John 12:36

While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them.

While ye have ('the') light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. Instead of answering their question, He warns them, with mingled majesty and tenderness, against trifling with their last brief opportunity, and entreats them to let in the Light while they had it in the midst of them, that themselves might be "light in the Lord." In this case all the clouds which hung around His Person and Mission would speedily be dispelled, while if they continued to hate the light, bootless were all His answers to their merely speculative or captious questions. (See the note at .)

These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them. He who spake as never man spake, and immediately after words fraught with unspeakable dignity and love, had to "hide Himself" from His auditors! What then, must they have been? He retired probably to Bethany. (See ; ).

It is the manner of our Evangelist alone, as has been frequently remarked, to record his own reflections on the scenes he describes: but here, having arrived at what was virtually the close of our Lord's public ministry, he casts an affecting glance over the fruitlessness of His whole ministry on the bulk of the now doomed people.