John 21:3-4

“ Simon Peter says to them, I go a fishing. They say to him, We also go with thee. They went forth and entered immediately into the boat; and they took nothing that night. 4. But when the morning was already come, Jesus stood on the beach; the disciples, however, knew not that it was Jesus. ”

Between their first call and the beginning of the active ministry of their Master (see at John 2:12), the disciples had returned to their ordinary profession. They seem to have acted in the same way when once they had returned to Galilee after the resurrection. As ordinarily, the initiative comes from Peter.

The word πιάζειν, to take, which is used in John 21:3; John 21:10, is found again six times in our Gospel, nowhere in the Synoptics (Hengstenberg). On the other hand, the word πρωΐα does not occur again in John. Baumlein rightly observes that the asyndeta λέγει, λέγουσιν, ἐξῆλθον, etc., are in John's style.

This long night of toil without result had, no doubt, recalled to the apostles that which had preceded their calling to the office of preachers of the Gospel (Luke 5).