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Joh_1:13. Οἵ ] refers to τέκνα θεοῦ (the masculine in the well-known constructio κατὰ σύνεσιν , 2Jn_1:1, Phm_1:10, Gal_4:19; comp. Eurip. Suppl. 12, Androm. 571), not to τοῖς πιστεύουσιν , because the latter, according to Joh_1:12, are said to become God’s children, so that ἐγεννήθησαν would not be appropriate. The conception “children of God” is more precisely defined as denoting those who came into existence not after the manner of natural human generation, but who were begotten of God. The negative statement exhibits them as those in whose coming into existence human generation (and consequently also Abrahamic descent) has no part whatever. This latter brings about no divine sonship, Joh_3:6.
οὐκ ἐξ αἱμάτων ] not of blood, the blood being regarded as the seat and basis of the physical life (comp. on Act_15:20), which is transmitted by generation.[88] Comp. Act_17:26; Hom. Il. vi. 211, xx. 241; Soph. Aj. 1284, El. 1114; Plato, Soph. p. 268 D; Liv. 38, 28. Kypke and Loesner on the passage, Interpp. ad Virg. Aen. vi. 836; Horace, Od. ii. 20. 6; Tib. i. 6. 66. The plural is not to be explained of the commingling of the two sexes (“ex sanguinibus enim homines nascuntur maris et feminae,” Augustine; comp. Ewald), because what follows ( ἀνδρός and the corresponding ἘΚ ΘΕΟῦ ) points simply to generation on the man’s side; nor even of the multiplicity of the children of God (B. Crusius), to which there is no reference in what follows; quite as little does it refer to the continuos propagationum ordines from Adam, and afterwards from Abraham downwards (Hoelemann, p. 70), which must necessarily have been more distinctly indicated. Rather is the plural used in a sense not really different from the singular, and founded only on this, that the material blood is represented as the sum-total of all its parts (Kühner, II. p. 28). Comp. Eur. Ion. 705, ἄλλων τραφεὶς ἀφʼ αἱμάτων ; Soph. Ant. 121, and many places in the Tragedians where αἵματα is used in the sense of murder (Aesch. Eum. 163, 248; Eur. El. 137; Or. 1547, al.); Monk, ad Eur. Alc. 512; Blomf. Gloss. Choeph. 60. Comp. Sir_22:22; Sir_31:21; 2Ma_14:18; also Plato, Legg. x. p. 887 D, ἔτι ἐν γάλαξι τρεφόμενοι .
The negation of human origination is so important to John (comp. Joh_3:6), that he adds two further parallel definitions of it by οὐδέ
οὐδέ (which he arranges co-ordinately); nor even—nor even, where σαρκός designates the flesh as the substratum of the generative impulse, not “the woman” (Augustine, Theophylact, Rupertus, Zeger, Schott, Olshausen),—an interpretation which is most inappropriately supported by a reference to Gen_2:22, Eph_5:28-29, Jud_1:7, while it is excluded by the context ( ἀνδρός , and indeed by what follows). The man’s generative will is meant, and this is more exactly, i.e. personally, defined by ἐκ θελ . ἀνδρός , to which the contrasted etc ἘΚ ΘΕΟῦ is correlative; and hence ἈΝΉΡ must not be generalized and taken as equivalent to ἌΝΘΡΩΠΟς (Lücke), which never occurs—even in the Homeric ΠΑΤῊΡ ἈΝΔΡῶΝ ΤΕ ΘΕῶΝ ΤΕ only apparently—but here least of all, because the act of generation is the very thing spoken of. The following are merely arbitrary glosses upon the points which are here only rhetorically accumulated to produce an ever increasing distinctness of description; e.g. Baumgarten Crusius: “There is an advance here from the most sensual to the most noble” (nature, inclination, will—in spite of the twice repeated θελήματος !); Lange (L. J. III. p. 558): “There is an onward progress from natural generation to that which is caused by the will, and then to that consummated in theocratic faith;” Hoelemann: “ σάρξ , meant of both sexes, stands midway between the universalis humani generis propagatio ( ΑἽΜΑΤΑ ) and the proprius singularis propagationis auctor ( ἈΝΉΡ ).” Even Delitzsch refines upon the words, finding in ΘΕΛΉΜ . ΣΑΡΚΌς the unholy side of generation, though John has only in view the antithesis between the human and the divine viewed in and by themselves.
ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθ .] were begotten of God, containing the real relation of sonship to God, and thus explaining the former τέκνα θεοῦ , in so far as these were begotten by no human being, but by God, who through the Holy Spirit has restored their moral being and life, Joh_3:5. Hence ἘΚ ΘΕΟῦ ἘΓΕΝΝ . is not tautological. ἘΚ indicates the issuing forth from God as cause, where the relation of immediateness (in the first and last points) and of mediateness (in the second and third) lies in the very thing, and is self-evident without being distinctively indicated in the simple representation of John.
[88] ὡς τοῦ σπέρματος ὑλὴν τοῦ ἔχοντος , Eustath. ad Hom. Il vi. 211. Comp. Delitzsoh, Psychol. p. 246 [E. T. p. 290, and note].