John 1:26,27

“ John answered them saying, Yea, I baptize with water;in the midst of you there standeth one whom you know not; 27. He who comes after me but who was before me the latchet of whose sandal I am not worthy to loose. ”

This reply has been regarded as not very clear and as embarrassed. De Wette even thinks that it does not correspond altogether with the question proposed. The generally adopted explanation is the following: “My baptism with water does not, in any case, encroach upon that of the Messiah, which is of an altogether superior nature; it is only preparatory for it.” John would in some sort excuse his baptism by trying to diminish it, and by reminding them that beyond this ceremony the Messianic baptism maintains the place which belongs to it. But, first of all, this would be to evade the question which was put; and the criticism of de Wette would remain a well- founded one. For the baptism of John was attacked in itself and not as being derogatory to that of the Messiah. Then, the words ἐν ὕδατι, with water, should be placed at the beginning: “It is only with water that I baptize,” and the baptism of the Spirit would necessarily be mentioned in the following clause, as an antithesis. Finally, it would scarcely be in harmony with the character of the Baptist to shelter himself under the insignificance of his office and to present his baptism as an inoffensive novelty. This reply, properly understood, is, on the contrary, full of solemnity, dignity, even threatening; it makes apparent the importance of the present situation, into the mystery of which John alone, until now, is initiated. “The Messiah is present: this is the reason why I baptize!” If the Messianic time has really come, and he is himself charged with inaugurating it, his baptism is thereby justified (see John 1:23).

This feeling of the gravity of the situation and of the importance of his part is expressed in the ἐγώ, I, placed at the beginning of the answer, the meaning of which, as the sequel proves, is this: “ I baptize with water, and in acting thus I know what I do: for He is present who...” We have given the force of this pronoun by the affirmation Yea! The ἐγώ, I, is ordinarily contrasted with the Messiah, by making an antithesis between the baptism of water and the baptism of the Spirit. But this latter is not even mentioned, and this interpretation results from a recollection of the words of the Baptist in the Synoptics. Hence also probably came the introduction of the particle δέ, but (in what follows after the word μέσος), which is rightly omitted by the Alexandrian authorities. It is precisely because he knows that the Messiah is present among them, that he baptizes with water and that he has the right to do so. This reply, accompanied as it undoubtedly was, with a significant look cast upon the crowd, in which the mysterious personage of whom he was thinking could be found, must have produced a profound sensation among his hearers. The two readings ἕστηκεν and στήκει, although one is in the perfect and the other in the present, have the same sense: He stands there. The important words are these: Whom you know not. The word you contrasts John's hearers, who are still ignorant, with John himself, who already knows. This expression necessarily assumes that, at the time when the forerunner was speaking, the baptism of Jesus was already an accomplished fact. For it was by means of that ceremony that, in conformity with the divine promise (John 1:33), the person of the Messiah was to have been pointed out to him.

In John 1:31; John 1:33, He Himself affirms that, up to the moment of the baptism, he did not know Him. It is impossible, then, to place the baptism of Jesus, with Olshausen and Hengstenberg, on this same day or the next, with Baumlein, between John 1:28 and John 1:29, or, with Ewald, between John 1:31 and John 1:32. Moreover, this testimony, whatever Weiss may say of it, is wholly different from the preachings of John which are reported in the Synoptics, and which had preceded the baptism of Jesus. The very terms which the forerunner here employs contain a very clear allusion to previous declarations in which he had announced a personage who was to follow him; this is especially evident if we read ὁ before ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος, “ the one coming after me whom I have announced to you.” This testimony has an altogether new character: “The Messiah is present, and I know him.” This is the first declaration which refers personally to Jesus; it is for his hearers the true starting-point of faith in Him. The words it is he (αὐτός ἐστιν), omitted by the Alexandrian authorities, sometimes omitted and sometimes read by Origen, are not indispensable, and may have been added either by copyists who wrongly identified this testimony with that of John 1:15 (οὖτος ἦν), or by others who wished to bring out better the allusion to the previous testimonies related by the Synoptics.

It is otherwise with the words, who was before me, which the Alexandrian authorities, Origen and the Curetonian Syriac omit, but which 15 Mjj. and the two ancient versions, Itala and Peschito, read. The relation between this testimony and that of John 1:30, which will follow, renders these words indispensable in John 1:27. For in John 1:30, John reproduces expressly (“ he it is of whom I said [yesterday]”), the testimony of John 1:27, and not, as is imagined, that of John 1:15, which is itself only a quotation of our John 1:30 (see on John 1:15). The first day, John uttered, without yet designating Jesus, the declaration of John 1:26-27; the second day, he repeated it, as it is related in John 1:30, this time applying it to Jesus as present. Gess rightly says, “If the shorter reading of John 1:27 were the true one, the evangelist would refer in John 1:30 to a fact which had not been related by him” (i. p. 345). These words: who was before me, are, in John 1:27, a sort of parenthesis inserted by the forerunner: “Come after me? Yes, and yet in reality, my predecessor!” (See on John 1:15).

By the expression “to loose the latchet of the sandals,” John means to designate the humble office of a slave. On the pleonasm of οὗ and αὐτοῦ Baumlein rightly says: “imitation of the Hebrew construction.” Philologues discuss the question whether the form ἄξιος ἵνα implies a weakening of the sense of the conjunction ἵνα, which becomes here, according to some, a simple paraphrase of the infinitive (worthy to loose), so Baumlein, or whether this conjunction always retains the idea of purpose (Meyer). Baumlein rests upon the later Greek usage and on the νά of the modern Greek, which, with the verb in the subjunctive mood, supplies the place of the infinitive. Nevertheless, we hold, with Meyer, that the idea of purpose is never altogether lost in the ἵνα of the New Testament; he who is worthy of doing a thing, is, as it were, intended to do it.