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Joh_11:47-48. Now, since Jesus had, even according to the testimony of His earlier opponents, even raised a dead man, the matter becomes too serious for the Pharisees to permit them to look on any longer without taking a decisive step. The chief priests (with whom they have accordingly communicated) and they themselves summon a sitting of the council, i.e. a sitting of the Sanhedrin. On συνάγ . συνέδρ . comp. Diod. Sic. ii. 25. Not to be translated: they assembled the Sanhedrin. The article in that case, as throughout, where it is expressed with συνέδρ ., must have been used.
τί ποιοῦμεν ] What are we to do? The Indic, is used (see Stallbaum, ad Plat. Symp. p. 176 A); for that something must now definitively be done, was undoubted. Comp. Act_4:15-16.
ὅτι ] the simple for, as statement of the ground of the question.
οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρ .] contemptuously.
οὕτω ] without interposing.
καὶ ἐλεύσονται , κ . τ . λ .] so they fear, in keeping with the political view of the Messiah. Comp. Joh_6:15. And they really fear it (against Strauss, Weisse, who here see an invention); they do not merely delude themselves with it (Luthardt); nor do they wish to give to their proper motive (envy, Mat_27:18) only another colour (Calvin, Hengstenberg). Now, when they saw the last outbreak before their eyes, their calculation must necessarily be shaped according to the popular conception of the Messiah, and according to the effects which this notion would produce upon the mass (uproar, etc.).
ἀροῦσιν ] they will take away (tollent, Vulgate), not equivalent to ἀπολέσουσιν (Euth. Zigabenus, Beza, Grotius, Lücke, De Wette, Tholuck, Hengstenberg, and several others), which is less appropriate to the egoistic sense, which is concerned about the withdrawal of their own power. Nonnus well remarks: ἀφαρπάξουσι .
ἡμῶν ] correlative to Ῥωμαῖοι , placed first with the emphasis of egoism, though not as genit. of separation (away from us), since such a construction with αἴρω is only poetical (Kühner, II. p. 160); but: the place and nation belonging to us.
τὸν τόπον ] is to be defined solely from the emphatic ἡμῶν ; our place, i.e. the holy city (Chrysostom, Grotius, Ewald, Baeumlein, Godet), the residence of the Sanhedrin and of the entire hierarchy. Hence neither: the country (so most commentators, as Luther: “country and people”), nor: the temple (Maldonatus, Lücke, De Wette, Maier, B. Crusius, Hengstenberg). The latter is neither to be supported by Act_6:13, nor by passages like 3 Esdr. 8:78; 2Ma_5:19; Mat_23:38. The Sanhedrists apprehend that the Romans, who had, indeed, acquiesced in great part hitherto in the hierarchical constitution of the Jews, and the spiritually political sway of the Sanhedrin, would enter Jerusalem, and remove the city as well as the people ( ἔθνος , Luk_23:2; Act_10:22, et al.) from the rule of the Sanhedrin, because it knew so badly how to maintain order.