Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 12:5 - 12:6
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_12:5-6. Τριακοσίων ] Mar_14:5 sets forth the climax in the tradition by ἐπάνω τριακ . The mention of the price itself (about 120 Rhenish guldens, or about £10) is certainly original, not the indefinite πολλοῦ of Mat_26:9.
πτωχοῖς ] without the article: to poor people.
κ . τ . γλωσσ . εἶχε κ . τ . β . ἐβάστ .] gives historical definiteness to the general κλέπτης ἦν . He had the chest, the cash-box (see as regards γλωσσόκ . 2Ch_24:8; Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 98 f.), in his keeping, and bore away that which was thrown into it, i.e. he purloined it. This closer definition of the sense of βαστάζειν , auferre (Joh_20:15; Mat_7:17; Polyb. i. 48. 2, et al.), is yielded by the context. See Krebs, Obss. p. 153. So Origen, Codd. of the It. Nonnus, Theophylact, Cornelius a Lapide, Kypke, Krebs, and several others, including Maier, Grimm; comp. Lange.[105] The article does not signify that he had taken away all the deposits (objection of Lücke and several others), but refers to the individual cases which we are to suppose, in which deposits were removed by him. The explanation portabat (Vulgate, Luther, Beza, and many others, including Lücke, De Wette, B. Crusius, Luthardt, Ebrard, Wichelhaus, Baeumlein, Godet, Hengstenberg, Ewald; Tholuck doubtful) yields a meaning which is quite tautological, and a matter of course. The βαλλόμενα were gifts of friends and adherents of Jesus for the purchase of the necessities of life and for charitable uses. Comp. Luk_8:3; Joh_13:29. That the disciples had acquired earnings by the labour of their hands, and had deposited such earnings in the bag, nay, that even Jesus Himself had done so (Mar_6:3),—of this there exists no trace during the period of His ministry.
The question, why Jesus had not taken away the custody of the chest from the dishonest disciple (which indeed, according to Schenkel, he probably did not hold), is not answered by saying that He would remove every pretext for treason from him (Ammonius, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, and several others), or that He did not desire violently to interfere with the development of his sins (Hengstenberg); for neither would harmonize with the educative love of the Lord. Just as little, again, is it explained by suggesting that Judas carried on his thefts unobserved, until perhaps shortly before the death of Jesus (Lücke), which would be incompatible with the higher knowledge of the Lord, Joh_2:25; comp. Joh_6:64; Joh_6:71. The question stands rather in the closest connection with another—how Jesus could adopt Judas at all as a disciple; and here we must go back solely to a divine destination, Act_1:16; Act_2:23. Comp. the note after Joh_6:70-71. That the custody of the chest had been entrusted to Judas only by agreement of the disciples among one another (Godet), is an assumption which quite arbitrarily evades the point, while it would by no means have excluded the competency of Jesus to interfere.
[105] Who, however, explains: he laid hold of. But βαστάζειν denotes to lay hold of only in the sense of ψηλαφᾶν (Suidas). See Reisig, ad Soph. O. C. 1101; Ellendt, Lex Soph. I. p. 299. And also in this sense only in the tragic poets.