John 11:47-50

“ The chief priests and Pharisees therefore gathered an assembly, and they said, What shall we do? For this man does many miracles. 48. If we let him alone, all will believe on him, and the Romans will come and they will destroy both our place and nation. 49. But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high-priest of that year, said to them: You know nothing at all, 50 and you do not consider that it is better for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish. ”

The resurrection of Lazarus was not the cause of Jesus' death; but it occasioned and hastened the decree of His condemnation. The cup was full; this made it overflow. The Pharisees are specially named because they were the instigators of this hostile meeting (John 11:46; John 9:45); but it was the chief priests who officially convoked it.

The absence of the article before συνέδριον might be explained by supposing that John is here using this word as a proper name. It is more natural, however, to take the term in the general meaning of assembly or council, which it has also in the profane Greek. The present ποιοῦμεν, “what do we” takes the place of a future; it makes prominent the imminence of the danger. “It is absolutely necessary to do something, but what?” ῞Οτι : because of the fact that. “His doing must decide ours.” The fear expressed in John 11:48 was not without foundation. The least commotion might serve the Romans as a pretext for depriving the people of Israel of the remnant of independence which they still enjoyed, and in that case what would become of the power of the Sanhedrim? The disquietude of the rulers has reference especially to the destruction of their power. This is emphatically expressed by the position of the pronoun ἡμῶν (of us, our) before the two substantives. Jesus reproduced this thought of the rulers in the words of the laborers in the vineyard, Matthew 21:38: “ Let us kill him and secure the inheritance. ” Jerusalem, Israel, belong to them. “ Our place ” naturally designates the capital, as the seat of their government, rather than the temple (Lucke, de Wette, etc.), or the whole of Judea (Bengel). In the first sense, this term is also more naturally connected with the following expression: our nation; that which we govern from this place. As they speak from a political point of view, contrasting nation with nation, they employ the term ἔθνος, and not λαός, which is the name of honor for the people of Israel.

The expression: one of them, hardly allows us to suppose that Caiaphas was presiding over the assembly. Although, indeed, it seems now to be proved that the high-priest was at the same time president of the Sanhedrim (Schurer, Lehrb. der N. T. Zeitgesch., p. 411), we must not forget that this was not a regular meeting (John 11:47). In the midst of a company of irresolute spirits, who are wavering between conscience and interest, an energetic man, who boldly denies the rights of conscience and unscrupulously puts forward reasons of state, has always the chance of carrying his point. If this had occurred in the best days of the theocracy, the expression: High- priest of that year, would be incomprehensible; for, according to the law, the pontificate was for life. But, since the Roman dominion, the masters of the country fearing the power which a permanent office gives, had adopted the custom of frequently replacing one high-priest by another.

According to Josephus (Antiq., 18.2. 2), the Roman governor Valerius Gratus “took away the high-priestly office from Ananus and conferred it on Ishmael; then, having deposed the latter a little while afterwards, he established as high-priest Eleazar, the son of Ananus: after a year had elapsed, he deposed this last person and nominated Simon in his place; he held the office only one year, and Joseph, surnamed Caiaphas, was made his successor.” Caiaphas remained in office from the year 25 to the year 36 of our era; consequently, the entire ministry of Jesus was passed under his pontificate. These frequent changes justify the expression of the evangelist, and deprive criticism of the right to assert that the author of our Gospel was ignorant of the fact that the high-priesthood, from its foundation, was a life-office. But if Caiaphas had been high-priest for eleven official years, how could St. John use three times (John 11:49-51; John 18:13) the expression: “High-priest of that year? ” We find the pronoun ἐκεῖνος used here in the particularly emphatic sense which it has so frequently in this Gospel; not, that more remote year, in opposition to some other nearer one, but, that unique, decisive year, in which the Messiah was put to death and the priesthood, with the theocracy, came to its end. The apostrophe of Caiaphas to his colleagues has a certain character of rudeness.

This feature, as Hengstenberg observes, agrees with the behavior of the Sadducean sect to which Caiaphas belonged; comp. Acts 4:6; Acts 5:17, and Josephus, Antiq., 20.9. 1. In Bell. Jud., 2.8, 14, this historian says: “The Pharisees are friendly to each other, and cultivate harmony among themselves with a view to the common benefit; but the manners of the Sadducees are much more rude both towards each other and towards their equals, whom they treat as strangers.” Hengstenberg takes διαλογίζεσθε in an intransitive sense and the following ὅτι in the sense of because: You do not consider, seeing that it is more advantageous that...” But it is more natural to make the clause which begins with ὅτι the content of διαλογίζεσθε : “You know nothing and you do not consider that...” The reading διαλογίζεσθε : “You do not know how to clear up by reasoning...” is preferable to the simple λογίζεσθε which results from negligence or from a mistaken correction. The reading ἡμῖν, for us, has fundamentally the same sense as the variant ὑμῖν, for you; but it somewhat better disguises the egoistic and personal character of the opinion expressed (comp. the ἡμῶν of John 11:48). The use of the terms λαός and ἔθνος in John 11:50 is not arbitrary. The first (corresponding to the Hebrew am) designates the multitude of individuals forming the theocratic nation, in opposition to the single individual who is to perish, while the second, answering to goi, designates Israel as a political body in contrast with the foreign nationality, that of the Romans.