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Joh_11:49-50. Caiaphas, however, solves this question of helplessness, censuring his colleagues on account of the latter, since the means to be adopted had been clearly put into their hands by circumstances.
εἷς τις ] unus quidam. Comp. Mar_14:47; Mar_14:51, et al.; Bernhardy, p. 442. This one alone was a man of counsel.
Καϊάφας ] see on Mat_26:3; Luk_3:2.
τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ ἐκείνου ] He was high priest of that year. The previous and following time is left out of consideration, not, however, negatived, but simply that remarkable and fatal year is brought into prominence. Comp. Joh_18:13. The supposition of an annual change in the office cannot be ascribed (against Bretschneider, Strauss, Schenkel, Scholten) even to a Pseudo-John, considering his manifest acquaintance elsewhere with Jewish affairs; but to appeal to the fact that the high priests were frequently changed in those times, and that actually before Caiaphas several were only a year in office, Josephus, Antt. xviii. 2. 2 (Hengstenberg), is least of all applicable in the case of Caiaphas, who was already in office, A.D. 25. Again, the assumption of an alternative holding of the office by Annas and Caiaphas, in virtue of a private agreement (comp. on Luke, loc. cit.; so Baur, ascribing this view to the Pseudo-John, and Maier[95]), is as purely arbitrary (see Bleek, p. 257) as the pretended allusion to the change of Asiarchs (Gfrörer).
ὑμεῖς ] you, people.
οὐκ οἰδατε ΟὐΔΈΝ ] that you can still ask: ΤΊ ΠΟΙΟῦΜΕΝ .
ΟὐΔῈ ΛΟΓΊΖ .] (see critical notes): nor do ye consider that, etc. The proud, discourteous style of this address evinces passionate feeling generally, not exactly the manner (Josephus, Bell. ii. 8. 14) of Sadduceeism (Hengstenberg, Godet); from Act_5:17 it is by no means clear that Caiaphas was a Sadducee.
ἡμῖν ] for us Sanhedrists.
In ΣΥΜΦΈΡΕΙ , ἽΝΑ , as in Joh_16:7, the conception of divine destination is expressed: that it is of advantage to us that one man must die, etc.
ὑπέρ ] in commodum, in order that the people may be preserved from the destruction which threatens them, Joh_11:48.
ἀπόληται ] through their subjugation, and the overthrow of the national independent existence.
Observe the interchange of ἜΘΝΟς (the people as a nation) and λαός (the people as a political, here theocratic, community).
The principle itself, which regarded in itself may be moral and noble, is expressed in the feeling of the most ungodly and selfish policy. For similar expressions, see Schoettgen and Wetstein. To refer the scene to a legend afterwards current among the Christians (Weizsäcker), is opposed to the earnest narrative of the evangelist.
[95] Here, too, belongs the supposition of Ebrard (apud Olshausen), that the two alternated with each other in the offering of the annual sacrifice of atonement. And that John means to say that in that year this function fell to Caiaphas. But he does not say so.