《Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures – John (Ch. 4~Ch. 8》(Johann P. Lange) 04 Chapter 4

07 Chapter 7
Verses 1-9

IV

Approach Of The Feast Of Tabernacles, And Offence Of Even The Brethren Of Jesus At His Refusal To Go To It. Christ’s Time And The Time Of The Worldly Mind. Christ The Object Of The World’s Hatred

John 7:1-9

1[And]^[FN1] After these things^[FN2] Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry^[FN3] [Judæa], because the Jews sought to kill him 2 Now the Jews’ feast of tabernacles 3 was at hand. His brethren [brothers]^[FN4] therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also [thine adherents in that country, 4especially in Jerusalem] may see the [thy] works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself [For no one doeth anything in secret and yet himself] seeketh to be known openly. If thou do [doest] these things, shew thyself to the world. (5For neither did his brethren believe in him.) [For even 6 his brothers did not believe in him.] Then^[FN5] Jesus said [saith] unto them, My time is not yet come: but your time is always ready 7 The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. Go ye up unto 8 this^[FN6] [the] feast; I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet^[FN7] full [fully] come 9 When he had said these words unto them^[FN8] he abode still [remained] in Galilee.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

“According to Baur this seventh chapter goes to show how the dialectics (criticism?) into which unbelief enters, is only its own dialectical (critical?) refutation.” Meyer.

John 7:1. And after these things Jesus walked.—After the occurrences and discourses in Galilee in John 6; a new general date succeeding the μετὰ ταῦτα of John 6:1. The festival caravan had proposed to take possession of Him and make Him a king. But He had completely delivered Himself from them, and went not with them the Passover. Nor did He join the next train, which went up to the feast of tabernacles. The words “walked in Galilee,” therefore, mean, as their primary antithesis, that He went not up with the caravan to the feast [passover, John 6:4] next following. John mentions only the second antithesis: that He could not walk in Judea, without peril of death. If He had now at once gone about publicly in Judea, and remained there, He would have too seriously embarrassed His exit. In Judea, the main theatre of His ministry, He no longer had room to work; He still had room in Galilee. And His isolated and sudden appearance and His ministry in Judea hereafter take place only under the protection of secresy, or of Galilean and Perean friends and adherents, as well as individual disciples in Judea. The proximate period of the walking in Galilee is from the feast of Purim to the feast of tabernacles of the year782 (A. D29), from the month Adar to the month Tisri. (Wieseler: from the 19 th March to about the 12 th October.)

In this period of Galilean itinerancy fall the charges of heresy against Jesus in Galilee and His contests with the hostile Pharisees there, Matthew 12; most of His parables or sermons on the sea, Matthew 13 ( Matthew 14dates the beginning); His interview with the deputation from Jerusalem, and the great gathering on the mountain, which followed, Matthew 15; the last contest with Pharisean power in Galilee, the retirement of the Lord and His transfiguration, Matthew 16 and Matthew 17:21 (not John 15-18, as Meyer gives it.)

John 7:2. The feast … was at hand.—The second occasion and demand to go with a festival caravan, which Jesus declined. Though He went to Jerusalem, He did so not in the full publicity of the festival pilgrimage, nor in the capacity of a festival pilgrim.

Feast of tabernacles.—חַג הַסֻּכּוֹת, σκηνοπηγία in Josephus, σκηναί in Philo.^[FN9] The third of the great festivals of the Jews (Passover, Pentecost or Weeks, Tabernacles); celebrated in the seventh month or Tisri (in October), for seven days from the 15 th, in memory of the dwelling of the Israelites in tabernacles or tents on their journey through the wilderness, and in thanksgiving for the harvest now, with the fruit and grape gathering, entirely finished. Thus: Passover: deliverance from the destroying angel and from Egypt, beginning of harvest; Pentecost: completion of grain-harvest, thanksgiving feast of first-fruits, no doubt also in celebration of some point of the theocratic history (Maimonides: the giving of the law on Sinai); Tabernacles: feast of the wandering and of vintage. It is to be remembered that the eighth day of this feast (23d Tisri) was kept by the Jews as the feast of the joy of the law. The feast of tabernacles formed at the same time the counterpart to the great penitential feast of the day of atonement which occurred five days before, as a sort of preparation for the feast of joy. The feast was distinguished by its grand offerings, as well as its joyful tone; so that it was called by Josephus “the holiest and greatest of the feasts.” [Antiqu. VIII:4, John 1 : ἑορτὴ ἁγιωτάτη καὶ μεγίστη).—P. S.] People lived in tents formed of live branches of trees, on roofs, in streets, on open grounds; they carried boughs of fruit, noble, handsome fruits, especially branches of palms and citrons, in their hands, and had merry banquets. The feast of tabernacles had so joyous an appearance that Plutarch could think it a feast of Bacchus. But it is a mistake to try to trace the Israelitish festivals of events of theocratic history to original festivals of nature. As Israelitish feasts they must be primarily historical. They may have attached themselves, however, to existing popular feasts of Asia, absorbing and spiritualizing them, as was confessedly done by Christian festivals [Christmas, Easter, etc.] in reference to existing feasts of heathenism (comp. Leben Jesu, II. p941). Attendance on these festivals in Jerusalem was binding upon the male portion of Israel ( Deuteronomy 16:16). Respecting the particular practices of the feast of tabernacles, see below.

John 7:3. His brothers therefore said unto him.—According to Matthew 13:55 these were James, Joses, Simon and Judas. A disposition on their part to act as guardians and advisers to Jesus appears again, and prominently in Mark 3:21. But they as surely mean well with their counsel here, as they meant in that other case to act in faithful solicitude for Him. Euthymius Zigabenus [also Luther], attributed to them a malicious design (to draw Him into the hands of the Jews), because their unbelief is afterwards mentioned. The speech of His brethren refers to the fact that Jesus did not go to the late passover that in general he seems to wish to avoid Judea, and that, by going about on the mountains and the sea, He makes even His residence in Galilee a half-concealed one. They propose that He should appear publicly in judea and accredit Himself as the Messiah before His adherents there. Evidently the echo of the spirit of John 6:15. They were right in assuming that a Messiah could not complete His legitimation of Himself and His work outside of Judea and Jerusalem; they were wrong and frivolous (1) in beginning to think lightly of His quiet ministry in Galilee; (2) in still hoping that by a public appearance in Jerusalem, He might carry the nation with Him, and become a Messiah glorious after an Old Testament sort; (3) in not submitting themselves to His wisdom and His self-determining course of action. And herein chiefly lay their unbelief.

John 7:3-4. How important the brothers of Jesus thought it, that He should change His field, appears from the twofold expression: Depart hence and go into Judæa, that thy disciples also may see thy works, etc. μετάβηθι ἐντεῦθεν, καὶ ὕπαγε, κ. τ. λ. In this view we are to understand by the disciples who were to see His works, all His adherents in the land of Judea; chiefly the influential ones in Jerusalem, but not these alone. In contrast with such an appearance His Galilean work, particularly His quiet itinerancy and His withdrawal to the Phenician borders, to the highlands of the Jordan, and across the sea, seems to them an incongruous working in secret ( John 7:4). And it presents to them the contradiction of His proposing to be a public personage with a secret ministry. (On the misinterpretations of ἐνκρυπτῷ, by Baumgarten-Crusius, Brückner, and Luthardt, see Meyer.) Not the least thing which pertains to the authentication of a public character, does such an one perform in secret; much less does he waste such (great) works (ταῦτα) on an obscure region. The εἰ [“if Thou doest these things”] is not intended to throw doubt on the works; it denotes the logical premise. (Meyer, against Lücke, etc.)

John 7:5. Then when John remarks: For even his brothers did not believe in him, it is entirely gratuitous to make of this, as has been done, a disbelief of His Messiahship itself common to all the brothers, and to infer that the brothers of the Lord, James, Judas and Simon, must be distinguished from the apostles of the Lord, James, Judas and Simon, whom He had chosen before the feast of Purim.( Matthew 10) See Com. on Matthew on Matthew 10 and Matthew 12:46 ff, (comp. Mark, at John 3:30; Matthew 13:55).; Leben Jesu, II, p139 sqq, and926; Herzog’s Real-Encyklop., Art. Jakobus, der Bruder des Herrn. It is plain from the connection that the unbelief of these brothers of the Lord was a want of confidence in Him of the same sort, at the worst, as that of Mary in Mark 3:31, of Peter in Matthew 16:22, and of Thomas in John 20:25; that Isaiah, while believing in His Messiahship, they lacked in the perfect yielding of a believing obedience, and assumed to prescribe to Him from their own judgment; but they were not unbelieving in the sense in which Caiaphas and the Jewish people were. Tenaciously as the Ebionistic Clementine tradition, distinguishing between the three apostolic brothers of the Lord and the three apostles, James, the son of Alpheus, Judas, and Simon, endeavors to maintain itself, it will not ultimately withstand, with its half-dogmatical, half critical prejudice, the sense of Scripture and the primitive church tradition. [I dissent from this view. See my remarks below on John 7:9, p241. The theory here opposed is certainly older and exegetically more natural, than the cousin-theory, which cannot be traced beyond Jerome in the fourth century,^[FN10] and which owes its popularity far more to an ascetic over-estimate of the perpetual virginity of Mary (and Joseph) than to exegetical or critical arguments. It is clearly irreconcilable with the whole tenor of this passage, as I shall presently show.—P. S.]

John 7:6. My time is not yet come.—Interpretations: 1. The time for Me to go to the feast (Jansen, et al.); 2. The time to show Myself openly to the world (as they had demanded in John 7:4, Lücke, et al.); 3. The time of my passion (Chrysostom, et al.). The first interpretation is connected with the second, the second with the third. His first public entrance into Jerusalem was the entrance in the procession with palms; by that He showed Himself publicly to the world, and by that also He brought on His own death. Hence: My time for going to the feast to manifest Myself to the world. His words, therefore, referred primarily to the time of journeying, but in connection with the deeper meaning. The connection lies in the fact that His fixed time (καιρός), like His hour ( John 2:4), denotes the time ordained and appointed to Him by God for His public appearance, in distinction from the hours arbitrarily chosen by other men.

Hence the other words: But your time is always ready; describing the free, arbitrary disposal of times which sinful men make; with primary reference to their travelling, but with respect also to the safety with which they may show themselves to the world, with which they do not yet stand, like Him, in full and pure antagonism, John 7:7. An intimation of their want of decided faith.

John 7:7. The world cannot hate you.—The world considered as unbelieving, in its antagonism to the Lord. It can no more take the internally complete attitude of mortal enmity towards you, than ye have thus far taken this attitude toward its spirit. All chiliastic kinds of faith, (e.g. in the church of the middle ages) have an element akin to the world and open to its sympathy. But me it hateth.—The entire antagonism brought into play by His testimony against the world.

John 7:8. Go ye up unto this feast.—This Isaiah, after the ritual manner of the Israelitish law, as pilgrims in the festival caravan, to participate in the exercises of the feast.

I go not up (yet) unto this feast.—Interpretations with reference to John 7:10 : [omitting the “yet.”]

1. The hostile interpretation of Porphyry, that Jesus proved Himself fickle (Jerome, Contra Pel.)

2. Bruno Bauer’s modification: The Evangelist entangles himself in contradiction in his narrative (see Lücke, p193; kindred constructions by F. Chr. Baur, etc., see in Meyer.)

3. Meyer: “Jesus might alter His plan without being inconsistent, especially since the motive of this change of purpose is not patent. He also changed His purpose with the Canaanitish woman ( Matthew 15:26 sqq.).” But He no more changed it there, than here. The entrance of a new motive, must at least have been intimated.

4. The reading οὔπω [which is omitted by some of the oldest MSS, but inserted by others and by the early Versions.—P. S.] or to the same purpose, the emphasizing of the present ἀναβαίνω, inserting a νῦν in thought (Chrysostom, Lücke, and others). Of the same class is the restricting of the οὐκ by the οὕπω following (De Wette and others).

5. Emphasizing of feast, ἑορτή; Cyril: οὐκ οὕτως ἑορτάζων. He took no part ritually in the festal train or the festal scenes, (Leben Jesu, II. p927; Ebrard and others). In favor of this is the ensuing: οὐ φανερῶς, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐν κρυπτῷ.

6. The explanation: Not with the caravan (Bengel, Ewald, Luthardt), is properly only one part of the preceding interpretation. It is emphatically said, moreover: “unto this feast;” Jesus thus already announcing in a manner His intended decisive observance of the next passover. A glance at that last feast we see in the words: “For my time,” &c.

John 7:9. He remained in Galilee.—That Isaiah, He let the train pass on, and perhaps His brothers with it.

[Remarks on the Brothers of Jesus.—The family dispute which John relates in this section from personal knowledge, with the simplicity and frankness of a genuine historian, gives us an insight into the domestic trials of our Saviour. The unbelief of His brothers need not surprise us any more than the unbelief of the Nazarenes generally, according to the sentence: “A prophet has no honor in his own country” (comp. note on John 4:44). Not unfrequently the nearest relatives throw more obstacles in the way to God’s children than strangers. Christ entered into the condition of fallen humanity with all its daily troubles, temptations and miseries. The unbelief and misconduct of His brothers must have been to Him a deep source of grief and a school of patience and forbearance in order that, being tempted even as we are in all things, He might become a merciful High Priest able and willing to sympathize with His followers in passing through similar experiences. ( Hebrews 2:17-18; Hebrews 5:7-8).

But the full significance of this passage depends upon the proper view of the brothers of Jesus. And here I must again dissent from the cousin-theory of Jerome, advocated in a modified form by Dr. Lange, which assumes that these brothers were only distant relatives of Jesus, and that three of them, James, Simon and Jude (i.e., all but Joses or Joseph), were identical with the three apostles of that name. I regard this passage (with Meyer, Godet, Alford, Lightfoot) as one of the strongest arguments in favor of the more natural view that the brothers of Jesus were really members of the holy family and under the care of Joseph and Mary in whose company they constantly appear.^[FN11]

1. It is perfectly plain that John here, as in John 2:12 and in harmony with the Synoptists, also with Acts 1:13-14, and 1 Corinthians 9:5, distinguishes the brothers of Christ from the apostles. The brothers themselves make this distinction in John 7:3, “That thy disciples also,” etc., on which Bengel remarks: Eo ipso ostendunt se non esse discipulos.

2. But what is more conclusive, John represents here the brothers as unbelievers, and as using irreverent, presumptuous and ironical language against our Lord. This is absolutely incompatible with the assumption that they were apostles, especially after the sifting process described in John 6, and the noble confession of Peter in the name of all ( John 6:67-68). I readily admit that the brothers were not unbelievers in the sense of the hostile Jews or indifferent pagans, but they certainly were not believers in a sense in which we must suppose all apostles (with the exception perhaps of Judas Iscariot) to have been almost from their first acquaintance with Jesus, and as John expressly says that they were even as early as the miracle at Cana, John 2:11; comp. John 7:22; John 16:17; John 17:8. How, in the name of consistency, could he say that the apostles believed in Him (ἐπίστευσαν εἰς αὐτόν), and afterwards, that His brothers, including at least three of the apostles, did not believe in him, οὐδὲ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ αὐτοῦ ἐπίστευον—mark the imperfect which denotes continued and habitual unbelief, in distinction from a momentary act as expressed by the aorist—(ἐπίστευσαν)? Why did he not avoid such flat contradiction by the qualifying words: some of His brothers, or by using a milder term than unbelief?^[FN12] John recognizes indeed different degrees of belief (comp. John 2:23; John 4:39; John 8:31; John 12:42), and different degrees of unbelief, but he never confounds the sharp lines which, in his system especially, distinguish belief from unbelief, light from darkness, truth from falsehood. Moreover the language used by the brothers on this occasion, however mildly we may explain it, is very unbecoming, and strongly contrasts with the profound reverence shown by the apostles to our Lord on every occasion, even where they could not understand or appreciate His conduct (comp. John 4:27).

3. Finally our Lord Himself here characterizes His brothers as men of the world whom the world cannot hate ( John 7:7); while He says the very reverse of His apostles, John 15:18 f. comp. Matthew 10:5 ff, Matthew 10:22; Matthew 10:40 ff.

We infer then that all the four brothers of Jesus were distinct from the apostles, and were not converted till after the resurrection. James, it would seem, became a believer in consequence of a special manifestation of the risen Lord, 1 Corinthians 15:7. They first appear among the disciples, Acts 1:14.

As to the other question, whether the brothers of Jesus were older brothers of Jesus from a former, otherwise unknown marriage of Joseph (the old Greek tradition defended by Epiphanius), or younger children of Mary and Joseph (the view held by Tertullian and Helvidius, and denounced first by Jerome as heretical and profane because of its conflict with the prevalent ascetic belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary), our passage gives no decisive answer. The patronizing tone assumed by the brothers towards Jesus on this occasion seems to favor the former view, but may be found also with younger brothers. Comp. the fuller discussion of this whole question in my notes on Matthew, pp256–260, also on Matthew 1:25 and John 2:12. (p115 of this vol.)—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The heavenly precaution with which Jesus guarded His life from a premature end, that He might sacrifice it with full effect at the right hour, forms a contrast with the heedless boldness with which His brothers would push Him upon the stage of the most glaring publicity; and a contrast with the many premature sacrifices which occur in the lives of worldly heroes and even of Christian missionaries and martyrs. The life of the believer must be in spirit offered up to God at all times; but the actual sacrifice of it must be put with all decision under the law of Christian wisdom. No one should prematurely squander his life; every one should, in the holiest sense, “sell it at the highest possible price.” But for His wise reserve, the life of the Lord would perhaps have fallen before the hatred of Judaism in the very first year of His ministry; certainly at the feast of Purim in the spring of the second year. A ministry of about three years in the midst of Pharisaic Judea could be secured to Jesus only by His heavenly wisdom.

2. The subsequent appearance of Christ at the feast of tabernacles does not contradict this caution. It is an act of consummate psychological mastery. By this oft-repeated sudden appearance, He places Himself as an astounding wonder before His enemies; they themselves are restrained by fear, or at least their servants, and they do not venture to seize Him. They are disarmed not only by the personal impression of Jesus, but also by fear of the powerful popular following which He had, particularly of the fighting Galileans. Not till the continuous stay of Christ among them at the last passover could they carry out a definite plan against Him.

3. It agrees with the nature of human restlessness that the same brothers of the Lord, who with His mother sought to rescue Him some time before from the press of Galilean enemies through fear ( Mark 3; Matthew 12), now sought in recklessness to press Him upon the theatre of decision. Apart from the fact that such extremes beget and account for each other, the experience which the brothers of Jesus had had of the uselessness of their fear and of the security of Jesus amidst the strongest probabilities of danger, might urge them now to the utmost risk in His behalf.

4. Jesus, in respect to His time and place is subject to the individual direction (ἐντολή) of His Father. Thus His time at every point is a point of eternity, and His being in every place is a being in heaven. The contrast between the Divine discernment of His time and His hour [in the life of Jesus] and the arbitrary caprice of men in the use of times and hours.

5. The notion of the world which the brothers of Jesus express, differs greatly from the notion expressed by Christ. Judas Lebbæus recurs to this favorable idea of the world in John 14:22. The brothers of Jesus vaguely see a world ready to receive Christ with open arms; Christ sees through a world disposed to kill Him. Undoubtedly Christ Himself also distinguishes between the world as the object of the Divine love ( John 3:16), and the world in its decided ungodliness and unbelief.

6. Christ’s word: The world cannot hate you, expresses the truth that there is no deeper, more incisive opposition than that between a godly mind and a worldly mind, faith and unbelief. The world’s hatred comes out completely only in opposition to that which is divine.

7. There is an infinite difference between the delicate precision of the Lord’s form of expression and a made-up reservatio mentalis. But for this reason the words of Christ, and especially His expression here: I go not up to this feast, are also exposed to the ready abuse of men. The abuse is not due to ambiguities on His part, but to the want of discrimination on the part of His expounders. Else it would have been easily seen that between a public Messianic progress of Jesus to the ceremonial observance of a feast, and an incidental appearance of the anonymous prophet at the feast, the difference is wide.