Joh 7:25-27 | Clarke

John 7:25-27

Verse 26

That this is the very Christ? - In most of the common printed editions αληθως is found, the Very Christ; but the word is wanting in BDKLTX, twenty-two others, several editions; all the Arabic, Wheelock's Persic, the Coptic, Sahidic, Armenian, Slavonic, Vulgate, and all the Itala but one, Origen, Epiphanius, Cyril, Isidore, Pelusian, and Nonnus. Grotius, Mill, Bengel, and Griesbach, decide against it. Bishop Pearce says, I am of opinion that this second αληθως, in this verse, should be omitted, it seeming quite unnecessary, if not inaccurate, when the words αληθως εγνωσαν, had just preceded it.

Calmet observes that the multitude which heard our Lord at this time was composed of three different classes of persons:

1. The rulers, priests, and Pharisees, declared enemies of Christ.

2. The inhabitants of Jerusalem, who knew the sentiments of their rulers concerning him.

3. The strangers, who from different quarters had come up to Jerusalem to the feast, and who heard Christ attentively, being ignorant of the designs of the rulers, etc., against him.

Our Lord addresses himself in this discourse principally to his enemies. The strange Jews were those who were astonished when Christ said, Joh 7:20, that they sought to kill him, having no such design themselves, and not knowing that others had. And the Jews of Jerusalem were those who, knowing the disposition of the rulers, and seeing Christ speak openly, no man attempting to seize him, addressed each other in the foregoing words, Do the rulers know indeed that this is the Christ? imagining that the chief priests, etc., had at last been convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. Verse 27

No man knoweth whence he is - The generality of the people knew very well that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, in the city, and of the family, of David; see Joh 7:42. But, from Isa 53:8, Who shall declare his generation? they probably thought that there should be something so peculiarly mysterious in his birth, or in the manner of his appearing, that no person could fully understand. Had they considered his miraculous conception, they would have felt their minds relieved on this point. The Jews thought that the Messiah, after his birth, would hide himself for some considerable time; and that when he began to preach no man should know where he had been hidden, and whence he had come. The rabbins have the following proverb: Three things come unexpectedly:

1. A thing found by chance.

2. The sting of a scorpion: and,

3. The Messiah.

It was probably in reference to the above that the people said, No man knoweth whence he is. However, they might have spoken this of his parents. We know that the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem, of the family of David; but no man can know his parents: therefore they rejected him: Joh 6:42, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?