Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - John 11:50 - 11:50
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
That it is expedient for you (hoti sumpherei humin). Indirect discourse with present active indicative of sumpherō used with the hina clause as subject. It means to bear together, to be profitable, with the dative case as here (humin, for you). It is to your interest and that is what they cared most for.
That one man die (hina heis anthrōpos apothanēi). Sub-final use of hina with second aorist active subjunctive of apothnēskō as subject clause with sumpherei. See Joh 16:7; Joh 18:7 for the same construction.
For the people (huper tou laou). Huper simply means over, but can be in behalf of as often, and in proper context the resultant idea is “instead of” as the succeeding clause shows and as is clearly so in Gal 3:13 of the death of Christ and naturally so in 2Co 5:14.; Rom 5:6. In the papyri huper is the usual preposition used of one who writes a letter for one unable to write.
And that the whole nation perish not (kai mē holon to ethnos apolētai). Continuation of the hina construction with mē and the second aorist subjunctive of apollumi. What Caiaphas has in mind is the giving of Jesus to death to keep the nation from perishing at the hands of the Romans. Politicians are often willing to make a sacrifice of the other fellow.