{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"JHN","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"John","commonName":"John","introduction":"THE author of the Fourth Gospel was the younger of the two sons of Zebedee, a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, who resided at Bethsaida, where were born Peter and Andrew his brother, and Philip also. His mother's name was Salome, who, though not without her imperfections (Mat 20:20-28), was one of those dear and honored women who accompanied the Lord on one of His preaching circuits through Galilee, ministering to His bodily wants; who followed Him to the cross, and bought sweet spices to anoint Him after His burial, but, on bringing them to the grave, on the morning of the First Day of the week, found their loving services gloriously superseded by His resurrection ere they arrived. His father, Zebedee, appears to have been in good circumstances, owning a vessel of his own and having hired servants (Mar 1:20). Our Evangelist, whose occupation was that of a fisherman with his father, was beyond doubt a disciple of the Baptist, and one of the two who had the first interview with Jesus. He was called while engaged at his secular occupation (Mat 4:21-22), and again on a memorable occasion (Luk 5:1-11), and finally chosen as one of the Twelve Apostles (Mat 10:2). He was the youngest of the Twelve--the \"Benjamin,\" as DA COSTA calls him--and he and James his brother were named in the native tongue by Him who knew the heart, \"Boanerges,\" which the Evangelist Mark (Mar 3:17) explains to mean \"Sons of thunder\"; no doubt from their natural vehemence of character. They and Peter constituted that select triumvirate of whom see on Luk 9:28. But the highest honor bestowed on this disciple was his being admitted to the bosom place with his Lord at the table, as \"the disciple whom Jesus loved\" (Joh 13:23; Joh 20:2; Joh 21:7, Joh 20:24), and to have committed to him by the dying Redeemer the care of His mother (Joh 19:26-27). There can be no reasonable doubt that this distinction was due to a sympathy with His own spirit and mind on the part of John which the all-penetrating Eye of their common Master beheld in none of the rest; and although this was probably never seen either in his life or in his ministry by his fellow apostles, it is brought out wonderfully in his writings, which, in Christ-like spirituality, heavenliness, and love, surpass, we may freely say, all the other inspired writings.\n\nAfter the effusion of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, we find him in constant but silent company with Peter, the great spokesman and actor in the infant Church until the accession of Paul. While his love to the Lord Jesus drew him spontaneously to the side of His eminent servant, and his chastened vehemence made him ready to stand courageously by him, and suffer with him, in all that his testimony to Jesus might cost him, his modest humility, as the youngest of all the apostles, made him an admiring listener and faithful supporter of his brother apostle rather than a speaker or separate actor. Ecclesiastical history is uniform in testifying that John went to Asia Minor; but it is next to certain that this could not have been till after the death both of Peter and Paul; that he resided at Ephesus, whence, as from a center, he superintended the churches of that region, paying them occasional visits; and that he long survived the other apostles. Whether the mother of Jesus died before this, or went with John to Ephesus, where she died and was buried, is not agreed. One or two anecdotes of his later days have been handed down by tradition, one at least bearing marks of reasonable probability. But it is not necessary to give them here. In the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) he was banished to \"the isle that is called Patmos\" (a small rocky and then almost uninhabited island in the Ægean Sea), \"for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ\" (Rev 1:9). IRENÆUS and EUSEBIUS say that this took place about the end of Domitian's reign. That he was thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil, and miraculously delivered, is one of those legends which, though reported by TERTULLIAN and JEROME, is entitled to no credit. His return from exile took place during the brief but tolerant reign of Nerva; he died at Ephesus in the reign of Trajan [EUSEBIUS, Ecclesiastical History, 3.23], at an age above ninety, according to some; according to others, one hundred; and even one hundred twenty, according to others still. The intermediate number is generally regarded as probably the nearest to the truth.\n\nAs to the date of this Gospel, the arguments for its having been composed before the destruction of Jerusalem (though relied on by some superior critics) are of the slenderest nature; such as the expression in Joh 5:2, \"there is at Jerusalem, by the sheep-gate, a pool,\" &c.; there being no allusion to Peter's martyrdom as having occurred according to the prediction in Joh 21:18 --a thing too well known to require mention. That it was composed long after the destruction of Jerusalem, and after the decease of all the other apostles, is next to certain, though the precise time cannot be determined. Probably it was before his banishment, however; and if we date it between the years 90 and 94, we shall probably be close to the truth.\n\nAs to the readers for whom it was more immediately designed, that they were Gentiles we might naturally presume from the lateness of the date; but the multitude of explanations of things familiar to every Jew puts this beyond all question.\n\nNo doubt was ever thrown upon the genuineness and authenticity of this Gospel till about the close of the eighteenth century; nor were these embodied in any formal attack upon it till BRETSCHNEIDER, in 1820, issued his famous treatise [Probabilia], the conclusions of which he afterwards was candid enough to admit had been satisfactorily disproved. To advert to these would be as painful as unnecessary; consisting as they mostly do of assertions regarding the Discourses of our Lord recorded in this Gospel which are revolting to every spiritual mind. The Tubingen school did their best, on their peculiar mode of reasoning, to galvanize into fresh life this theory of the post-Joannean date of the Fourth Gospel; and some Unitarian critics still cling to it. But to use the striking language of VAN OOSTERZEE regarding similar speculations on the Third Gospel, \"Behold, the feet of them that shall carry it out dead are already at the door\" (Act 5:9). Is there one mind of the least elevation of spiritual discernment that does not see in this Gospel marks of historical truth and a surpassing glory such as none of the other Gospels possess, brightly as they too attest their own verity; and who will not be ready to say that if not historically true, and true just as it stands, it never could have been by mortal man composed or conceived?\n\nOf the peculiarities of this Gospel, we note here only two. The one is its reflective character. While the others are purely narrative, the Fourth Evangelist, \"pauses, as it were, at every turn,\" as DA COSTA says [Four Witnesses, p. 234], \"at one time to give a reason, at another to fix the attention, to deduce consequences, or make applications, or to give utterance to the language of praise.\" See Joh 2:20-21, Joh 2:23-25; Joh 4:1-2; Joh 7:37-39; Joh 11:12-13, Joh 11:49-52; Joh 21:18-19, Joh 21:22-23. The other peculiarity of this Gospel is its supplementary character. By this, in the present instance, we mean something more than the studiousness with which he omits many most important particulars in our Lord's history, for no conceivable reason but that they were already familiar as household words to all his readers, through the three preceding Gospels, and his substituting in place of these an immense quantity of the richest matter not found in the other Gospels. We refer here more particularly to the nature of the additions which distinguish this Gospel; particularly the notices of the different Passovers which occurred during our Lord's public ministry, and the record of His teaching at Jerusalem, without which it is not too much to say that we could have had but a most imperfect conception either of the duration of His ministry or of the plan of it. But another feature of these additions is quite as noticeable and not less important. \"We find,\" to use again the words of DA COSTA [Four Witnesses, pp. 238, 239], slightly abridged, \"only six of our Lord's miracles recorded in this Gospel, but these are all of the most remarkable kind, and surpass the rest in depth, specialty of application, and fulness of meaning. Of these six we find only one in the other three Gospels--the multiplication of the loaves. That miracle chiefly, it would seem, on account of the important instructions of which it furnished the occasion (John 6:1-71), is here recorded anew. The five other tokens of divine power are distinguished from among the many recorded in the three other Gospels by their furnishing a still higher display of power and command over the ordinary laws and course of nature. Thus we find recorded here the first of all the miracles that Jesus wrought--the changing of water into wine (Joh 2:1-11), the cure of the nobleman's son at a distance (Joh 4:43-54); of the numerous cures of the lame and the paralytic by the word of Jesus, only one--of the man impotent for thirty and eight years (Joh 5:1-9); of the many cures of the blind, one only--of the man born blind (Joh 9:1-12); the restoration of Lazarus, not from a deathbed, like Jairus' daughter, nor from a bier, like the widow of Nain's son, but from the grave, and after lying there four days, and there sinking into corruption (John 11:1-44); and lastly, after His resurrection, the miraculous draught of fishes on the Sea of Tiberias (Joh 21:5-11). But these are all recorded chiefly to give occasion for the record of those astonishing discourses and conversations, alike with friends and with foes, with His disciples and with the multitude which they drew forth.\"\n\nOther illustrations of the peculiarities of this Gospel will occur, and other points connected with it be adverted to, in the course of the Commentary. \n\n\n\nNext: John Chapter 1\n\n","order":43,"numberOfChapters":21,"sha256":"2a03297b1e3a6f9e0b82a13c39c82e2202f9e979c173750344c480c63057d8a0","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":21,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/21.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":21},"totalNumberOfVerses":680},"chapter":{"number":20,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came first to the sepulchre--These particulars have a singular air of artless truth about them. Mary, in her grief, runs to the two apostles who were soon to be so closely associated in proclaiming the Saviour's resurrection, and they, followed by Mary, hasten to see with their own eyes. The younger disciple outruns the older; love haply supplying swifter wings. He stoops, he gazes in, but enters not the open sepulchre, held back probably by a reverential fear. The bolder Peter, coming up, goes in at once, and is rewarded with bright evidence of what had happened.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["seeth the linen clothes lie--lying. \n\nAnd the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes--not loosely, as if hastily thrown down, and indicative of a hurried and disorderly removal. \n\nbut wrapped--folded. \n\ntogether in a place by itself--showing with what grand tranquillity \"the Living One\" had walked forth from \"the dead\" (Luk 24:5). \"Doubtless the two attendant angels (Joh 20:12) did this service for the Rising One, the one disposing of the linen clothes, the other of the napkin\" [BENGEL].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["Then went in . . . that other disciple which came first to the sepulchre--The repetition of this, in connection with his not having gone in till after Peter, seems to show that at the moment of penning these words the advantage which each of these loving disciples had of the other was present to his mind. \n\nand he saw and believed--Probably he means, though he does not say, that he believed in his Lord's resurrection more immediately and certainly than Peter.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["For as yet they knew--that is, understood. \n\nnot the scripture that he must rise again from the dead--In other words, they believed in His resurrection at first, not because they were prepared by Scripture to expect it; but facts carried resistless conviction of it in the first instance to their minds, and furnished a key to the Scripture predictions of it.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping, &c.--Brief was the stay of those two men. But Mary, arriving perhaps by another direction after they left, lingers at the spot, weeping for her missing Lord. As she gazes through her tears on the open tomb, she also ventures to stoop down and look into it, when lo! \"two angels in white\" (as from the world of light, and see on Mat 28:3) appear to her in a \"sitting\" posture, \"as having finished some business, and awaiting some one to impart tidings to\" [BENGEL].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["one at the head, and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain--not merely proclaiming silently the entire charge they had had of the body, of Christ [quoted in LUTHARDT], but rather, possibly, calling mute attention to the narrow space within which the Lord of glory had contracted Himself; as if they would say, Come, see within what limits, marked off by the interval here between us two, the Lord lay! But she is in tears, and these suit not the scene of so glorious an Exit. They are going to point out to her the incongruity.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["Woman, why weepest thou?--You would think the vision too much for a lone woman. But absorbed in the one Object of her affection and pursuit, she speaks out her grief without fear. \n\nBecause, &c.--that is, Can I choose but weep, when \"they have taken away,\" &c., repeating her very words to Peter and John. On this she turned herself and saw Jesus Himself standing beside her, but took Him for the gardener. Clad therefore in some such style He must have been. But if any ask, as too curious interpreters do, whence He got those habiliments, we answer [with OLSHAUSEN and LUTHARDT] where the two angels got theirs. Nor did the voice of His first words disclose Him to Mary--\"Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?\" He will try her ere he tell her. She answers not the stranger's question, but comes straight to her point with him.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["Sir, if thou have borne him hence--borne whom? She says not. She can think only of One, and thinks others must understand her. It reminds one of the question of the Spouse, \"Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?\" (Sol 3:3). \n\ntell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away--Wilt thou, dear fragile woman? But it is the language of sublime affection, that thinks itself fit for anything if once in possession of its Object. It is enough. Like Joseph, He can no longer restrain Himself (Gen 45:1).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["Jesus saith unto her, Mary--It is not now the distant, though respectful, \"Woman.\" It is the oft-repeated name, uttered, no doubt, with all the wonted manner, and bringing a rush of unutterable and overpowering associations with it. \n\nShe turned herself, and saith to him, Rabboni!--But that single word of transported recognition was not enough for woman's full heart. Not knowing the change which had passed upon Him, she hastens to express by her action what words failed to clothe; but she is checked.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father--Old familiarities must now give place to new and more awful yet sweeter approaches; but for these the time has not come yet. This seems the spirit, at least, of these mysterious words, on which much difference of opinion has obtained, and not much that is satisfactory said. \n\nbut go to my brethren--(Compare Mat 28:10; Heb 2:11, Heb 2:17). That He had still our Humanity, and therefore \"is not ashamed to call us brethren,\" is indeed grandly evidenced by these words. But it is worthy of most reverential notice, that we nowhere read of anyone who presumed to call Him Brother. \"My brethren: Blessed Jesus, who are these? Were they not Thy followers? yea, Thy forsakers? How dost Thou raise these titles with Thyself! At first they were Thy servants; then disciples; a little before Thy death, they were Thy friends; now, after Thy resurrection, they were Thy brethren. But oh, mercy without measure! how wilt Thou, how canst Thou call them brethren whom, in Thy last parting, Thou foundest fugitives? Did they not run from Thee? Did not one of them rather leave his inmost coat behind him than not be quit of Thee? And yet Thou sayest, 'Go, tell My brethren! It is not in the power of the sins of our infirmity to unbrother us'\" [BISHOP HALL]. \n\nI ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God--words of incomparable glory! Jesus had called God habitually His Father, and on one occasion, in His darkest moment, His God. But both are here united, expressing that full-orbed relationship which embraces in its vast sweep at once Himself and His redeemed. Yet, note well, He says not, Our Father and our God. All the deepest of the Church fathers were wont to call attention to this, as expressly designed to distinguish between what God is to Him and to us--His Father essentially, ours not so: our God essentially, His not so: His God only in connection with us: our God only in connection with Him.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her--To a woman was this honor given to be the first that saw the risen R edeemer, and that woman was not His mother. (See on Mar 16:9).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["JESUS APPEARS TO THE ASSEMBLED DISCIPLES. (Joh 20:19-23)\n\nthe same day at evening, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus--plainly not by the ordinary way of entrance. \n\nand saith unto them Peace be unto you--not the mere wish that even His own exalted peace might be theirs (Joh 14:27), but conveying it into their hearts, even as He \"opened their understandings to understand the scriptures\" (Luk 24:45).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["And when he had so said, he showed them his hands and his side--not only as ocular and tangible evidence of the reality of His resurrection (See on Luk 24:37-43), but as through \"the power of that resurrection\" dispensing all His peace to men. \n\nThen were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["Then said Jesus--prepared now to listen to Him in a new character. \n\nPeace be unto you. As my Father hath sent me, so send I you--(See on Joh 17:18).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["he breathed on them--a symbolical conveyance to them of the Spirit. \n\nand saith, Receive ye the Holy Ghost--an earnest and first-fruits of the more copious Pentecostal effusion.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, &c.--In any literal and authoritative sense this power was never exercised by one of the apostles, and plainly was never understood by themselves as possessed by them or conveyed to them. (See on Mat 16:19). The power to intrude upon the relation between men and God cannot have been given by Christ to His ministers in any but a ministerial or declarative sense--as the authorized interpreters of His word, while in the actings of His ministers, the real nature of the power committed to them is seen in the exercise of church discipline.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["JESUS AGAIN APPEARS TO THE ASSEMBLED DISCIPLES. (Joh 20:24-29)\n\nBut Thomas--(See on Joh 11:16). \n\nwas not with them when Jesus came--why, we know not, though we are loath to think (with STIER, ALFORD and LUTHARDT) it was intentional, from sullen despondency. The fact merely is here stated, as a loving apology for his slowness of belief.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["We have seen the Lord--This way of speaking of Jesus (as Joh 20:20 and Joh 21:7), so suited to His resurrection-state, was soon to become the prevailing style. \n\nExcept I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my linger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe--The very form of this speech betokens the strength of the unbelief. \"It is not, If I shall see I shall believe, but, Unless I shall see I will not believe; nor does he expect to see, although the others tell him they had\" [BENGEL]. How Christ Himself viewed this state of mind, we know from Mar 16:14, \"He upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart because they believed not them which had seen Him after He was risen.\" But whence sprang this pertinacity of resistance in such minds? Not certainly from reluctance to believe, but as in Nathanael (see on Joh 1:46) from mere dread of mistake in so vital a matter.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["And after eight days--that is, on the eighth, or first day of the preceding week. They probably met every day during the preceding week, but their Lord designedly reserved His second appearance among them till the recurrence of His resurrection day, that He might thus inaugurate the delightful sanctities of THE LORD'S DAY (Rev 1:10). \n\ndisciples were within, and Thomas with them . . . Jesus . . . stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither . . . behold . . . put it into my side, and be not faithless, but believing--\"There is something rhythmical in these words, and they are purposely couched in the words of Thomas himself, to put him to shame\" [LUTHARDT]. But wish what condescension and gentleness is this done!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God--That Thomas did not do what Jesus invited him to do, and what he had made the condition of his believing, seems plain from Joh 20:29 (\"Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed\"). He is overpowered, and the glory of Christ now breaks upon him in a flood. His exclamation surpasses all that had been yet uttered, nor can it be surpassed by anything that ever will be uttered in earth or heaven. On the striking parallel in Nathanael, see on Joh 1:49. The Socinian invasion of the supreme divinity of Christ here manifestly taught--as if it were a mere call upon God in a fit of astonishment--is beneath notice, save for the profanity it charges upon this disciple, and the straits to which it shows themselves reduced.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed--words of measured commendation, but of indirect and doubtless painfully--felt rebuke: that is, 'Thou hast indeed believed; it is well: it is only on the evidence of thy senses, and after peremptorily refusing all evidence short of that.' \n\nblessed they that have not seen, and yet have believed--\"Wonderful indeed and rich in blessing for us who have not seen Him, is this closing word of the Gospel\" [ALFORD].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":30,"content":["FIRST CLOSE OF THIS GOSPEL. (Joh 20:30-31)\n\nmany other signs--miracles.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":31,"content":["But these are written--as sufficient specimens. \n\nthe Christ, the Son of God--the one His official, the other His personal, title. \n\nbelieving . . . may have life--(See on Joh 6:51-54).\n\n\n\n\nNext: John Chapter 21\n\n"]}],"introduction":"MARY'S VISIT TO THE SEPULCHRE, AND RETURN TO IT WITH PETER AND JOHN--HER RISEN LORD APPEARS TO HER. (John 20:1-18)\n\nThe first day . . . cometh Mary Magdalene early, &c.--(See on Mar 16:1-4; and Mat 28:1-2). \n\nshe runneth and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre--Dear disciple! thy dead Lord is to thee \"the Lord\" still.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/20.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":20},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/21.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":21},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/19.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":19},"numberOfVerses":24}