deceiving themselves (cf. 1Co 3:18; 1Jn 1:8) or
4. being deceived (cf. 1Co 6:9; 1Co 15:33; Gal 6:7; Jas 1:16
The word was used of the planets that did not follow the regular orbits of the constellations. They were called “the wanderers.”
Joh 7:13 “the Jews” This whole crowd was Jewish. This clearly shows John’s specialized use of this term to refer to the religious leaders in Jerusalem. See note at Joh 7:1.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
when. Not a note of time but of sequence, as in Joh 2:9, Joh 2:23; Joh 2:4, Joh 2:1, Joh 2:40; Joh 6:12, Joh 6:16; Joh 11:6, Joh 11:32, Joh 11:38.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
10.] ., i.e. not in the usual caravan-company, nor probably by the usual way. Whether the Twelve were with Him, we have no means of judging: probably so, for they appear ch. Joh 9:2; and after their becoming once attached to the Person of our Lord as Apostles, we find no trace of his having been for any long time separated from them, except during their mission Matthew 10, which was long ago accomplished.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Joh 7:10. , as) This particle has here the force, not of comparing, but of declaring.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Joh 7:10
Joh 7:10
But when his brethren were gone up unto the feast, then went he also up, not publicly, but as it were in secret.-His brethren went to the feast while he for the time tarried in Galilee for a day or two, and then quietly, without showing himself to the world, went up.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
then: Psa 26:8, Psa 40:8, Mat 3:15, Gal 4:4
not: Joh 11:54, Isa 42:2, Isa 42:3, Amo 5:13, Mat 10:16
Reciprocal: Mat 12:46 – his Luk 12:50 – and Joh 7:25 – of Jerusalem
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
0
After the brethren of Jesus were gone, he could go up unnoticed, being alone. This secrecy was maintained for the reason expressed in verses 6 and 8.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Joh 7:10. And when his brethren had gone up unto the feast, then went he also up, not manifestly but as in secret. We must not sever manifestly from manifest thyself, in Joh 7:4. Had Jesus joined any festal band, it would have been impossible (without an express miracle) to restrain the impetuous zeal of Galilean pilgrims, of whom very many had witnessed His signs and listened to His words. To have gone up publicly would have been to manifest Himself to the world. At the next great feast, the Passover of the following year, He did enter the holy city in triumph, thus proclaimed King of Israel by the rejoicing multitudes. For this, however, the time was not yet come. It is very probable that this journey must be identified with that related in Luk 9:51 sqq. The privacy here spoken of has been thought inconsistent with Lukes statement that Jesus at that time travelled through Samaria with His disciples, sending messengers before him (Luk 9:52). But the divergence is only apparent. Jesus went up in secret, in that He avoided the train of Galilean pilgrims, who may have reached Jerusalem before He set out from Galilee; besides, it is probable that the route through Samaria, though not altogether avoided by the festal companies (as we know from Josephus), would be more rarely taken. The sending of messengers implies no publicity; for such a company as this, composed of Jesus and His disciples, such a precaution might well be essential.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Observe here, 1. How our blessed Saviour, who came to fulfil the law, goes to Jerusalem at the Jewish feast, according to the command of God, Three times a year shall all thy males appear before me. Exo 23:17 Christ being made under the law, sheweth a punctual obedience to the law, and fulfilled it in his own person.
Observe, 2. The different opinions which the Jews at Jerusalem do express concerning our Saviour; some allowing him the charitable character of being a good man; others traducing him as being a deceiver of the people.
Our dear Lord, we see, when here on earth, passed through evil report and good report. Is it any wonder to find the friends of Christ branded with infamy and reproach, when Christ himself passes under the infamous character of a deceiver of the people? Some allowed him to be a good man; but others said, Nay, but he deceiveth the people.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Joh 7:10. But when his brethren His carnal relations and their friends, in whose company he did not choose to travel; were gone up, then went he also to the feast In obedience to the divine command, and because it would give him an opportunity of honouring God, and doing good; but not openly Not publicly, with a train of attendants, as he had often done: but as it were in secret With as much privacy as possible; and that probably rather for fear of giving offence than of receiving injury: he would not unnecessarily provoke the government, which his being accompanied with a multitude of people would have done. And this suggests another reason for his delay. Had he taken this journey at the usual time, the multitudes who were on the road would have gathered round him, and accompanied him to Jerusalem, and at once have excited the notice, and provoked the malice and envy of his enemies; he therefore did not set out till the greater part of the people were gone, and then went up as privately as possible, neither preaching nor working miracles by the way.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
LXXVI.
THE PRIVATE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.
(Through Samaria. Probably September, A. D. 29.)
cLUKE IX. 51-56; dJOHN VII. 10.
d10 But when his brethren were gone up unto the feasts, then went he also up, not publicly, but as it were in secret. [This section follows immediately after the preceding. The secrecy of this journey consists in the fact that Jesus did not join the caravans or pilgrim bands, and that he did not follow the usual Peran route, but went directly through Samaria.] c51 And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, 52 and sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. [Taken in its strictest sense, the expression “taken up” refers to our Lord’s ascension, but it is here used to embrace his entire passion. Though our Lord’s death was still six months distant, his going to Jerusalem is described as attended with a special effort, because from that time forth Jerusalem was to occupy the position of headquarters, as Capernaum had done, and his [441] withdrawals and returns would be with regard to it. The presence of the twelve alone is sufficient to account for the messengers. He did not wish to overtax the fickle hospitality of the Samaritans by coming unannounced.] 53 And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he were going to Jerusalem. [Had Jesus come among them on a missionary tour he would doubtless have been received. But when he came as a Jew passing through to Jerusalem, and using their highway as a convenience, they rejected him.] 54 And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven, and consume them? 55 But he turned, and rebuked them, 56 And they went to another village. [Refusing to receive a religious teacher was considered a rejection of his claim. This rejection roused the ire of the two sons of thunder and prompted them to suggest that the example of Elijah be followed ( 2Ki 1:9-12), but Jesus was a Saviour and not a destroyer, so he passed on to another village. The conduct of John in after years contrasts sharply with the wish which he here expressed– Act 8:14-25.]
[FFG 441-442]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
Joh 7:10-24. The Secret Visit.Soon, however, He receives the Divine intimation, for which He always waits (cf. Joh 2:4, Joh 11:6 f.) and goes up secretly. The Jews are discussing Him, and various opinions are expressed, but only in secret from fear of the leaders of the party, who are known to be hostile. When He appears in the Temple and teaches, they are surprised at the power of one who has not been trained in the schools. He replies that His teaching has a higher source, as all will recognise who are willing to obey Gods will (cf. Num 16:28). The self-sent teacher will betray himself by the selfishness of his aims. Circumcision is allowed to override the law of the Sabbath. Why not, therefore, His healing of the whole man, in consequence of which they are ready to break the law, Thou shalt not kill? The similarity of the argument to the Rabbinical tract Sabbath is strikingif for circumcision, which deals with one member only, the Sabbath must give way, how much more in the case of saving life? Their judgment should be based on something deeper than the mere appearance of law-breaking.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
7:10 {3} But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.
(3) An example of horrible confusion in the very bosom of the Church. The pastors oppress the people with terror and fear: the people seek Christ, when he does not appear: when he offers himself, they neglect him. Some also that know him condemn him rashly: only a very few think well of him, and even then in secret.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
H. Jesus’ third visit to Jerusalem 7:10-10:42
This section of the text describes Jesus’ teaching in Jerusalem during the feast of Tabernacles and the feast of Dedication. John evidently included it in His narrative because it contains important revelations of Jesus’ identity and explains the mounting opposition to Jesus that culminated in His crucifixion.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
1. The controversy surrounding Jesus 7:10-13
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Jesus proceeded to Jerusalem shortly after his half-brothers did because the Father led Him to go then. He did not herald His arrival with great publicity, as His brothers had recommended, but went without fanfare. If He had gone sooner, the authorities would have had more opportunities to arrest Him (Joh 7:1).