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Joh_1:21. In consequence of this denial, the next point was to inquire whether he was the Elias who, according to Mal_4:5, was expected (back from heaven) as the immediate forerunner of the Messiah.
τί οὖν ] not, quid ergo es (Beza et al.), but as τίς does not again occur (vers. 19, 22): what then is the case, if thou art not the Messiah? what is the real state of the matter?
Art thou Elias? So put, the question assumes it as certain that John must give himself out to be Elias, after he had denied that he was the Messiah.
οὐκ εἰμί ] He could give this answer, notwithstanding what is said in Luk_1:17, Mat_11:14; Mat_17:10 (against Hilgenfeld), since he could only suppose his interrogators were thinking of the literal, not of the antitypical Elijah. Bengel well says: “omnia a se amolitur, ut Christum confiteatur et ad Christum redigat quaerentes.” He was conscious, nevertheless, according to Joh_1:23, in what sense he was Elias; but taking the question as literally meant, there was no occasion for him to go beyond that meaning, and to ascribe to himself in a special manner the character of an antitypical Elias, which would have been neither prudent nor profitable. The οὐκ εἶμι is too definite an answer to the definite question, to be taken as a denial in general of every externally defined position (Brückner); he would have had to answer evasively.
ὁ προφήτης εἶ σύ ;] The absence of any connecting link in the narrative shows the rapid, hasty manner of the interrogation. ὁ προφήτης is marked out by the article as the well-known promised prophet, and considering the previous question Ἠλίας εἶ σύ , can only be a nameless one, and therefore not Jeremias, according to Mat_16:14 (Grotius, Kuinoel, Olshausen, Klee, Lange), but the one intended in Deu_18:15, the reference of whom to the Messiah Himself (Act_3:22; Act_7:37; Joh_1:46; Joh_6:14) was at least not universal (comp. Joh_7:40), and was not adopted by the interrogators here. Judging from the descending climax of the points of these questions, they must rather have thought of some one inferior to Elias, or, in general, of an individual undefined, owing to the fluctuation of view regarding Him who was expected as “the prophet.”[113] Nonnus well expresses the namelessness and yet eminence of this ὁ προφήτης : μὴ σύ μοι , ὃν καλέουσι , θεηγόρος ἐσσὶ προφήτης , ἄγγελος ἐσσομένων ; Observe how the rigid denials become shortened at last to the bare οὔ . Here also we have a no on the Baptist’s lips, because in his view Jesus was the prophet of Deuteronomy 18.
[113] Luthardt thinks of the prophet in the second portion of Isaiah. Comp. Hofmann, Weissag u. Erf. II. p. 69. It would agree with this, that John immediately gives an answer taken from Isaiah 40. But if his interrogators had had in mind Isaiah 40 ff., they would probably have designated him whom they meant more characteristically, viz. as the servant of Jehovah.