John 7:45-49

“ The officers therefore returned to the chief-priests and Pharisees. And they said to them, Why have you not brought him? 46. The officers answered, Never man spake like this man. 47. The Pharisees answered them, Are you also led astray? 48. Has any one of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? 49. But this multitude, who know not the law, are accursed! ”

Although this was a holy day, the Sanhedrim or at least a part of this body held a meeting, no doubt awaiting the result of the mission of the officers (John 7:42). The union of the two substantives under the force of one and the same article indicates strongly community of action (comp. John 7:32). The pronoun ἐκεῖνοι, properly those there, is surprising, since it refers to the nearest persons.

Weiss and Westcott try to explain it by saying that the priests and Pharisees were morally farther removed from the author than were the officers, as if the moral distance could take the place of grammatical remoteness. We find here again, more evidently than elsewhere, the pregnant sense of this pronoun in John; not: those there (in contrast to these here), but: those and not others; those, always the same, the eternal enemies of Jesus. By their frank reply (John 7:46) the officers, unintentionally, pay a strange compliment to these doctors whom they were accustomed every day to hear. Tischendorf has rightly restored, in his later editions, the last words of John 7:46; the omission of these words in the Alexandrian authorities arises from the confounding of the two ἄνθρωπος.

By the you also (John 7:47), the rulers appeal to the vanity of their servants. John takes pleasure, in John 7:48, in again maliciously recalling one of these sayings of the adversaries of Jesus on which the contradiction made by facts impressed the stamp of ridicule (comp. the conduct of Nicodemus in John 7:50). The commentators recall, on the suggestion of John 7:49, the contemptuous expressions contained in the Rabbinical writings with reference to those who are uneducated. “The ignorant man is not pious; the learned only will be raised from the dead.” We must also recall the expressions: “people of the earth,” “vermin,” etc., applied by the learned Jews to the common people. By the words: who know not the law, the rulers insinuate that for themselves they have unanswerable reasons derived from the law for rejecting Jesus. Sacerdotal wrath willingly assumes an esoteric mien. The reading ἐπάρατοι belongs to the classical style; the LXX. and the New Testament (Galatians 3:10-13) use the form ἐπικατάρατος.

But there is one present who calls them to order in the name of that very law which they claim alone to know: