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Joh_21:22. Jesus gives, in virtue of His personal sovereignty over the life and death of His own (comp. Rom_14:9), to the unwarranted question, put by Peter, too, not merely out of curiosity, but even from a certain jealousy (Chrysostom, Erasmus, Wetstein, and several others import: out of particular love to John),[289] the answer: that it does not at all concern him, if He have possibly allotted to John a more distant and happier goal, and leads him, who had again so soon turned away his gaze from himself, immediately back to the task of ἈΚΟΛΟΎΘΕΙ ΜΟΙ imposed upon him, Joh_21:19.
ΜΈΝΕΙΝ ] Opposite of the ἈΚΟΛΟΥΘΕῖΝ , to be fulfilled by the death of martyrdom; hence: be preserved in life. Comp. Joh_12:34; Php_1:25; 1Co_15:6; Kypke, I. p. 415 f. Olshausen (and so substantially even Ewald) arbitrarily adds, after Augustine, the sense: “to tarry in quiet and peaceful life.”[290]
ἕως ἔρχομαι ] By this Jesus means, as the solemn and absolute ἜΡΧΟΜΑΙ itself renders undoubted, His final historical Parousia, which He, according to the apprehension of all evangelists and apostles, has promised will take place even before the passing away of the generation (see note 3 after Matthew 24), not the destruction of Jerusalem, which, moreover, John far outlived ( τινὲς in Theophylact, Wetstein, Lange, and several others, including Luthardt, who sees in this destruction the beginning of the Parousia, in opposition to the view of the N. T. generally, and to Joh_21:23); not the world historical conflict between Christ and Rome, which began under Domitian (Hengstenberg); not the carrying away by a gentle death (Olshausen, Lange, Ewald, after the older expositors, as Ruperti, Clarius, Zeger, Grotius, and several others); not the leading out from Galilee (where John in the meanwhile was to remain) to the scene of Apostolic activity (Theophylact); not the apocalyptic coming in the visions of John’s revelation (Ebrard); not the coming at any place, where John was to wait (Paulus)! See rather Joh_14:3; 1Jn_2:28; 1Jn_3:2. On ἕως ἔρχομαι (as 1Ti_4:13), as long as until I come, see Buttmann, Neut. Gr. p. 199 [E. T. p. 231]. In σύ μοι ἀκολ ., σύ bears the emphasis, in opposition to the other disciples.
[289] Comp. Luthardt: “only loving interest for his comrade,” to which, however, the reproving τί πρὸς σέ , ver. 22, does not apply.
[290] Comp. Godet, who, strangely enough, finds here an allusion to the fact that John remained at rest in the boat, and with his comrades (except Peter) towed the full net to land, where Jesus was. This allusion again includes the other, that John, in the history of the development of the founding of the church, received “a calm and collected part.” And with this Godet finally connects: At the great gospel draught of fishes in the Gentile world, where Peter at the beginning stood foremost, “John assisted thereat until the end of the first century, a type of the whole history of the church, and here begins the mystery—perhaps he is therewith associated in an incomprehensible manner until the end of the present economy, until the vessel touches the shore of eternity.” Thus, if we depart from the clear and certain sense of the words, we fall into the habit of phantasy, so that we no longer expound, but invent and create.