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Joh_20:24-25. Θωμᾶς … Δίδυμος ] See on Joh_11:16.
οὐκ ἦν μετʼ αὐτῶν , εἰκὸς γὰρ , αὐτὸν μετὰ τὸ διασκορπισθῆναι τοὺς μαθητὰς … μήπω συνελθεῖν αὐτοῖς , Euth. Zigabenus. There may also have been another reason, and conjectures (Luthardt: melancholy led him to be solitary, similarly Lange) are fruitless.
Thomas shows himself, Joh_20:25 (comp. on Joh_14:5), in a critical tendency of mind, in which he does not recognise the statement of eye-witnesses as a sufficient ground of faith. From this, however, we perceive how completely remote from his mind lay the expectation of the resurrection. In the fact that he wished to feel only the wounds of the hands and of the side, some have found a reason against the nailing of the feet to the cross (so still Lücke and De Wette). Erroneously; the above demand was sufficient for him; in feeling the wounds on the feet, he would have required something which would have been too much, and not consistent with decorum. Comp. on Mat_27:35.
τύπον is then interchanged with τόπον (see critical notes), as correlative to seeing and feeling. Comp. Grotius: “ τύπος videtur, τόπος impletur”.
βάλω τὴν χεῖρά μου , κ . τ . λ .] is regarded as a proof of the peculiar greatness of the wounds. But he would lay his hand in truth not in the wounds, but in the side, in order, that is, there to touch with his fingers the wound on the mere skin, which, at the same time, must also have been in so far considerable enough.
Note, further, the circumstantiality in the words of Thomas, on which an almost defiant reliance in his unbelief, not melancholy dejection (Ebrard), is stamped.