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Joh_11:45-46. This occurrence makes an overwhelming impression upon the party adverse to Jesus, upon the Ἰουδαῖοι . Many of the Ἰουδαῖοις —those, namely, who had come to Mary, and had seen the act of Jesus—believed on Him. A certain number, however, of them (of these who had become believers) went away (from the scene of the miracle) to the Pharisees, and said to them, etc., but with well-meaning intent, in order to put them in possession of a correct account of the act, and to bear witness to them of the miracle (comp. Origen). The ordinary understanding of the passage finds here two sections among the Ἰουδαίοι who had come to Mary; many of them had become believers, but certain of them remained unbelieving, and the latter had denounced Jesus to the Pharisees with evil intent (as a Goëte, thinks Euth. Zigabenus; as a sacrilegious person, who had disinterred the corpse, thought Theophylact; as a dangerous person, think most commentators), or communicated the fact, simply with the view of obtaining a judgment upon it (Luthardt). The error of this interpretation lies in not observing that John has not written τῶν ἐλθόντων (which is the reading of D), but οἱ ἐλθόντες , κ . τ . λ ., so that ἐκ τῶν Ἰουδαίων is said generally of the Ἰουδαῖοι in general, and οἱ ἐλθόντες (ii, qui, etc.) more closely defines the πολλοί ; instead of τινές , however, Joh_11:46, there now remain no others, none who had not become believers, since ἀπῆλθον indicates that they went away from the place to the Pharisees, while in the preceding only the Jews who came to Mary are mentioned. Lachmann and Tischendorf have rightly placed a comma after Ἰουδ .
πρὸς τὴν Μαρίαν ] for the same reason as in Joh_11:1 she was named first,—here she is briefly named alone. Hengstenberg strangely imports into the words an antithesis to those who had come only for Simon’s sake. See on Joh_11:1-2.