Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 18:35 - 18:36
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_18:35-36. The answer of the procurator, irritated and haughty, gives in μήτι … εἰμι an indirect denial of the first question, and therewith also an affirmation of the second.
μήτι ἐγὼ Ἰουδαῖός εἰμι ] ʼΕγώ , with proud emphasis: you do not surely suppose that I, I your procurator, am a Jew? How should I of myself think of trying thee as a Jew and as king of the Jews? The emphasis of ἐγώ , Nonnus denotes by: μὴ γὰρ Ἰουδαῖος κἀγὼ πέλον ;—the opposite of that: Thine own nation ( τὸ ἔθνος τὸ σόν ), and especially ( καί ) the high priests, have delivered thee to me; what hast thou done? No further ceremony!
Jesus now confesses His kingship,[231] but, in the first instance, only negatively (positively: Joh_18:37): “The kingdom which is mine does not arise (like other kingdoms) out of this world (which endures only until the establishment of my kingdom); if the kingdom which is mine proceeded out of this world, the servants whom I ( οἱ ἐμοί ) have would assuredly fight that I should not be delivered (which is done, Joh_19:16) to the Jews (the hierarchical opposition); but as it is (since they do not fight for me), my kingdom is not from thence” ( ἐντεῦθεν = ἐκ τοῦ κόσμ . τούτου ).
Note in this Demonstratio ad oculos the solemn repetition of ἐκ τοῦ κόσμον τ . and of Ἡ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΊΑ Ἡ ἘΜΉ , as well as that ἘΝΤΕῦΘΕΝ , from here, hence, is expressed deictically, as a vivid opposition to that which is coelitus, and, finally, that in ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου , not ΤΟΎΤΟΥ , which might also have been omitted, but ΚΌΣΜΟΥ bears the emphasis. The ὙΠΗΡΈΤΑΙ ΟἹ ἘΜΟΊ are not the servants whom He would have in the case supposed (Lücke, Tholuck, Hengstenberg, and several others), but He has His servants, they are His disciples and adherents (not the angels, as Luthardt thinks), Joh_12:26; 1Co_4:1; 2Co_6:4; 2Co_11:23; 1Ti_4:6; but even not from this world (Joh_17:16), they also do not fight, etc. Note how also, in the designation of His own by ὑπηρέται , the kingly consciousness expresses itself.
[231] This confession must, according to Schenkel, have probably teen spoken on another occasion. Groundless supposition. Comp. 1Ti_6:13, and Huther in loc.