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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - John 12:9 - 12:9
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The common people (ho ochlos polus). This is the right reading with the article ho, literally, “the people much or in large numbers.” One is reminded of the French idiom. Gildersleeve (Syntax, p. 284) gives a few rare examples of the idiom ho anēr agathos. Westcott suggests that ochlos polus came to be regarded as a compound noun. This is the usual order in the N.T. rather than polus ochlos (Robertson, Grammar, p. 774). Mar 12:37 has ho polus ochlos. Moulton (Proleg., p. 84) terms ho ochlos polus here and in Joh 12:12 “a curious misplacement of the article.” John’s use of ochlos is usually the common crowd as “riff-raff.”
That he was (hoti estin). Present active indicative retained in indirect discourse after the secondary tense (egnō, second aorist active indicative of ginōskō). These “Jews” are not all hostile to Jesus as in Joh 5:10; Joh 6:41, etc., but included some who were friendly (Joh 12:11).
But that they might see Lazarus also (all' hina kai ton Lazaron idōsin). Purpose clause with hina and second aorist active subjunctive of horaō. Motive enough to gather a great crowd, to see one raised from the dead (cf. Joh 12:1 for the same phrase, “whom he had raised from the dead”). Some of the very witnesses of the raising of Lazarus will bear witness later (Joh 12:17). It was a tense situation.