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Joh_1:49. The approaching Nathanael heard the testimony of Jesus, and does not decline His commendation,—itself a proof of his guileless honesty; but he asks in amazement how Jesus knew him.
ὄντα ὑπὸ τ . συκῆν ] belongs, as Joh_1:51 shows, not to φωνῆσαι , but to εἶδόν σε . Therefore, before Philip, Joh_1:46-47, met and called ( φωνῆσαι , comp. Joh_2:9, Joh_4:16, Joh_9:28, Joh_18:33), Nathanael had been under a fig-tree; whether the fig-tree of his own house (Mic_4:4; Zec_3:10), whether meditating (possibly upon the Messianic hope of the people), praying, reading,—which, according to Rabbinical statements (see in Lightfoot, Schoettgen, Wetstein), were employments performed beneath such trees,—we are not informed. He had just come from the tree to the place where Philip met him.[127]
ΕἾΔΌΝ ΣΕ ] is usually taken as referring to a glance into the depth of his soul,[128] but contrary to the simple meaning of the words, which affirm nothing else than: I saw thee, not ἔγνων σε , or the like. Comp. also Hengstenberg. The miraculous element in the ΕἾΔΌΝ ΣΕ , which made it a ΣΗΜΕῖΟΝ to Nathanael, and which led to his confession which follows in Joh_1:50, must have consisted in the fact that the fig-tree either was situated out of sight of the place, or so far off that no one with ordinary powers of sight could have discerned a person under it. ΕἾΔΌΝ ΣΕ thus simply interpreted gives the true solution to Nathanael’s question, because there could not have been this rapport of miraculous far-seeing on the part of Jesus, had it not just been brought about by the immediate recognition of the true Israelite when he was at that distance. This spiritual elective affinity was the medium of the supernatural εἶδόν σε . Nonnus well says: ὌΜΜΑΣΙ ΚΑῚ ΠΡΑΠΊΔΕΣΣΙ ΤῸΝ Οὐ ΠΑΡΕΌΝΤΑ ΔΟΚΕΎΩΝ . Jesus would not have seen an ordinary Jew, who, being therefore without this spiritual affinity, was beyond the limits of sight.
ὑπὸ τὴν συκ .] with the article: “under that well-known fig-tree, beneath which you were,” or, if the tree was within the range of vision, pointing towards it. De Wette also rightly abides by the simple meaning, I saw thee, but thinks that what caused the astonishment of Nathanael was the fact that Jesus saw him when he believed himself to he unobserved (though John regarded this seeing as supernatural). But this does not give an adequate motive psychologically for the confession of Joh_1:50; and we must further assume, with Ewald, that the words of Jesus reminded Nathanael of the deep and weighty thoughts which he was revolving when alone under the fig-tree, and he thus perceived that the depths of his soul were laid open before the spiritual eye of Jesus, though this is not indicated in the text.
[127] The reference of the εἶδόν σε to the same place where Philip called him (so, after the Greek Fathers, B. Crusius) must be rejected, because neither the πρὸ τοῦ
φωνῆσαι nor the ὄντα ὑπὸ τὴν συκῆν would thus have their appropriate and necessary point.
[128] Where it is imagined, though without the slightest hint to that effect in the text, that Jesus had a short time before passed by the fig-tree unobserved.