John 1:11

[See also the "General Considerations on the Prologue" in the comments of John 1:18.]

Ver. 11. “ He came to His own and they that were His own received Him not. ”

A relation of gradation might be established between this verse and the preceding, if this verse were applied to the rejection of the natural revelation by the heathen: “And there was something still worse!” But the asyndeton is unfavorable to this sense, which we have already refuted. It leads us rather to find here a more emphatic reaffirmation of the fact indicated in John 1:10: “The world did not know Him.” Yes; that rejection took place, and where it seemed the most impossible in the dwelling-place which the Logos had prepared for Himself here below! The words His home, His own, by setting forth the enormity of the Jewish crime, characterize it as the climax of the sin of humanity. The word ἦλθε, came, refers to the public ministry of Jesus in Israel. Τὰ ἴδια, literally: His home (comp. John 19:27). Before coming to the earth, the Logos prepared for Himself there a dwelling-place which peculiarly belonged to Him, and which should have served Him as a door of entrance to the rest of the world. Comp. Exodus 19:5, where Jehovah says to the Jews: “ You shall be my property among all peoples,” and Psalms 135:4: “ The Lord hath chosen Jacob for Himself. ” Malachi had said of Jehovah, in describing the Messianic advent as His last appearance: “And the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple; behold, he cometh” (John 3:1).

But this door was closed to Him, and even by those who should have opened it to Him: οἱ ἴδιοι, His own, His servants, the dwellers in His house, which He had Himself established. In the same way as τὰ ἴδια His home designates Canaan together with the entire theocratic institution, οἱ ἴδιοι, His own, designates all the members of the Israelitish nation. Paul also calls them οἰκεῖοι, members of the household, domestici, familiares, in contrast with ξένοι and πάροικοι, strangers and sojourners. Never, it seems, had the Jews better deserved that title of honor from Jehovah, “His people,” than at the moment when Jesus appeared. Their monotheistic zeal and their aversion to idolatry had reached at that epoch the culminating point. The nation in general seemed to form a Messianic community altogether disposed to receive “Him who should come,” as a bride welcomes her bridegroom. The word παραλαμβάνειν, receive to oneself (John 14:3), well expresses the nature of the eager welcome which the Messiah had a right to expect. That welcome should have been a solemn and official reception on the part of the whole nation hailing its Messiah and rendering homage to its God. If the home prepared had opened itself in this way, it would have become the centre for the conquest of the world. Instead of this, an unheard of event occurred. Agamemnon returning to his palace and falling by the stroke of his faithless spouse this was the tragic event par excellence of pagan history. What was that crime in comparison with the theocratic tragedy! The God invoked by the chosen nation appears in His temple, and He is crucified by His own worshipers. Notice the finely shaded difference between the two compound verbs, καταλαμβάνειν, to apprehend, John 1:5, which corresponds with the light as a principle, and παραλαμβάνειν, to welcome, which characterizes the reception given to the master of the house. Respecting the καί, and, the same observation as in John 1:5; John 1:10. The writer has reached the point of contemplating with calmness the poignant contrast which the two facts indicated in the two propositions of this verse present.

Two explanations opposed to that which we have just been developing have been offered. Some interpreters, Lange, for example, refer the coming of the Word indicated in this verse, to the manifestations of Jehovah and the prophetic revelations in the Old Testament. Others, as Reuss, while applying the words “ He came,” just as we do, to the historical appearing of Jesus Christ, think that the ἴδιοι, His own, are not the Jews, but “men in general, as creatures of the pre-existent Word” (Hist. de la theolchret t. II., p. 476). Reuss even describes the application of the words τὰ ἴδια, οἱ ἴδιοι, to the Jews, as “a strange error of the ordinary exegesis.” He is, however, less positive in his last work; he merely says: “An interpretation may be maintained according to which there is no question here of the Jews. So far as the first view is concerned, it is excluded by the word ἦλθε, He came, which can only designate, like the same word in John 1:7, an historical fact, the coming of Christ in the flesh. We shall see, moreover, that the following verses cannot be applied to the time of the Old Covenant, as must be the case according to the sense which Lange gives to John 1:11. Reuss' interpretation seems to him to be required, first, by a difficulty which he finds in the ὅσοι, all those who, of John 1:12, if by His own, of John 1:11, the Jews are to be understood we shall examine this objection in its proper place and then, by the general fact that, according to our Gospel, “there are no special relations between the Word and the Jews as such.” We believe that we can prove, on the contrary, that the fourth Gospel, no less than the first, establishes from the beginning to the end an organic relation between the theocracy and the coming of Christ in the flesh. The following are some of the principal passages which do not allow us to question this: John 2:16, “The house of my Father; ” John 4:22, “Salvation is from the Jews; ”5:39, “The scriptures bear witness of me; ”5:45-47; John 8:35; John 8:56; John 10:2-3; John 12:41; John 19:36-37. All these sayings are incompatible with the thought of Reuss and prove that the expressions His abode, His own, are perfectly applicable to the land of Israel and the ancient people of God.