John 8:26,27

“ I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you; but he who sent me is worthy of belief, and what I have heard from him, that do I speak to the world. 27. They understood not that he spoke to them of the Father. ”

Some interpreters, ancient and modern, have tried to connect this verse grammatically with the preceding, by making the last words of that verse: ὅτι καὶ λαλῶ ὑμῖν, a parenthetical clause, and the first words of John 8:26, πολλὰ ἔχω, the continuation of the clause which was begun with τὴν ἀρχήν (so Bengel, Hofmann, Baumlein): “For the moment since it is still the time when I am speaking with you I have many things to say to you” (Hofmann); or: “Certainly I have a thing which I am also doing many things to say to you” (Baumlein). But this sense of τὴν ἀρχήν is absolutely idle; and no less so that of the parenthetical clause. The attempt has also been made to connect John 8:26 logically with John 8:25.

Thus Luthardt and Reuss introduce this antithesis: “It is of yourselves (not of myself) that I have to speak to you, and this will be for you a much more important thought to occupy your minds.” But what was there of more serious importance for them than to know who Jesus was? Weiss finds a contrast between the idea: that it was not worth while to speak to them any longer (John 8:25), and the idea of the multitude of things which He had to say to them (John 8:26). This explanation falls together with the sense which Weiss gives to John 8:25. In my view, John 8:26 does not continue the thought of John 8:25. It is united with John 8:24. After having answered the question of the hearers in John 8:25, Jesus takes up again the course of His charges in John 8:21-24. In these verses he had uttered stern truths with reference to the moral state of the people; He simply continues in John 8:26: “Of these declarations and these judgments I have still many (πολλά, at the beginning of the clause) to pronounce with regard to you.” What is to follow in this same chapter, John 8:34; John 8:37; John 8:40-41; John 8:43-44; John 8:49; John 8:55, gives us an idea of these many judgments which Jesus had in mind. “ But,” He adds, “painful as this mission may be for me, I cannot abstain from speaking to you as I do, for I only obey herein Him who dictates to me my message; now He is the truth itself, and my office here below can only be that of making the world hear what He reveals to me.” From Chrysostom to Meyer, some explain the opposition expressed in the word but by this idea: “I have much to say to you; but I refrain, and this because you are unwilling to receive the truth.”

But with this sense, to what purpose make appeal to the divine truth which forces him to speak and to say to the world what He hears from above. And in what follows, does Jesus keep silence? Does He not, on the contrary, make the greatest number of charges and the most severe ones against His hearers that He has ever addressed to them? With reference to ἤκουσα, I heard, comp. John 5:30. This past tense cannot, either in accordance with this parallel or with the context, refer to the pre-existent state. Jesus certainly cannot mean that He heard in heaven, before coming here below, the charges which He now addresses to the Jews.