{"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but, on bringing them to the grave, on the morning of the First Day of the week, found their loving services gloriously superseded by His resurrection ere they arrived.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":7,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["feast of tabernacles . . . at hand--This was the last of the three annual festivals, celebrated on the fifteenth of the seventh month (September). (See Lev 23:33, &c.; Deu 16:13, &c.; Neh 8:14-18).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["His brethren said--(See on Mat 13:54-56). \n\nDepart . . . into Judea, &c.--In Joh 7:5 this speech is ascribed to their unbelief. But as they were in the \"upper room\" among the one hundred and twenty disciples who waited for the descent of the Spirit after the Lord's ascension (Act 1:14), they seem to have had their prejudices removed, perhaps after His resurrection. Indeed here their language is more that of strong prejudice and suspicion (such as near relatives, even the best, too frequently show in such cases), than from unbelief. There was also, probably, a tincture of vanity in it. \"Thou hast many disciples in Judea; here in Galilee they are fast dropping off; it is not like one who advances the claims Thou dost to linger so long here, away from the city of our solemnities, where surely 'the kingdom of our father David' is to be set up: 'seeking,' as Thou dost, 'to be known openly,' those miracles of Thine ought not to be confined to this distant corner, but submitted at headquarters to the inspection of 'the world.'\" (See Psa 69:8, \"I am become a stranger to my brethren, an alien unto my mother's children!\")\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["My time is not yet come--that is, for showing Himself to the world. \n\nyour time is always ready--that is \"It matters little when we go up, for ye have no great plans in life, and nothing hangs upon your movements. With Me it is otherwise; on every movement of Mine there hangs what ye know not. The world has no quarrel with you, for ye bear no testimony against it, and so draw down upon yourselves none of its wrath; but I am here to lift up My voice against its hypocrisy, and denounce its abominations; therefore it cannot endure Me, and one false step might precipitate its fury on its Victim's head before the time. Away, therefore, to the feast as soon as it suits you; I follow at the fitting moment, but 'My time is not yet full come.'\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["then went he . . . not openly--not \"in the (caravan) company\" [MEYER]. See on Luk 2:44. \n\nas it were in secret--rather, \"in a manner secretly\"; perhaps by some other route, and in a way not to attract notice.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["Jews--the rulers. \n\nsought him--for no good end. \n\nWhere is He?--He had not been at Jerusalem for probably a year and a half.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["much murmuring--buzzing. \n\namong the people--the multitudes; the natural expression of a Jewish writer, indicating without design the crowded state of Jerusalem at this festival [WEBSTER and WILKINSON]. \n\na good man . . . Nay . . . deceiveth the people--the two opposite views of His claims, that they were honest, and that they were an imposture.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["none spake openly of him--that is, in His favor, \"for fear of the [ruling] Jews.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["about the midst of the feast--the fourth or fifth day of the eight, during which it lasted. \n\nwent up into the temple and taught--The word denotes formal and continuous teaching, as distinguished from mere casual sayings. This was probably the first time that He did so thus openly in Jerusalem. He had kept back till the feast was half through, to let the stir about Him subside, and entering the city unexpectedly, had begun His \"teaching\" at the temple, and created a certain awe, before the wrath of the rulers had time to break it.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["How knoweth . . . letters--learning (Act 26:24). \n\nhaving never learned--at any rabbinical school, as Paul under Gamaliel. These rulers knew well enough that He had not studied under any human teacher--an important admission against ancient and modern attempts to trace our Lord's wisdom to human sources [MEYER]. Probably His teaching on this occasion was expository, manifesting that unrivalled faculty and depth which in the Sermon on the Mount had excited the astonishment of all.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["doctrine . . . not mine, &c.--that is, from Myself unauthorized; I am here by commission.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["If any man will do his will, &c.--\"is willing,\" or \"wishes to do.\" \n\nwhether . . . of God, or . . . of myself--from above or from beneath; is divine or an imposture of Mine. A principle of immense importance, showing, on the one hand, that singleness of desire to please God is the grand inlet to light on all questions vitally affecting one's eternal interests, and on the other, that the want of his, whether perceived or not, is the chief cause of infidelity amidst the light of revealed religion.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["seeketh his own glory--(See on Joh 5:41-44).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["Did not Moses, &c.--that is, In opposing Me ye pretend zeal for Moses, but to the spirit and end of that law which he gave ye are total strangers, and in \"going about to kill Me\" ye are its greatest enemies.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["The people answered, Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?--This was said by the multitude, who as yet had no bad feeling to Jesus, and were not in the secret of the plot hatching, as our Lord knew, against Him.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["I have done one work, &c.--Taking no notice of the popular appeal, as there were those there who knew well enough what He meant, He recalls His cure of the impotent man, and the murderous rage it had kindled (Joh 5:9, Joh 5:16, Joh 5:18). It may seem strange that He should refer to an event a year and a half old, as if but newly done. But their present attempt \"to kill Him\" brought up the past scene vividly, not only to Him, but without doubt to them, too, if indeed they had ever forgotten it; and by this fearless reference to it, exposing their hypocrisy and dark designs, He gave His position great moral strength.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["Moses . . . gave unto you circumcision, &c.--Though servile work was forbidden on the sabbath, the circumcision of males on that day (which certainly was a servile work) was counted no infringement of the Law. How much less ought fault to be found with One who had made a man \"every whit whole\"--or rather, \"a man's entire body whole\"--on the sabbath-day? What a testimony to the reality of the miracle, none daring to meet the bold appeal.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["Judge not, &c.--that is, Rise above the letter into the spirit of the law.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["some of them of Jerusalem--the citizens, who, knowing the long-formed purpose of the rulers to put Jesus to death, wondered that they were now letting Him teach openly.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["Do the rulers know, &c.--Have they got some new light in favor of His claims?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["Howbeit we know this man, &c.--This seems to refer to some current opinion that Messiah's origin would be mysterious (not altogether wrong), from which they concluded that Jesus could not be He, since they knew all about His family at Nazareth.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["cried Jesus--in a louder tone, and more solemn, witnessing style than usual. \n\nYe both, &c.--that is, \"Yes, ye know both Myself and My local parentage, and (yet) I am not come of Myself.\" \n\nbut he that sent me is true, &c.--Probably the meaning is, \"He that sent Me is the only real Sender of any one.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":30,"content":["sought to take . . . none laid hands--their impotence being equal to their malignity.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":31,"content":["When Christ cometh, will he, &c.--that is, If this be not the Christ, what can the Christ do, when He does come, which has not been anticipated and eclipsed by this man? This was evidently the language of friendly persons, overborne by their spiteful superiors, but unable to keep quite silent.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":32,"content":["heard that the people murmured--that mutterings to this effect were going about, and thought it high time to stop Him if He was not to be allowed to carry away the people.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":33,"content":["Yet a little while, &c.--that is, \"Your desire to be rid of Me will be for you all too soon fulfilled. Yet a little while and we part company--for ever; for I go whither ye cannot come: nor, even when ye at length seek Him whom ye now despise, shall ye be able to find Him\"--referring not to any penitential, but to purely selfish cries in their time of desperation.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":35,"content":["Whither will he go, &c.--They cannot comprehend Him, but seem awed by the solemn grandeur of His warning. He takes no notice, however, of their questions.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":37,"content":["the last day, that great day of the feast--the eighth (Lev 23:39). It was a sabbath, the last feast day of the year, and distinguished by very remarkable ceremonies. \"The generally joyous character of this feast broke out on this day into loud jubilation, particularly at the solemn moment when the priest, as was done on every day of this festival, brought forth, in golden vessels, water from the stream of Siloah, which flowed under the temple-mountain, and solemnly poured it upon the altar. Then the words of Isa 12:3 were sung, With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of Salvation, and thus the symbolical reference of this act, intimated in Joh 7:39, was expressed\" [OLSHAUSEN]. So ecstatic was the joy with which this ceremony was performed--accompanied with sound of trumpets--that it used to be said, \"Whoever had not witnessed it had never seen rejoicing at all\" [LIGHTFOOT]. \n\nJesus stood--On this high occasion, then, He who had already drawn all eyes upon Him by His supernatural power and unrivalled teaching--\"JESUS stood,\" probably in some elevated position. \n\nand cried--as if making proclamation in the audience of all the people. \n\nIf any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink!--What an offer! The deepest cravings of the human spirit are here, as in the Old Testament, expressed by the figure of \"thirst,\" and the eternal satisfaction of them by \"drinking.\" To the woman of Samaria He had said almost the same thing, and in the same terms (Joh 4:13-14). But what to her was simply affirmed to her as a fact, is here turned into a world-wide proclamation; and whereas there, the gift by Him of the living water is the most prominent idea--in contrast with her hesitation to give Him the perishable water of Jacob's well--here, the prominence is given to Himself as the Well spring of all satisfaction. He had in Galilee invited all the WEARY AND HEAVY-LADEN of the human family to come under His wing and they should find REST (Mat 11:28), which is just the same deep want, and the same profound relief of it, under another and equally grateful figure. He had in the synagogue of Capernaum (Joh 6:36) announced Himself, in every variety of form, as \"the BREAD of Life,\" and as both able and authorized to appease the \"HUNGER,\" and quench the \"THIRST,\" of all that apply to Him. There is, and there can be, nothing beyond that here. But what was on all those occasions uttered in private, or addressed to a provincial audience, is here sounded forth in the streets of the great religious metropolis, and in language of surpassing majesty, simplicity, and grace. It is just Jehovah's ancient proclamation now sounding forth through human flesh, \"HO, EVERY ONE THAT THIRSTETH, COME YE TO THE WATERS, AND HE THAT HATH NO MONEY!\" &c. (Isa 55:1). In this light we have but two alternatives; either to say with Caiaphas of Him that uttered such words, \"He is guilty of death,\" or falling down before Him to exclaim with Thomas, \" MY LORD AND MY GOD!\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":38,"content":["as the scripture hath said--These words belong to what follows, \"Out of his belly, as the scripture hath said, shall flow,\" &c. referring not to any particular passage, but to such as Isa 58:11; Joe 3:18; Zac 14:8; Eze 47:1-12; in most of which the idea is that of waters issuing from beneath the temple, to which our Lord compares Himself and those who believe in Him. \n\nout of his belly--that is, his inner man, his soul, as in Pro 20:27. \n\nrivers of living water--(See on Joh 4:13). It refers primarily to the copiousness, but indirectly also to the diffusiveness, of this living water to the good of others.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":39,"content":["this spake he of the Spirit--who, by His direct personal agency, opens up this spring of living waters in the human spirit (Joh 3:6), and by His indwelling in the renewed soul ensures their unfailing flow. \n\nthey that believe, &c.--As the Holy Ghost is, in the redemption of man, entirely at the service of Christ, as His Agent, so it is only in believing connection with Christ that any one \"receives\" the Spirit. \n\nfor the Holy Ghost was not yet given--Beyond all doubt the word \"given,\" or some similar word, is the right supplement. In Joh 16:7 the Holy Ghost is represented not only as the gift of Christ, but a gift the communication of which was dependent upon His own departure to the Father. Now as Christ was not yet gone, so the Holy Ghost was not yet given. \n\nJesus not yet glorified--The word \"glorified\" is here used advisedly, to teach the reader not only that the departure of Christ to the Father was indispensable to the giving of the Spirit, but that this illustrious Gift, direct from the hands of the ascended Saviour, was God's intimation to the world that He whom it had cast out, crucified, and slain, was \"His Elect, in whom His soul delighted,\" and that it was through the smiting of that Rock that the waters of the Spirit--for which the Church was waiting, and with pomp at the feast of tabernacles proclaiming its expectation--had gushed forth upon a thirsty world.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":40,"content":["Many . . . when they heard this . . . said, Of a truth, &c.--The only wonder is they did not all say it. \"But their minds were blinded.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":41,"content":["Others said, This is the Christ--(See on Joh 1:21). \n\nShall Christ come out of Galilee?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":42,"content":["scripture said . . . of the seed of David, and out of . . . Bethlehem, &c.--We accept this spontaneous testimony to our David-descended, Bethlehem-born Saviour. Had those who gave it made the inquiry which the case demanded, they would have found that Jesus \"came out of Galilee\" (Joh 7:41) and \"out of Bethlehem\" both, alike in fulfilment of prophecy as in point of fact. (Mat 2:23; Mat 4:13-16).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":44,"content":["would have taken him; but, &c.--(See on Joh 7:30).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":45,"content":["Then came the officers--\"sent to take him\" (Joh 7:32). \n\nWhy . . . not brought him?--already thirsting for their Victim, and thinking it an easy matter to seize and bring Him.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":46,"content":["Never man spake like this man--Noble testimony of unsophisticated men! Doubtless they were strangers to the profound intent of Christ's teaching, but there was that in it which by its mysterious grandeur and transparent purity and grace, held them spellbound. No doubt it was of God that they should so feel, that their arm might be paralyzed, as Christ's hour was not yet come; but even in human teaching there has sometimes been felt such a divine power, that men who came to kill them (for example, ROWLAND HISS) have confessed to all that they were unmanned.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":47,"content":["ye also deceived--In their own servants this seemed intolerable.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":48,"content":["any of the rulers or . . . Pharisees believed--\"Many of them\" did, including Nicodemus and Joseph, but not one of these had openly \"confessed Him\" (Joh 12:42), and this appeal must have stung such of them as heard it to the quick.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":49,"content":["But this people--literally, \"multitude,\" meaning the ignorant rabble. (Pity these important distinctions, so marked in the original of this Gospel, should not be also in our version.) \n\nknoweth not the law--that is, by school learning, which only subverted it by human traditions. \n\nare cursed--a cursed set (a kind of swearing at them, out of mingled rage and scorn).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":50,"content":["Nicodemus--reappearing to us after nearly three years' absence from the history, as a member of the council, probably then sitting.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":51,"content":["Doth our law, &c.--a very proper, but all too tame rejoinder, and evidently more from pressure of conscience than any design to pronounce positively in the case. \"The feebleness of his defense of Jesus has a strong contrast in the fierceness of the rejoinders of the Pharisees\" [WEBSTER and WILKINSON].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":52,"content":["thou of Galilee--in this taunt expressing their scorn of the party. Even a word of caution, or the gentlest proposal to inquire before condemning, was with them equivalent to an espousal of the hated One. \n\nSearch . . . out of Galilee . . . no prophet--Strange! For had not Jonah (of Gath-hepher) and even Elijah (of Thisbe) arisen out of Galilee? And there it may be more, of whom we have no record. But rage is blind, and deep prejudice distorts all facts. Yet it looks as if they were afraid of losing Nicodemus, when they take the trouble to reason the point at all. It was just because he had \"searched,\" as they advised him, that he went the length even that he did.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":53,"content":["every man went unto his own home--finding their plot could not at that time be carried into effect. Is your rage thus impotent, ye chief priests?\n\n\n\n\nNext: John Chapter 8\n\n"]}],"introduction":"CHRIST AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. (John 7:1-53)\n\nAfter these things--that is, all that is recorded after Joh 5:18. \n\nwalked in Galilee--continuing His labors there, instead of going to Judea, as might have been expected. \n\nsought to kill him--referring back to Joh 5:18. Hence it appears that our Lord did not attend the Passover mentioned in Joh 6:4 --being the third since His ministry began, if the feast mentioned in Joh 5:1 was a Passover.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/7.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":7},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/8.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":8},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/6.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":6},"numberOfVerses":42}