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Joh_3:11. Jesus now discloses to the henceforth silent Nicodemus, in growing excitement of feeling, the source of his ignorance, namely, his unbelief in what He testifies, and which yet is derived from His own knowledge and intuition.
The plurals οἴδαμεν , etc., are, as is clear from the singulars immediately following in Joh_3:12, simply rhetorical (plurals of category; see Sauppe and Kühner ad Xen. Mem. 1. 2. 46), and refer only to Jesus Himself. Comp. Joh_4:38, and its frequent use by St. Paul when he speaks of himself in the plural. To include the disciples (Hengstenberg, Godet), or to explain them as refering to general Christian consciousness as contrasted with the Jewish (Hilgenfeld), would be quite inappropriate to what has been stated (see especially ὃ ἑωράκ . μαρτ .). To understand them as including John the Baptist (Knapp, Hofmann, Luthardt, Weizsäcker, Weiss, Steinfass), or him along with the prophets (Luther, Beza, Calvin, Tholuck), or even God (Chrysostom, Euthymius Zigabenus, Rupertus, Calovius, etc.), or the Holy Ghost (Bengel), is quite arbitrary, and without a trace of support in the text, nay, on account of the ἑωράκ ., opposed to it, for the Baptist especially did not by Joh_1:34 occupy the same stage of ἑωρακέναι with Christ. It is, moreover, quite against the context when B. Crusius says: “men generally are the subject of the verbs οἴδαμεν and ἑωράκ .,” so that human things—what one sees and knows ( τὰ ἐπίγεια , Joh_3:12)—are meant.
Observe the gradual ascent in the parallelism, in which ἑωράκαμεν does not refer to the knowledge attained in this earthly life (Weizsäcker), but to the vision of God enjoyed by Christ in His pre-existent state. Comp. Joh_3:32; Joh_1:18; Joh_6:46; Joh_8:38; Joh_17:5.
οὐ λαμβάνετε ] ye Jews: comp. τοῦ Ἰσραήλ , Joh_3:10; and for the fact itself, Joh_1:11-12. The reproach, like the οὐ πιστεύετε of Joh_3:12, refers to the nation as a whole, with a reference also to Nicodemus himself. To render this as a question (Ewald) only weakens the tragic relation of the second half of the verse to the first.