John 21:7-8

“ Then that disciple whom Jesus loved says to Peter, It is the Lord! Simon Peter, when he heard that it was the Lord, put on his garment and girded himself (for he was naked); and he cast himself into the sea. 8 But the other disciples came with the boat (for they were not far from the land but about the distance of two hundred cubits), dragging the net with the fishes. ”

How characteristic of the two apostles are the features which appear in these two simple incidents! John contemplates and divines; Peter acts and springs forward. “It will not fail to be noticed,” says Reuss, “that Peter has need to be instructed by John;” which means that by this detail the author seeks to elevate John above Peter. But in all that follows (John 21:7; John 21:11; John 21:15-17; John 21:19) everything tends, on the contrary, to give Peter the first rank. What results from this is simply that the story tends to characterize the two principal apostles by their different gifts, as they afterwards showed themselves throughout their whole career: Peter, the man of missionary activity; John, of contemplative knowledge.

The garment called ἐπενδύτης is an intermediate one between the χιτών, the under garment, the shirt, and the ἱμάτιον, the outer garment, the mantle; it is the blouse of the workman. After having taken it off, Peter was really naked, except for the subligaculum, the apron, required for decency. But we may also hold, with Meyer, that he had kept on an undergarment; the Greek usage of the word γυμνός, naked, authorizes this sense. The word διεζώσατο, literally, he girded himself, includes the two ideas of putting on the garment and fastening it.

While Peter springs into the water and swims to the Lord, John remains with the other disciples in the boat. Πλοιαρίῳ, a local dative (Meyer), or, better perhaps, instrumental: by means of the boat (in contrast with Peter, who had thrown himself into the water to swim). They simply drew the net. The for explains how they could have recourse to this means: They were not far distant from the shore. Two hundred cubits make nearly a hundred metres (somewhat more than a hundred yards). Από is not used for measuring distance except in our Gospel (John 11:18) and in the Apocalypse (John 14:20), as Hengstenberg remarks. The same author observes that the terms πλοῖον and πλοιάριον are used alternately in this section, as in John 6:17 ff.

It has been supposed that this story of a miraculous fishing refers to the same event as the similar story in Luke 5:4 ff.; some (Strauss, Weisse, etc.) seeing in John's story a free reproduction of Luke's; others, as Weiss, finding rather in Luke's story an anticipatory reminiscence of the event related in John 21. The transposition of a fact in the evangelic history would undoubtedly not be an impossibility. But how can we believe that Peter throwing himself into the water to go to Jesus standing on the shore is only a variation of Peter prostrate on his knees before Him in the boat and saying to Him: “Depart from me, for I am a sinner!” etc., etc.? I think rather that, when Jesus wished to reinstate Peter and place him again at the head of his brethren in the work of the apostolic office, He did so through recalling to his mind, by this magnificent draught of fishes, the circumstances of his first call, and, through encouraging him, by the renewal of this symbol of the unprecedented successes which would crown his work, to give himself anew entirely to this task.