John 6:15

John 6:15. Jesus therefore perceiving that they were about to come and carry him off to make him king, retired again into the mountain himself alone. The thought of ‘Messiah' is the connecting link between the exclamation related in the last verse and the purpose here mentioned. The Messiah is to reign in the royal city: to Jerusalem therefore they would now carry Him by force, and there proclaim Him king. Their words here given are taken up again in chap. John 12:13, when the Galilean multitudes go to meet Him to escort Him in triumph into Jerusalem, crying out, ‘Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel.' But the hour for a triumphant entry has not yet arrived. Jesus reads their purpose, and frustrates it by retiring again to ‘the mountain' (John 6:3), from which He came down to teach the multitudes and to heal their s ick (Luke 9:11). The first two Evangelists tell us that He retired into the mountain ‘to pray;' but the two motives assigned are in no way inconsistent with each other. Our Lord's withdrawal from view after His miracles is frequently noticed in this Gospel. The reason here explained would naturally operate at other times also; but there are peculiarities of language which seem to show that John beheld in all the ‘signs' which were occasional manifestations of the glory of Jesus emblems of His whole manifestation, of all that lay between His coming forth from the Father and His final withdrawal from the world and return to the Father. There is a beautiful harmony between the prayer of which other Gospels speak, the solitariness (‘Himself alone') here brought before us, and the later words of Jesus, ‘He that sent me is with me, He hath not left me alone' (chap. John 8:29), ‘I am not alone, because the Father is with me' (John 16:32).

No one can read the four narratives of this miracle without being struck with their essential harmony in the midst of apparent diversities. Every narrative contributes some new feature; almost every one introduces some particular which we cannot with positive certainty adjust with the other narratives, though we may see clearly that in more ways than one it might be so adjusted. It is especially necessary in this place to call attention to these other narratives, because John alone records the impression made upon the multitude, and (as has been well suggested by Godet) this impression may explain a very remarkable word used both by Matthew and by Mark. These Evangelists relate (Matthew 14:22; Mark 6:45) that Jesus ‘compelled' His disciples to return to their boat until He should have dismissed the people. No motive for the compulsion is supplied by the two writers who use the word. If, however, this was the crisis of the Galilean ministry, and the multitudes, impressed by other recent miracles, and moved beyond measure by the last, must now be withheld from their premature design to proclaim Him king, it becomes necessary forcibly to separate the disciples as well as Himself from the excited crowds in the hour of their highly-wrought enthusiasm. Even though Jesus Himself were absent, yet if the contagious excitement of the people should communicate itself to the Galilean disciples also, the plan of His working would (humanly speaking) be frustrated. Perhaps, too, this decisive breaking with the impulses of the multitude, this practical renunciation of the honours the people would confer and of the political sovereignty to which they would raise Him, may furnish one reason for John's selection of this miracle, already so well known in the Church. Another reason is made evident by the discourse of this chapter.