John 18:12-14

“ The cohort and the tribune and the officers of the Jews seized Jesus, therefore, and bound him, 13, and they led him first to Annas; for he was father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high-priest of that year. 14. Caiaphas was he who had given this counsel to the Jews: that it was expedient that one man should die for the people. ”

The word πρῶτον, first, contains a tacit correction of the Synoptics, according to which Jesus was led directly to the house of Caiaphas; comp. an altogether similar remark in John 3:24.

It has been supposed that this in the first place, or first, alludes to the subsequent sending of Jesus to Pilate; but see on John 18:24; John 18:28. According to these verses, the understood secondly is certainly the sending to Caiaphas.

Annas had himself been high-priest during the years 6-15 of our era, thus about fifteen years before this time. We see in Josephus that he was the influential man of the period. John, however, gives us to understand that the true reason why Jesus was led at this moment to his house was rather his relationship to Caiaphas, the high-priest. By virtue of this relationship, the two personages constituted, as it were, but a single one. Comp. the expression in Luke 3:2.

On John 18:13-14, comp. John 11:50-51. By establishing the identity of this personage with the one mentioned in ch. 11, John would give us to understand what kind of justice Jesus had to expect on the part of a judge who had already expressed himself in this way.