John Chapter 7 verse 28 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 28. - Jesus therefore cried - lifted up his voice in such a way as to cause wide astonishment. (The word is found in John 1:15 of John the Baptist, and ver. 37 and John 12:44; but frequently in the synoptists and Acts, and very frequently in the LXX.) The trumpet peal sounded through the courts of the temple, and the crowds rushed in the direction from which it proceeded. He cried in the temple. This clause is added, notwithstanding the statement of ver. 14, and it intimates a break in the discourse, a sudden and trenchant response to certain loudly uttered murmurs of the Jerusalem multitude. Ye both know me, and know whence I am. Surely (with De Wette, Meyer, Westcott, Moulton) the Lord distinctly concedes to the men of Jerusalem a certain amount of superficial knowledge. It is lamentably defective in respect of that for which they imagine it all-sufficient; and yet this knowledge was highly significant and important as far as it went. Such knowledge of his birthplace and his family, his provincial training, his Galilaean ministry, were all proofs to them of his humanity - that he belonged to their race, was bone of their bone, and sympathizing in their deepest sorrows, understood their noblest aspirations. Such a concession, moreover, repudiates the supposed docetic character of the Christ of the Fourth Gospel. Many commentators regard the exclamation its ironical and interrogatory (Grotius, Lampe, Calvin, Lucke, and even Godet), without sufficient warrant. Our Lord, however, soon shows that, though they are rightly informed about certain obvious facts, there were others of stupendous importance which could go a long way towards rcconciling their many-sided and conflicting ideas of Messiah, of which they were yet in ignorance. And yet (all commentators show that there is a certain adversative force about this third καί; see also ver. 30; John 8:20; John 9:30; Mark 12:12) I am not come from myself (see John 5:30). I have not risen upon the wings of my own ambition. It is not my mere human whim and purpose, or my desire for self-glorification, which brings me before you. You may know the home of my childhood; and watched as I have been by your eager spies, as you had full right to do, you may know all my public proceedings, and yet you have not fathomed the fact that I have not come on my own errand, nor does my humanity as you have grasped it cover the whole of the facts about me. There is a peculiarity, a uniqueness, about my coming that you have yet to learn. I have been sent to you; but he that sent me is real - a reality to me, which makes it an absolute reality in itself. The use of ἀληθινός is somewhat peculiar, and, unless with some commentators and Revisers we make it equal to ἀλήθης, and thus disturb the uniform usage of St. John, we must either imagine under the word a real "Sender," or one really answering to the idea already announced as of One competent to send. "He that sent me, the Father," of whom I spoke (John 5:37) when last we conversed together, is the overwhelming Reality in this case. Whom ye know not. The Jerusalem multitudes were suffering grievously from the superstitious limitations of their own faith, from the traditions, the symbolism, the letter, the form, which had well nigh strangled, suffocated, the underlying truths. They had in many ways lost the God whose great Name they honoured. They failed to apprehend his awful nearness to them, his love to every man, his compassion to the world, the demand of his righteousness, the condition of seeing him, the way to his rest - "Him ye know not." This was a serious rebuke of the entire system which prevailed at Jerusalem. Not understanding nor knowing the Father, they were unable to see the possibility of his having sent to them, through the life and lips of a Man whom they knew, his last and greatest message.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(28) Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught.--The word rendered "cried," implies always an elevation of voice answering to the intensity of the speaker's feeling. (Comp. in this Gospel John 1:15; John 7:37; John 12:44.) Here this feeling has been roused by another instance of their misapprehension, because they think of the outward appearance only, and therefore do not grasp the inner truth. They know whence He is; they had been taught that no man should know the Messiah's origin, and therefore they think He is not the Christ. And this technical reason, the meaning of which they have never fathomed, is enough to stifle every growing conviction, and to annul the force of all His words and all His works! St. John is impressed with the fact that it was in the very Temple itself, in the presence of the priests and rulers, in the act of public teaching, that He uttered these words, and he again notices this, though he has told us so before (John 7:14; John 7:26).Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am.--He takes up their objection in order to refute it. There is, indeed, a sense in which it is true. Those features were well known alike to friend and foe. With minds glowing with the fire of love or of hate, they had gazed upon Him as He walked or taught, and His form had fixed itself on the memory. They knew about His earthly home and early life (John 7:27), but all this was far short of the real knowledge of Him. It is but little that the events of the outer life tell of the true life and being even of a brother man. Little does a man know even his bosom friend; how infinitely far were they, with minds which did not even approach the true method of knowledge, from knowing Him whom no mind can fully comprehend! . . .