John 6:60

Ver. 60. “ After having heard him speak thus, many of his disciples said. This saying is a hard one; who can listen to it? ”

According to de Wette and Meyer, this exclamation relates to the idea of the bloody death of the Messiah, the great cause of stumbling to the Jews, which had been implied in the preceding declarations; according to Weiss, to the overthrow of all their Messianic hopes which resulted from all these discourses; according to Tholuck and Hengstenberg, to the apparent pride with which Jesus connected the salvation of the world with His own person, according to several of the older writers, Lampe and others, to the claim of Jesus to be a personage who had come down from heaven.

Undoubtedly all these ideas are expressed in what precedes; but the most striking idea was evidently the obligation to eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to have life, and there was here indeed, also, the most paradoxical and most offensive idea. Grossly understood, it might indeed be revolting even to the disciples, and might force from them the cry: This is going too far; He talks irrationally! The term μαθηταί, disciples, here denotes persons who attached themselves to Jesus, who followed Him habitually, and who had even broken off from their ordinary occupations in order to accompany Him (John 6:66); it was from among them that Jesus had, a short time before, chosen the Twelve. Some of them were afterwards found undoubtedly among the five hundred of whom Paul speaks (1 Corinthians 15:6). Σκληρός (properly, hard, tough), does not here signify obscure (Chrysostom, Grotius, Olshausen), but difficult to receive. They think they understand it, but they cannot admit it. Τίς δύναται, “ who has power to...?” ᾿Ακούειν, “to listen calmly, without stopping the ears.”