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Joh_12:21-22. The Messianic hope, which they as proselytes share, draws their hearts to Him whose Messiahship has just found so open and general a recognition. They wish to see Jesus, that is, to be introduced to Him, in order to make His nearer personal acquaintance, and this it is which they modestly express. For mere seeing, as in Luk_19:3, any intervention of a third party (as Brückner now also recognises) would not have been required.
Whether they came to Philip accidentally, or because the latter was known to them (perhaps they were from Galilee), remains undetermined. To presuppose in Philip, on account of his Greek name, a Greek education (Hengstenberg), is arbitrary.
κύριε ] not without the tender of honour, which they naturally paid even to the disciple of a Master so admired, who truly appeared to be the very Messiah.
That Philip first communicates the proposal to Andrew, who was possibly in more confidential relations with Christ (Mar_13:3), and who was on terms of intimacy with him by the fact of the same birthplace (Joh_1:45), and that with him he carries out their wish, rests on the circumstance that he was himself too timid to be the means of bringing about an interview between the Holy One of God—whose immediate destination he knew to be for Israel—and Gentiles. His was a circumspect nature, prone to scruples (Joh_6:5 ff., Joh_14:8-9). “Cum sodali, audet,” Bengel. Note the stamp of originality which appears in such side-touches.
In the reading ἔρχεται Ἀνδρ . κ . Φ . καὶ λέγουσι τῷ Ἰ . (see critical notes), observe (1) the lively manner of representation in the repetition of ἔρχεται ; (2) the change of the singular to the plural of the verb, which also is found in the classical writers. Xen. Anab. ii. 4. 16, and Kühner in loc.