Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 16:20 - 16:22
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_16:20-22. He gives no explanation of the meaning, but depicts the interchange of sorrow and joy, which the not seeing and seeing again will bring with them. In this way they might, with the correct apprehension and hope, advance towards the approaching development.
κλαύσετε κ . θρηνήσ . ὑμεῖς ] ὑμεῖς with peculiar emphasis, moved to the end, and placed immediately before ὁ δὲ κόσμ . The mourning and lamentation, this loud outburst of the λύπη of the disciples over the death of Jesus (not: “over the community of Christ given up to death,” Luthardt), becomes yet more tragic through the contrast of the joy of the world.
εἰς χαρὰν γενήσεται ] will be turned into joy, namely, when that ὄψεσθέ με takes place.
Joh_16:21. ἡ γυνή ] the woman; the article is generic, comp. ὁ δοῦλος , Joh_15:15.
ὅταν τίκτῃ ] when she is on the point of bringing forth.
ἡ ὥρα αὐτῆς ] her hour of distress, ὥρα βαρυώδινος , Nonnus. Comp. afterwards τῆς θλίψεως , which denotes the distress during the occurrence of birth.
ἄνθρωπος ] a man. In this lies a self-consciousness of the maternal joy.
εἰς τὸν κόσμ .] born and therewith come into the world (Joh_1:9, Joh_18:37). An appeal to the Rabbinical áåÉà áòåÉìÈí is not required.
The picture of the woman bringing forth, to set forth the sorrow which issues in joy, is also frequent in the O. T. (Isa_21:3; Isa_26:17; Isa_66:7; Hos_13:13; Mic_4:9-10). Its importance in the present passage Jesus Himself states, Joh_16:22, definitely and clearly, and in regard to it no further exposition is to be attempted. In accordance with this view, the grief and the joy of the disciples is the sole thing depicted, not also the passage of Christ through death to life (Brückner), as the birth of the new fellowship for the disciples, and the like. There is much arbitrary interpretation in Chrysostom, Apollinarius, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Ruperti, and several others, including Olshausen, according to whom the death of Christ is said to appear as the sorrowful birth-act of humanity, out of which the God-man comes forth, glorified to the eternal joy of the whole; even in De Wette the living Christ is subjectively a child of the spiritual productivity of the disciples. Similarly Tholuck, also Lange, in conformity with his explanation of Christ’s resurrection, understanding this as involving the birth of the new humanity out of the birth-sorrow of the theocracy; comp. Ebrard, who finds depicted the resurrection of the Lord as the birth of the community, which is begotten and suckled from His heavenly life. Since, further on, the Parousia is not referred to, and the ὑμεῖς , Joh_16:22, are the disciples, we must not, with Luthardt, explain it of the passage of the community into the state of glorification at the future coming of Christ (Rev_21:4), so that the community is to be thought of as “bringing forth in its death-throes the new state of things.”
Joh_16:22. According to the amended reading (see the critical notes): you also will consequently (corresponding to this παροιμία ) now indeed (over my death, which is immediately impending) have sorrow; but again I shall see you, etc. That here Christ does not again say ὄψεσθέ με , as in Joh_16:19, is only a change in the correlate designation of the same fact (Godet’s explanation is an artificial refinement, which, expressed in Joh_16:19; Joh_16:22 according to both its aspects, is, by means of vers. 23 and 25, obviously designated, neither as the Parousia,[181] nor as the return by the resurrection, or at least as taking its beginning from this (see on Joh_14:18), but as the communication of the Paraclete). The exalted Christ, returning to them and the Holy Ghost, sees them again.
αἴρει ] represents the certain future as present. Climax of the representation. Then your joy will be incapable of being taken from you, on account of the renewed fellowship, like this itself (Mat_28:20).
[181] In interpreting it of the Parousia, the assumption is forced on one, that with ἀμὴν , ἀμὴν λέγω , κ . τ . λ ., a new section of the discourse commences, which refers to the intermediate time until the Parousia. See especially Luthardt and Lechler, p. 225. This is certainly opposed, and decisively, by the ἐν ἐκείνῃ τ . ἡμέρᾳ , ver. 26, which is solemnly repeated, and points back to ver. 23. And the above assumption is, in and of itself, entirely arbitrary. Comp. the ἀμὴν , κ . τ . λ ., ver. 20. In interpreting it of the Resurrection, Ebrard sees himself necessitated to give to οὐκ ἐρωτήσ . οὐδέν the limitation: in the sense of ver. 19. A pure importation.