John 4:43-45

describe the general situation. Then, on this foundation there rises the following incident (John 4:46-54). We may compare here the relation of the conversation with Nicodemus to the general representation in John 2:23-25, or that of the last discourse of the forerunner to the representation in John 3:22-24.

Vv. 43-45. “ After these two days, he departed thence and went away into Galilee. 44. For Jesus Himself had declared that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 45. When therefore he came into Galilee, the Galileans received him, because they had seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem, at the feast; for they also went to the feast. ” This passage has from the beginning been a crux interpretum. How can John give as the cause (for, John 4:44) of the return of Jesus to Galilee this declaration of the Lord “that no prophet is honored in his own country!” And how can he connect with this adage as a consequence (therefore, John 4:45) the fact that the Galileans gave Him an eager welcome?

1. Bruckner and Luthardt think that Jesus sought either conflict (Bruckner) or solitude (Luthardt). This would well explain the for of John 4:44. But it would be necessary to admit that the foresight of Jesus was greatly deceived (John 4:45), which is absolutely opposed to the particle οὖν (therefore), which connects John 4:45 with the preceding. Instead of therefore, but would have been necessary. Moreover, Jesus did not seek conflict, since He abandoned Judea in order to avoid it; still less solitude, for He wished to work.

2. Weiss, nearly like Bruckner : Jesus leaves to His disciples the care of reaping joyously in Samaria afterwards; He Himself goes to seek the hard labor of the sower in Galilee. But the thought of the future evangelization of Samaria is altogether foreign to this passage (see above); and John 4:45 is opposed to this sense; for it makes prominent precisely the fact that Jesus found in Galilee the most eager welcome. Weiss escapes this difficulty only by making the therefore of John 4:45 relate to John 4:43 and not to John 4:44, and by making it a particle designed to indicate the resumption of the narrative. But after the for of John 4:44, therefore has necessarily the argumentative sense.

3. According to Lucke, de Wette and Tholuck, the for of John 4:44 is designed to explain, not what precedes, but the fact which is about to be announced, John 4:45. The sense would, thus, be: “Jesus had indeed declared...;” this indeed relating to the fact mentioned in John 4:45, that the Galileans no doubt received Him, but only because of the miracles of which they had been witnesses. But this very rare use of γάρ is foreign to the New Testament. This interpretation is hardly less forced than that of Kuinoel, who gives to for the sense of although, as also Ostervald translates.

4. Origen, Wieseler, Ebrard, Baur and Keil understand by ἰδία πατρίς (his own country), Judea, as the place of Jesus' birth. By this means, the two difficulties of the for and the therefore pass away at once. But common sense tells us that, in the maxim quoted by Jesus, the word country must denote the place where the prophet has lived and where he has been known from infancy, and not that where he was merely born. It is, therefore, very evident that, in the thought of John, His own country is Galilee.

5. Calvin, Hengstenberg and Baumlein understand by his own country especially Nazareth, in contrast with the rest of Galilee, and with Capernaum in particular where He went to make His abode. He came, not to Nazareth, as might have been expected, but to Capernaum. (Comp. Mark 6:1; Matthew 13:54-57; Luke 4:16; Luke 4:24.) Lange applies the term country to the whole of lower Galilee, in which Nazareth was included, in opposition to upper Galilee where Jesus went to fix His abode from this time. But how could Nazareth, or the district of Nazareth, be thus, without further explanation, placed outside of Galilee, or even in contrast with that province? It might still be comprehensible, if, in the following narrative, John showed us Jesus fixing His abode at Capernaum; but it is to Cana that He betakes Himself, and this town was very near to Nazareth.

6. Meyer seems to us quite near the truth, when he explains: Jesus, knowing well that a prophet is not honored in his own country, began by making Himself honored outside of it, at Jerusalem (John 4:45); and thus it was that He returned now to Galilee with a reputation as a prophet, which opened for Him access to hearts in His own country. Reuss is disposed to hold the same relation of thought: “In order to be received in Galilee, He had been obliged first to make Himself acknowledged outside of it.”

The complete explanation of this obscure passage follows, as in so many cases, from the relation of the fourth Gospel to the Synoptics. The latter make the Galilean ministry begin immediately after the baptism. But John reminds us here, at the time of Jesus' settlement in Galilee, that Jesus had followed a course quite different from that which the earlier narratives seemed to attribute to Him. The Lord knew that the place where a prophet has lived is the one where, as a rule, he has most difficulty in finding recognition. He began, therefore, by working at Jerusalem and in Judea for quite a long time (almost a whole year: John 4:35), and it was only after this that He came in the strict sense to begin His ministry in Galilee, that ministry with which the narrative of the other Gospels opens. The meaning, therefore, is: It was then, and only then, (not immediately after the baptism), that He commenced the Galilean work with which every one is acquainted. We find in this passage, as thus understood, a new confirmation of our remarks on John 3:24. If the for, John 4:44, indicates the cause of Jesus' mode of acting, the therefore, John 4:45, brings out in relief the joyful result and serves thus to justify the wisdom of the course pursued. The Galileans who had seen Him at work on the grand theatre of the capital, made no difficulty now in welcoming Him. The words καὶ ἀπῆλθεν, and went away, are rejected by the Alexandrian authorities; perhaps they were added from John 4:13.

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

XXIII.

1. The explanation of John 4:44 which is given by Godet and Meyer, is in all probability the correct one: namely, that Jesus made His entrance upon His ministry in Galilee only after He had been at Jerusalem and had, as it were, assumed His office there and after He had there gained the attention of the people in some degree because of His knowledge of the general truth stated in this verse. Of the very recent writers on this Gospel, Keil, Westcott, Milligan and Moulton hold that the reference of the words his own country, so far as Jesus is concerned, is to Judea, and not to Galilee. He went away from Judea to Galilee, therefore, because He did not find honor in the former region. Westcott even thinks that it is impossible that John should speak of Galilee in this connection as Christ's own country. But let us observe: (a) that John does not anywhere state that Jesus had His home or birthplace in Judea; (b) that in John 7:41-42, to which Westcott refers, the people question as to whether He can be the Christ because He comes from Galilee as they suppose; (c) that Philip speaks of Him to Nathanael in John 1:45 as of Nazareth, and Nathanael, in John 1:46, hesitates to believe because of this fact; (d) that He is called Jesus of Nazareth in all the Gospels; (e) that according to Matthew and Luke, who give the story of his birth at Bethlehem, His childhood's home was Nazareth; (f) that the proverb here used is referred by the earlier Gospels to Nazareth; (g) that the words: He came to his own, John 1:11, which are sometimes referred to as favoring the idea that Judea is meant here, have no real force as bearing upon the question, first, because all the Jews were “His own” and not merely the Judean Jews, and secondly, because, if this be not so, there is evidently in those words no exclusive reference to His first visit to Jerusalem, but, on the other hand, a pointing to the whole attitude of the Jews, especially the leading Jews, towards Him. The relation of Jesus to Nazareth is presented in such a way in all the Gospels this one as well as the earlier three as to show that it was evidently looked upon as His home and that Galilee was His country, notwithstanding the fact that His birth had taken place at Bethlehem.

2. John 4:43 takes up the narrative from John 4:1-2 of this chapter and carries on the story of the return to Galilee, which had been interrupted by the account of the meeting with the woman of Samaria, etc. Those first verses intimate that Jesus had had very considerable success in Jerusalem and Judea He was making and baptizing, it was said, more disciples than John. John 4:45 indicates the same thing. The connection of the verses is, therefore, unfavorable to the view that the proverb is introduced here as referring to Judea. Weiss, on the other hand, holds that the connection here is with the matter of leaving Samaria, and he explains the 44th verse by saying that Jesus leaves Samaria, where He had already gained honor (John 4:42), to labor to the end of gaining it in Galilee the disciples were to be left to reap the harvest in Samaria, while He was to go as a sower to a region where, according to the proverb, the foundation work was still to be done. But, in addition to what Godet says against this view, there is every reason to believe that the disciples accompanied Jesus into Galilee. The connection of this statement with the idea of sowing and reaping (John 4:35-38), is quite improbable. Those verses contain an incidental saying suggested by the circumstances of the visit to Sychar. But now the story moves on to an entirely new matter, and it is not to be believed that the writer would expect his readers to think of such a connection, without bringing it out more clearly in what he was writing.