Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 13:36 - 13:38
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_13:36-38. The words spoken in Joh_13:33 are still in Peter’s mind; he has not understood them, but can the less therefore get quit of them, and hence asks: ποῦ ὑπάγεις ; Jesus does not directly answer this, but points him to the personal experience of a later future, in which he (on the way to a martyr’s death) will follow after Him (comp. Joh_21:18-19), which at present is not possible. The latter statement surprises the fiery disciple, since he already feels that he is ready to sacrifice his very life for Him. Jesus then quenches this fire, Joh_13:38. οὐ δύνασαι ] not meant of moral ability (against Tholuck, Hengstenberg), as Peter took it, but of objective possibility as in Joh_13:33. The disciple also has “his hour,” and Peter had first a great calling before him, Joh_21:15 ff.; Mat_16:18.
τ . ψυχ . θήσω ] See on Joh_10:11. In the zeal of love he mistakes the measure of his moral strength.
On the discrepancy, that Matthew and Mark place the prediction of the denial on the way to Gethsemane (Luk_22:23 agrees substantially with John), see on Luk_22:31. The declaration of Joh_13:38 itself is certainly more original in John and Mat_26:34, Luk_22:34 (without δίς ), than in Mar_14:30.
NOTE.
The question, to what place in John’s narrative the celebration of the Supper belongs, is not to be more precisely determined on the ground of Mat_26:23-25 (against Luk_22:21), than that the Supper finds its place, not before the departure of Judas,[137] consequently first after Joh_13:30. Nothing more definite can be said (Paulus, B. Crusius, Kahnis, place it immediately after. Joh_13:30, against which, however, is the reading οὖν before ἘΞῆΛΘΕ in Joh_13:30; Lücke, Maier, and several others, between Joh_13:33-34, opposed to which is the question of Peter, Joh_13:36, which looks back to Joh_13:33; Neander, Ammon, and Ebrard, after Joh_13:32; Tholuck, in Joh_13:34; Lange, indeed, says: the ἘΝΤΟΛῊ ΚΑΙΝΉ , Joh_13:34, is the ordainment of the Supper itself; Olshausen, after Joh_13:38), since the entire arrangement of John in these chapters leaves the Supper completely out of consideration, and, what is to be particularly noted here in Joh_13:30; Joh_14:1 ff., is so inseparably connected together, that, in reality, there remains nowhere in his representation an opening for its insertion. This betrays, indeed, the free concatenation of the discourses on the part of John, but not his non-acquaintance with the institution (Strauss), and cannot justify the extreme assumptions, that it is to be placed, in spite of the periodic-structure of Joh_13:1-4, already before the feet-washing (Sieffert, Godet), or first after Joh_14:31 (Kern). So also Bengel, Wichelhaus, and Röpe, in so far as they make Jesus, in Joh_14:31, to be setting out for the Paschal Supper to Jerusalem. See on Joh_14:31. According to Schenkel, the feet-washing does not fall within the last hours of Jesus, but at an earlier period, whereby, of course, all difficulty would be removed.
[137] That Judas did not join in celebrating the Supper (Beza and several others), has been recently (also by Kahnis, not by Hofmann and Hengstenberg, who places the celebration before ἐξῆλθεν , ver. 30) almost universally recognised, although formerly (even already in the Fathers) the opposite view preponderated, and, owing to a dogmatic interest, was supported in the Lutheran Church against the Reformed, on account of the participation of the unworthy. See Wichelhaus, Komm. zur Leidensgesch. p. 256 f. In quite a different interest has Schenkel maintained that Jesus did not exclude the traitor from the solemnity; that He, in fact, desired thereby to remove even the pretext “for its again being made an ordinance,” and that without preparation or antecedent confession He granted an unconditional freedom of participation.