Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Bengel Commentary - John 11:52 - 11:52
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh 11:52. Καἰ οὐχ, and not) John everywhere obviates the possibility of a wrong interpretation: so at ch. Joh 21:23 [where the false construction was put on Jesus’ words, as if the beloved disciple should not die, John counteracts the error by adding, “Yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?”] In this passage, his object in adding Joh 11:52 is, lest any should infer from the words of Caiaphas, that Jesus died for the Jews alone. In truth, the apostle of Christ takes a wider range of view than the Jewish high priest.-ἵνα καὶ τὰ τέκνα) Almost all the Latin MSS. omit the particle καὶ, also Augustine, and with them Luther. Let the reader weigh the evidence and decide.-[305] τὰ τέκνα τοῦ Θεοῦ, the children of God) He calls them the children of God in respect to the Divine foreknowledge; and because they were in very deed about to become the children of God, [even though not being the posterity of Abraham, according to the flesh-V. g.]-τὰ διεσκορπισμένα, that had been [were] scattered abroad) The Preterite denotes, not those who are in the dispersion, but those who have come into a state of dispersion. Gen 10:32, “The nations were divided in the earth after the flood;” Joh 11:8, [at Babel] “The Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth.” The words in antithesis are, the people, Joh 11:50, and the scattered abroad [children of God], Joh 11:52. Otherwise the people and the children are synonyms: Rom 9:26, “In the place where it was said, Ye are not My people, there shall they be called the children of the living God.” So then Christ inflicted no detriment on the people [the Jews], in order that He might make a people of those also, who had not been a people [the Gentiles]. Comp. ch. Joh 12:20, etc. [Greeks, by their own desire, are brought to Jesus through Philip: whereupon Jesus saith] “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
[305] ABD Rec. Text and Origen retain καί. abc omit it. Some MSS. of Vulg. have it, but others omit it.-E. and T.