Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 13:6 - 13:9
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_13:6-9. Ἔρχεται οὖν ] So that He then made a commencement with another disciple, not with Peter himself (so Augustine, Beda, Nonnus, Rupertius, Cornelius a Lapide, Maldonatus, Jansen, and other Catholics in the Romish interest; but also Baumgarten-Crusius, Ewald, Hengstenberg). With whom (Chrysostom and Euth. Zigabenus point to Judas Iscariot, whom, however, Nonnus makes to be last) is left altogether undetermined.
σύ μου , κ . τ . λ .] ἐκπλαγεὶς εἶπε τοῦτο καὶ σφόδρα εὐλαβηθείς , Euth. Zigabenus. The emphasis lies, in the first instance, upon σύ ; not afterwards, however, on μου , as if ἐμοῦ had been used, but on τ . πόδας : Dost Thou wash my feet? The present νίπτεις , like λιθαζέτε , Joh_10:32, and ποιεῖς , Joh_13:27.
Joh_13:7. Note the antithesis of ἐγὼ … σύ . What He did was not the external work of washing (so Peter took it), but that which this washing signified in the mind of Jesus, namely, the σημεῖον of the morally purifying, ministering love.
μετὰ ταῦτα ] namely, through the instruction, Joh_13:13-17. To refer this to the later apostolic enlightenment and experience (Chrysostom, Grotius, Tholuck, Hengstenberg, Ewald, and several others) is not justified by the text (comp. γινώσκετε , Joh_13:12), and would have been expressed, as in Joh_13:36, by the antithesis of νῦν and ὕστερον .
Joh_13:8. Peter, instead of now complying, as became him, refuses with definite and vehement decision. But Jesus puts before him a threat connected with the necessity of this feet-washing, which could only have its ground and justification in the higher moral meaning of which the act was to be the quiet symbolic language. Thus He intends what He now says not of the external performance as such in and by itself, but of the ethical contents which it is symbolically to set forth, after He had already indicated, Joh_13:7, that something higher lay in this act. It is precisely John who has apprehended and reported in the most faithful and delicate manner how Jesus knew to employ the sensuous as a foil to the spiritual, and thus to ascend, first enigmatically, then more clearly, and ever higher, towards the very highest. He says: If I shall not have washed thee, thou hast no part with me. Thereby He undoubtedly means the feet-washing which He intended to perform ( τοὺς πόδας σου was to be understood as a matter of course, according to the connection,—against Hofmann, II. 2, p. 323), yet according to the ethical sense, which it was to set forth symbolically, and impress in a way not to be forgotten. Washing is the old sacred picture of moral purification. Hence the thought of Jesus divested of this symbolical wrapping is: If I shall not have purified thee, just as I now would wash thy feet, from the sinful nature still adhering to thee, thou hast no share with me (in the eternal possession of salvation). When Hengstenberg here takes the washing as the symbol of the forgiveness of sins (according to Psa_51:4), this is opposed to Joh_13:12 ff.
Peter, as Joh_13:9 shows, did not yet understand the higher meaning of the Lord’s words; he could but take His answer in the external sense that immediately offered itself (if, in disobedience to me, thou dost not suffer thyself to be washed by me, thou hast, etc.). The thought, however, of being a man separated, by further resistance, from Jesus and His salvation, was sufficiently overpowering for His ardent love to make him offer forthwith not merely His feet, but also the remaining unclothed parts of His body, His hands and His head, to be washed; καὶ ἐν τῇ παραιτήσει καὶ ἐν τῇ συγχωρήσει σφοδρότερος , ἑκάτερα γὰρ ἐξ ἀγάπης , Cyril.
εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ] while eternity lasts, spoken with passion. Comp. 1Co_8:13.
μέρος ἔχειν μετά τινος ] denotes the participation in the same relation, in the like situation with any one, Mat_24:51, Luk_12:46, after the Hebrew úÅìÆ÷ àÆú (Deu_12:12), and úÅìÆ÷ òÇí (Deu_10:9; Deu_14:27; Psa_50:18). The expression in the classics would be οὐκ ἔχεις or μετέχεις μέρος μου . It is the denial of the συγκληρονόμον εἶναι Χριστοῦ , and thus the threatening of exclusion from the ζωή and δόξα of the Lord.