John 8:59

59. Omit διελθὼν διὰ μέσου αὐτῶν καὶ παρῆγεν οὔτω after ἱεροῦ (an addition from John 9:1 combined with Luke 4:30) with א1BD against א3A. Other MSS. have the addition in another form. No English Version earlier than 1611 recognises the addition.

59. ἦραν οὖν. They took up therefore; i.e. in consequence of His last words. They clearly understand Him to have taken to Himself the Divine Name, and they prepare to stone Him for blasphemy. Building materials for completing and repairing the Temple would supply them with missiles (comp. John 10:31-33): Josephus mentions a stoning in the Temple (Ant. XVII. ix. 3). They would not have stoned Him for merely claiming to be the Messiah (John 10:24).

ἐκρύβη κ. ἐξῆλθεν. Probably we are not to understand a miraculous withdrawal as in Luke 4:30, where the ‘passing through the midst of them’ seems to be miraculous. Comp. ἄφαντος ἐγένετο, Luke 24:31. Here we need not suppose more than that He drew back into the crowd away from those who had taken up stones. The Providence which ordered that as yet the fears of the hierarchy should prevail over their hostility (John 7:30; John 8:20), ruled that the less hostile in this multitude should screen Him from the fury of the more fanatical. It is quite arbitrary to invert the clauses and render, ‘Jesus went out of the Temple and hid Himself.’

As a comment on the whole discourse see 1 Peter 2:22-23, remembering that S. Peter was very possibly present on the occasion.

“The whole of the Jews’ reasoning is strictly what we should expect from them. These constant appeals to their descent from Abraham, these repeated imputations of diabolic possession, this narrow intelligence bounded by the letter, this jealousy of anything that seemed in the slightest degree to trench on their own rigid monotheism—all these, down to the touch in John 8:57, in which the age they fix upon in round numbers is that assigned to completed manhood, give local truth and accuracy to the picture; which in any case, we may say confidently, must have been drawn by a Palestinian Jew, and in all probability by a Jew who had been himself an early disciple of Christ” (Sanday).