Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

John 14:27

εἰρήνην ἀφίημι ὑμῖν, “peace I bequeath to you”. The usual farewell was given with the word “peace”. And Jesus uses the familiar word, but instead of uttering a mere wish He turns it into a bequest, intimating His power not only to wish but to give peace in the further description εἰρήνην τὴν ἐμὴν δίδωμι ὑμῖν, “my peace I give unto you”; the peace which He had attained by means of all the disturbance and opposition He had encountered. Leaving them His work, His view of life, His Spirit, He necessarily left them His peace. οὐ καθὼς ὁ κόσμος δίδωσιν, ἐγὼ δίδωμι ὑμῖν, “not as the world gives give I to you”. This is referred by Grotius to the difference between the empty form of salutation and Christ's gift of peace. (“ Mundus, i.e., major pars hominum, salute alios impertit sono vocis, nihil saepe de re cogitans; et si cogitet, tamen id alteri nihil prodest.”) So too Holtzmann and Bernard. Meyer considers this “quite out of relation to the profound seriousness of the moment,” and understands the allusion to be to the treasures, honours, pleasures which the world gives. There is no reason why the primary reference should not be to the salutation, with a secondary reference to the wider contrast. This gift of peace, if accepted, would secure them against perturbation, and so Jesus returns to the exhortation of John 14:1, μὴ ταρασσέσθω … “Observing that the opening sentence of the discourse is here repeated and fortified, we understand that all enclosed within these limits is to be taken as a whole in itself, and that the intervening words compose a divine antidote to that troubling and desolation of heart which the Lord's departure would suggest.” Bernard. He now adds a word, μηδὲ δειλιάτω, which carries some reproach in it. Theophrastus (Char., xxvii.) defines δειλία as ὕπειξίς τις ψυχῆς ἔμφοβος, a shrinking of the soul through fear. With this must be taken Aristotle's description, Nic. Eth., iii. 6, 7, ὁ δὲ τῷ φοβεῖσθαι ὑπερβάλλων δειλός. It may be rendered “neither let your heart timidly shrink”.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

John 14:27

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