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Joh_12:27-28. The realization of His sufferings and death, with which His discourse from Joh_12:23 was filled, shakes Him suddenly with apprehension and momentary wavering, springing from the human sensibility, which naturally seeks to resist the heaviest suffering, which He must yet undergo. To define this specially as the feeling of the divine anger (Beza, Calvin, Calovius, Hengstenberg, and many others), which He has certainly appeased by His death, rests on the supposition, which is nowhere justified, that, according to the object of the death (Joh_1:29, Joh_3:14, Joh_10:11-12; Mat_20:28; Rom_8:3; Rom_3:25; 2Co_5:21, et al.), its severity also is measured in the consciousness. Bengel well says: “concurrebat horror mortis et ardor obedientiae.” The Lord is thus moved to pray; but He is for the moment uncertain for what ( τί εἴπω ), ἀπορούμετος ὑπὸ τῆς ἀγωνίας , Euth. Zigabenus. First, a momentary fear of the sufferings of death (comp. on Luk_12:50) obtains the upper hand, in virtue of that human weakness, in which even He, the Son of God, because He had become man, had His share (Heb_4:15; Heb_5:7-8), and He prays: Father, save me from this hour, spare me this death-suffering which is awaiting me, quite as in Mat_26:39, so that He thus not merely “cries for support through it, and for a shortening of it” (Ebrard). But immediately this wish, resulting from natural dread of suffering and death,[109] yields to the victorious consciousness of His great destiny; He gives expression to the latter ( ἀλλὰ διὰ τοῦΤΟ , Κ . Τ . Λ .), and now prays: Father, glorify Thy name; i.e., through the suffering of death appointed to me, let the glory of Thy name (of Thy being in its self-presentation, comp. on Mat_6:9) be manifested. The fulfilment of this prayer was brought about in this way, that by means of the death of Jesus (and of His consequent δόξα ) the divine decree of salvation was fulfilled, then everywhere made known through the gospel, in virtue of the Holy Spirit (Joh_14:16 ff.), and obedience to the faith established to the honour of the Father, which is the last aim of the work of Christ, Php_2:11.
Ἡ ΨΥΧΉ ΜΟΥ ] not as a designation of individual grief (Olshausen), but as the seat of the affections generally. He might also have said τὸ πνεῦμά μου (comp. Joh_11:33; Joh_11:38), but would then have meant the deeper basis of life, to which the impressions of the ΨΥΧΉ , which is united with the ΣΆΡΞ , are conveyed. Comp. on Luk_1:46-47.
ΠΆΤΕΡ , ΣῶΣΌΝ ΜΕ , Κ . Τ . Λ .] The hour of suffering is regarded as present, as though He were already at that hour. To take the words interrogatively: shall I say: save me? etc. (so Chrysostom, Theophylact, Jansen, Grotius, Lampe, and many others, including Lachmann, Tholuck, Kling, Schweizer, Maier, Lange, Ewald, Godet) yields the result of an actual prayer interwoven into a reflective monologue, and is therefore less suitable to a frame of mind so deeply moved.
ἀλλά ] objecting, like our but no! See Hartung, Partikell. I. p. 36; Baeumlein, Partik. p. 13 f.
διὰ τοῦτο ] Wherefore, is contained in the following prayer, πάτερ , δόξασον , κ . τ . λ . Consequently: therefore, in order that through my suffering of death Thy name may be glorified. The completion: in order that the world might be redeemed (Olshausen and older commentators), is not supplied by the context; to undergo this suffering (Grotius, De Wette, Luthardt, Lange, Ebrard, Godet; comp. Hengstenberg: “in order that my soul may be shaken”) is tautological; and Lampe: to be saved, is inappropriate. The τοῦτο is here preparative; let only διὰ τοῦτο … ταύτην be enclosed within dashes, and the sense is made clearly to appear: but no—therefore I came to this hour
Father, glorify, etc. Jesus might have said: ἀλλὰ , πάτερ , δόξασον σου τὸ ὄνομα , διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ ἦλθον ἐ . τ . ὡ . τ . But the language, deeply emotional, throbs more unconnectedly, and as it were by starts.
The repetition of πάτερ corresponds to the thrill of filial affection.
ΣΟΥ stands emphatically, in the first place, in antithesis to the reference which the previous prayer of Jesus contained to Himself. On the subject-matter, comp. Mat_26:39.
ΟὖΝ ] corresponding to this petition.
ΦΩΝῊ ἘΚ Τ . ΟὐΡ .] The voice which came from heaven: I have glorified it (in Thy mission and Thy whole previous work), and shall again (through Thine impending departure by means of death to the δόξα ) glorify it,[110] is not to be regarded as actual, natural thunder (according to the O. T. view conceived of as the voice of the Lord, as in Psalms 29, Job_37:4, and frequently), in which only the subjective disposition, the so-attuned inner ear of Jesus (and of the disciples), distinguished the words καὶ ἐδόξασα , κ . τ . λ .; while others, less susceptible to this divine symbolism of nature, believed only in a general way, that in the thunder an angel had spoken with Jesus; while others again, unsusceptible, understood the natural occurrence simply and solely as such, and took it for nothing further than what it objectively was. So substantially, not merely Paulus, Kuinoel, Lücke, Ammon, De Wette, Maier, Baeumlein, and several others, but also Hengstenberg.[111] Several have here had recourse to the later Jewish view of Bath-Kol (by which, however, only real literal voices, not natural phenomena, without speech, were understood; see Lübkert in the Stud. u. Krit. 1835, 3), as well as to the Gentile interpretations of thunder as the voice of the gods (see Wetstein). Against this entire view, it is decisive that John himself, the ear-witness, describes a φωνὴ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ , which was an objective occurrence; that he further repeats its express words; that, further, to take the first half of these words referring to the past, as the product of a merely subjective perception, is without any support in the prayer of Jesus; that, further, Jesus Himself, Joh_12:30, gives His confirmation to the occurrence of an actual voice; that, finally, the ἌΛΛΟΙ also, Joh_12:29, must have heard a speech. Hence we must abide by the interpretation that a voice actually issued from heaven, which John relates, and Jesus confirms as an objective occurrence. It is a voice which came miraculously from God (as was the case, according to the Synoptics, at the baptism and the transfiguration), yet as regards its intelligibility conditioned by the subjective disposition and receptivity of the hearers (so also Tholuck, Olshausen, Kling, Luthardt, Hofmann, Schriftbew. I. p. 391 f., Lange, Ebrard, Godet following the old commentators), which sounded with a tone as of thunder, so that the definite words which resounded in this form of sound remained unintelligible to the unsusceptible, who simply heard that majestic kind of sound, but not its contents, and said: βροντὴν γεγονέναι ; whereas, on the other hand, others, more susceptible, certainly understood this much, that the thunder-like voice was a speech, but not what it said, and thought an angel (comp. Act_23:9) had spoken in this thunder-voice to Jesus. This opinion of theirs, however, does not justify us in regarding the divine word which was spoken as also actually communicated by angelic ministry (Hofmann), since, in fact, the utterance of the ἄλλοι is not adduced as at all the true account, and since, moreover, the heavenly voice, according to the text, appears simply and solely as the answer of the Father.
[109] Which in itself is not only not immoral, but the absence of which would even lower the moral greatness and the worth of His sacrifice. Comp. Dorner, Jesu sündlose Vollkommenh. p. 6.
[110] The reference of ἐδόξασα to the O. T. revelation, which is now declared to be closed (Lange, L. J. II. p. 1208), is without any foundation in the context.
[111] See, in answer to him, some appropriate observations in Engelhardt, in the Luth. ZeitsChr. 1865, p. 209 ff. He, however, refers the δοξάσω to the fact that the Son, even in His sufferings, will allow the will of God entirely to prevail with Him. The glorifying of God, however, by means of the death of Jesus, which was certainly the culminating point of His obedience to the Father, reaches further, namely (see especially Joh_17:1-2) to God’s honour through the Lord’s attainment of exaltation throughout the whole world by means of His death. As ἐδόξασα refers to His munus propheticum, so δοξάσω to the fact that He attains to the munus regium through the fulfilment of the munus sacerdotale.