John 16:1-4

“ I have spoken these things to you, that you may not be offended. 2. They shall put you out of their synagogues; yea, the hour is coming that whoever kills you will think that he is doing service to God. 3. And they will do these things to you, because they have not known the Father nor me. But I have told them to you in order that, when the hour shall have come, you may remember that I told you of them. I did not say them to you at the beginning, because I was with you. ”

After this interruption, designed to encourage the apostles, Jesus comes to the more serious things which He has to announce to them on the subject which occupies His thought. The preceding picture makes especially prominent the culpability of the persecutors; the following words describe rather the sufferings of the persecuted. The faith of the apostles might have been shaken in view of the impenitence and hostility of their people.

᾿Αλλά, as often, a term of gradation (2 Corinthians 7:11): “Not only this; but you must expect what is worse.” ῞Ινα designates the contents of the hour, as willed of God. The fanatical zeal of Paul, at the time of Stephen's martyrdom, is in certain respects an example of the spiritual state described in John 16:2 (Acts 26:9), although in him ignorance surpassed hatred, and hatred of Jesus was not in his heart hatred of God, as in the case indicated in John 15:23; comp. 1 Timothy 1:13. John 16:3 describes the climax of moral blindness: to imagine oneself to be serving God by the very act which is the expression of the most intense hatred against Him! Such a mode of action can proceed only from the fact that one has reached the point of absolutely failing to know God and Christ. John 16:4 returns, after the digression, to the thought of John 16:1, and closes it by uniting itself with John 16:2-3.

The ἀλλά, but, has been explained in various ways. It seems to me to form an antithesis to the understood idea: “I understand the horror which the prospects that I open before you must inspire within you; but I have thought it more useful to reveal them to you freely at last, a thing which I should not have been willing to do until the present moment.”

These events, which in themselves would have been for them a cause of stumbling, will, when once foretold, be changed by the words which He utters at this hour, into a support for their faith; comp. John 13:19 and John 14:29. As long as Jesus was with them, it was upon Him that the hatred fell; He sheltered them, so to speak, with His body. Now that they are about to find themselves unprotected, they must be forewarned; comp. Luke 22:36-37, words which, in another form, contain an analogous thought, and which must have been pronounced nearly at the same moment with these of John. It seems to us impossible to reconcile with these words: “ I did not say these things to you from the beginning,” the place which is occupied in the discourse of Matthew 10 by the positive prediction of the persecutions of which the Church will be the object. It cannot be said, with Chrysostom and Euthymius, that the sufferings here predicted are much more terrible than those of which Matthew 10:17; Matthew 10:21; Matthew 10:28 speaks; nor, with Bengel and Tholuck, that the present description is more detailed than that; nor again, with Hofmann and Luthardt, that Jesus makes this prediction of the persecutions the more exclusive object of the discoursing at this farewell moment. All these distinctions are too subtle. It is in vain that Westcott rests for support upon the expression ἐξ ἀρχῆς, which would indicate a continuity, and not merely, like ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς, a point of departure. It is better to recognize the fact that Matthew unites in the great discourse of ch. 10 all the instructions given at different times to the Twelve respecting the future persecutions of which they will be the object, as in chs. 5.-7 he unites all the elements of the new Christian law, and in chs. 24, 25 all the eschatological prophecies; and this because, in the composition of the Logia, he did not take account of the chronological order, but only of the subjects treated. This characteristic finds its explanation as soon as the mode of composition of the first Gospel is understood (see my Etudes bibliques, ii. pp. 18, 19, 3d ed.).

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

Vv. 1-4. After the words of encouragement, the passage is closed with the sentence ταῦτα λελάληκα κ. τ. λ., expressing the purpose of this part of the discourse, and a repetition, with somewhat more of definiteness, of the statement of the persecutions which they must expect from the world. In this more definite statement two points are made prominent that they would be put out of the synagogue, and that they would be exposed to death by violence. The former refers probably to a temporary exclusion from the synagogue, with its consequence, exclusion from social intercourse, and thus to one of the first results of determined hostility; the latter, to the extreme of all evil which could be inflicted by adversaries. Thus the ἀλλά of John 16:2 contrasts the greater with the less; not only the one, but, what is even far more, the other.

In John 16:4 evidently in consequence of the repetition just alluded to the ταῦτα λελάληκα is repeated; and the clause beginning with ἵνα in John 16:4 corresponds with the similar clause in John 16:1. By remembering, when these things should come upon them in the future, that Jesus had already forewarned them, they would be secured from the danger indicated by the verb σκανδαλισθῆτε.

The difficulty which has been found in connection with the last part of John 16:4, by reason of the fact that in Matthew 10 and elsewhere, Jesus had given forewarnings of persecution, etc., is most simply explained by observing the whole preceding passage. Jesus had not given them this full statement with relation to the time of their separation from Him, as He does here, and He did not need to do so, because He was still with them. But now the time of His departure had come, and the future might be full of dangers to their faith if they were not forewarned.