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Joh_19:25-27. Another narrative, selected by John, and peculiar to him, as elevated and striking in its contents as it is simple and tender in form, and all the more unjustly relegated to the inventions made (Strauss, Baur, Schenkel) in the interest of John, although in the Synoptics (Mat_27:56; Mar_15:40) the women mentioned stand afar off, which standing afar off is to be placed after the present scene, not before, as Lücke and Olshausen, in opposition to the synoptical account, are of opinion.
ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ … Μαγδαληνή ] Are only three women here named (usual opinion), so that Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Κλωπᾶ is in apposition to ἡ ἀδελφὴ , κ . τ . λ .; or are there four (Wieseler in the Stud. u. Krit. 1840, p. 648 ff., Lücke, Lange, Ewald, Laurent, Neut. Stud. p. 170 f.), so that Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Κλωπᾶ is to be taken by itself, and the women are brought forward in two pairs? The Syr. already interpreted in the latter mode, and hence inserted a καί before Μαρία (as also Aeth. and Pers.); so also have Lachm. (ed. min., not in the large edition) and Tisch. interpunctuated (without a comma after Κλωπᾶ ). As it is highly improbable of itself, and established by no instance, that two sisters bore the same name,—as, further, it is in keeping with the peculiarity of John not to mention his own name, if he also does not mention his mother,[245] or even his brother James, by name (see on Joh_1:42), and as, according to Mat_27:56, Mar_15:40, Salome was also amongst the above-named women, Wieseler’s view, which is not throughout opposed by any well-founded doubts,[246] is to be deemed not “a mere learned refinement” (Hengstenberg), but correct, so that thus the unnamed ἡ ἀδελφὴ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ is Salome, the mother of John.
ἡ τοῦ Κλωπᾶ ] The wife of Klopas, according to Mat_27:56, Mar_15:40, Luk_24:10, mother of the younger James, hence Klopas is to be taken as Alphaeus, äìôé , Mat_10:3. According to Ewald, on the other hand, the mother of Kleopas, Luk_24:18, and according to Beza: the wife of this Kleopas.
Μαγδαλ .] See on Mat_27:56.
That Jesus enjoins on John to care for Mary, although the latter had several sons of her own, is not sufficiently explained by the unbelief of the brothers (Joh_7:5), for His speedy triumph over this (Act_1:14) could not be hidden from Him (Joh_2:24-25); but it presupposes the certainty in His mind that generally to no other’s hand could this dear legacy[247] be so well entrusted. That Mary had no other sons (see in opposition to this Joh_7:3, and on Mat_1:25) is, indeed, still inferred by Hengstenberg. For ΓΎΝΑΙ , comp. on Joh_2:4.
The words to the disciple, behold thy mother, meet no stumbling-block in the fact that he had his own actual mother, nay, that she herself was also present (see on Joh_19:25), but leave his relation to the latter untouched, and form with the ἴδε ὁ υἱός σου a parallelism, which expresses the filial care and protection which Mary, on the one hand, was to expect from John; which John, on the other hand, was to exercise towards Mary.
καὶ ἀπʼ ἐκείνης τῆς ὥρας , κ . τ . λ .] Not to be regarded as a parenthesis; to be taken with strict literality, that John forthwith, after Jesus had accomplished His end upon the cross, entered on his charge. Whether and where he possessed a property of his own is matter of conjecture. If he received Mary into his dwelling, into his family circle, formed by Salome, and perhaps by his brother, then εἰς τὰ ἴδια (comp. Joh_16:32) was a correct expression. Ewald well remarks on such traits of individual significance in the Gospel of John: “it was for him at a late period of life a sweet reward to call up reminiscences of all that was most vivid, but for the readers it is also, without his will, a token that only he could have written all this.” If, indeed, the designation of the disciple beloved by Jesus as a self-designation were a vanity (Scholten), nay, an arrogant and scornful self-exaltation (Weisse), then it could not have been he who wrote all this. But the consciousness of pre-eminent love on the part of the Lord, true, clear, and still glowing with all intensity and strength, in the heart of the old man, is inconceivable without the deepest humility, and this humility, which has long since ceased to have anything in common with the feeling evinced in Mar_10:35 ff., Luk_9:54, has precisely in that most simple of all expressions, ὃν ἠγάπα , its most correspondent expression and its necessary and sacred justification, which is as little to be passed over in silence, or to be denied, as is the consciousness of Paul, 1Co_15:10.
[245] He does, indeed, name in Joh_21:2 his father. But the latter appears so without participation in the evangelical history, that he might appear to John’s mind in his Christian relation, especially in the late period of the composition of the appendix, chap. 21, more foreign and remote, and that consequently a hesitation might not exist in reference to naming him, as there did in the case of the mother, founded on a delicate and more spiritual consideration.—Scholten changes the mother into an allegorical person, in whom the Church is represented, to care for which was to be incumbent on John, not on Peter. So substantially also Späth in Hilgenfeld, ZeitsChr. 1868, p. 187.
[246] Insufficient objections in Luthardt, Brückner, Baeumlein, Weizsäcker, and others. According to Euth. Zigabenus, Ebrard, Hengstenberg, and several others, ἀδελφή would signify sister-in-law.
[247] This noblest blossom of dying piety is violently removed into a sphere foreign to it, if it is transported into dogmatic ground, as Steinmeyer, p. 200, does. According to him, the death of the Atoner for all men, as such, has completely cut asunder the tie that hitherto existed; by this death Jesus departed out of every naturally-conditioned individual fellowship, and like Melchizedek must also appear as ἀμήτωφ . Of such a meaning, John gives not the slightest indication.