John 1:30

Ver. 30. “ This is he concerning whom I said: After me cometh a man who has preceded me, because he was before me. ”

This saying, while applying to Jesus as present (this is he) the testimony uttered on the preceding day in His absence (John 1:26-27), is designed to solve the enigma which that declaration contained: “He who follows me was before me.” The last clause explains it; see on John 1:15. It is difficult to decide between the two readings περί, in respect to, and ὑπέρ, on behalf of, both of which are suitable. The word ἀνήρ (a man in the strength of his age) which is not found in the quotation of this saying in John 1:15, is suggested to the forerunner by the sight of Jesus present before his eyes. Lucke, Meyer, Keil think that in John 1:30 the Baptist refers, not to the testimony of the day before (John 1:26-27), but to some other previous saying which is not mentioned, either in our Gospel or in the Synoptics.

They are condemned to this absurd supposition by their servile dependence on the Alexandrian text, which in John 1:27 omitted the words: who has preceded me. Weiss attempts to escape this difficulty by making the formula of quotation: he of whom I said, John 1:30, relate simply to the words: cometh after me, and not to those which follow, who has preceded me, an unfortunate expedient which cannot satisfy any one. For the emphasis, as the end of the verse shows, is precisely on the words which Weiss thus treats as insignificant. The systematic partisans of the Alexandrian text must, therefore, bring themselves to acknowledge, in this case also, that that text is no more infallible than the Byzantine or the Greco-Latin.

But how can John the Baptist have the boldness to give such a testimony to this mere Jew, like all the rest whom he had before him there, and to proclaim Him as the Redeemer of men, the being whom God had drawn forth from the depth of eternal existence that He might give Him to the world? He explains this himself in John 1:31-33: