Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 1:47 - 1:47
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_1:47. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? A question of astonishment that the Messiah should come out of Nazareth. But Nathanael asks thus doubtingly, not because Nazareth lay in Galilee, Joh_7:52 (the Fathers, Luther, Melancthon, Ebrard, and many), nor because of its smallness, as too insignificant to be the birth-place of the Messiah (Lücke, De Wette, Hug, Krabbe, Ewald, Lange, Brückner, and others), nor from both reasons together (Hengstenberg); nor, again, because the prophecy did not speak of Nazareth as the Messiah’s birth-place (Godet); but, as the general expression τὶ ἀγαθόν proves (it is not the more special ὁ Χριστός ), because Nathanael, and probably public opinion likewise, looked upon the little town as morally degenerate: it must have been so regarded at least in the narrow circle of the surrounding villages (Nathanael belonged to Cana). We have no historical proof that this was so; outside the N. T. the place is not mentioned, not even in Josephus; nevertheless Mar_6:6, and the occurrence recorded Luk_4:15 ff., well correspond with Nathanael’s judgment as to its disrepute in a moral point of view.
ἀγαθόν ] which yet must above all be the case if the Messiah were to come therefrom,
He whose coming must be a signally holy and sublime manifestation.
ἔρχου κ . ἴδε ] “optimum remedium contra opiniones praeconceptas,” Bengel.