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Joh_12:23. The proposal of the Gentiles which had been brought to Him, awakens in Jesus, with peculiar force and depth, the thought of His approaching death; for through His death was His salvation in truth to be conveyed to the Gentiles (Joh_10:16-17).
Accordingly, that wish of the Gentiles must appear to Him as already a beginning of that which was to be effected by His death. Hence His answer to those two disciples (not to the Ἕλληνες , Ebrard), which is pervaded by a full presentiment of the crisis at hand, and at the close, Joh_12:27, resolves itself into a prayer of deep emotion, but, by means thereof, into complete surrender to the Father. This answer is consequently neither inappropriate (De Wette), nor does it contain an indirect refusal of the request of the Greeks (Ewald, Hengstenberg, Godet); nor is the granting of it to be thought of as having taken place before, and as having been passed over in silence by John (Tholuck, B. Crusius, and older commentators), which the text refutes by the words ἀπεκρίνατο αὐτοῖς , which continue the narrative without any further remarks; nor is the petition of the Gentiles to be regarded as indirectly complied with, namely, by the fact that the apostles brought it before Jesus, and that the latter then began to speak (Luthardt)—which amounts to the improbability that Jesus, by the following speech, desired to make a display before those Gentiles (whom Ewald also supposes to have been present); but the admission of the Gentiles which was to have taken place after this outpouring of emotion, did not, however, take place, because the voice from heaven, Joh_12:28, interrupted and changed the scene.[108] The theory that in Joh_5:23 ff. the synoptical accounts of the transfiguration, and of the conflict of soul in Gethsemane, are either fused into a historical mixture (Strauss), or formed into an ideal combination (Baur), proceeds from presuppositions, according to which it is possible to adduce even Gal_2:9 as a witness against Joh_12:20 (see against this, Bleek, p. 250 ff.), as Baur has done.
ἐλήλυθεν ] Placed first with emphasis.
ἽΝΑ ] Comp. Joh_13:1, Joh_16:2; Joh_16:32. The hour is conceived of absolutely (in the consciousness of Jesus the present hora fatalis κατʼ ἐξοχήν ), and that which is to take place in it, as the divine appointment for its having arrived.
ΔΟΞΑΣΘῇ ] through death, as the necessary passage to the heavenly glory. Comp. Joh_17:5, Joh_6:62; 1Pe_1:11.
[108] According to Ewald, Gesch. Chr. p. 527, Jesus would, in granting the request, be exposed to a temptation, and have done something at this last development out of keeping with His previous ministry, which would have awakened disquiet, furnished a new embarrassment to the hierarchs, etc. But we may also conversely pass the judgment that Jesus, on the very threshold of His death, could not have designed to refuse an actual manifestation of His universal destination, which He, moreover, had expressed in Joh_10:16,—offered so accidentally, as it were,—especially since the conversion of the Gentiles to the Messiah was grounded in prophecy. To yield to the prayer was, further, by no means to make a full surrender to the petitioners.