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Joh_3:7-8. To allay still more the astonishment of Nicodemus (Joh_3:4) at the requirement of Joh_3:3, Jesus subjoins an analogy drawn from nature, illustrating the operation of the Holy Spirit of which He is speaking. The man is seized by the humanly indefinable Spirit, but knows not whence He cometh to him, and whither He leadeth him.
ὑμᾶς ] individualizing the general statement: “te et eos, quorum nomine locutus es,” Bengel. Jesus could not have expressed Himself in the first person.
τὸ πνεῦμα ] This, as is evident from πνεῖ , means the wind (Gen_8:1; Job_30:15; Wis_13:2; Heb_1:7; often in the classics), not the Spirit (Steinfass). It is the double sense of the word (comp. øåÌçÇ ) which gave rise to this very analogy from nature. For a similar comparison, but between the human soul, so far as it participates in the divine nature, and the well-known but inexplicable agency of wind, see, e.g., Xen. Mem. 4. 3. 14. Comp. also Ecc_11:5; Psa_135:7. On the expression τὸ πνεῦμα πνεῖ , see Lobeck, Paral. 503.
ὅπου θέλει ] The wind blowing now here, now there, is personified as a free agent, in keeping with the comparison of the personal Holy Spirit (1Co_12:2).[156]
ποῦ ] with a verb of motion. Comp. Hom. Il. 13. 219; Soph. Trach. 40: κεῖνος δʼ ὅπου βέβηκεν , οὐδεὶς οἶδε ; and see Lobeck ad Phryn. 45; Mätzn. ad Antiph. 169, § 8. Expressing by anticipation the state of rest following upon the movement. Often in the N. T. as in John (Joh_7:35, Joh_8:14, Joh_12:35) and Heb_11:8.
οὕτως ἐστὶ πᾶς , κ . τ . λ .] A popular and concrete mode of expression (Mat_13:19, etc.): so is it, i.e. with reference experimentally to the course of his higher birth, with every one who has been born (perfect) of the Spirit. The points of resemblance summed up in the οὕτως are: (1) the free self-determining action of the Holy Spirit ( ὅπου θέλει , comp. 1Co_12:11; Joh_5:21), not merely the greatness of this power, Tholuck; (2) the felt experience of His operations by the subject of them ( τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ ἀκ .); and (3) yet their incomprehensibleness as to their origin and their end ( ἀλλʼ οὐκ οἶδας , κ . τ . λ .), the latter pertaining to the moral sphere and reaching unto eternal life, the former proceeding from God, and requiring, in order to understand it, the previously experienced workings of divine grace, and faith ensuing thereupon. The man feels the working of grace within, coming to him as a birth from above, but he knows not whence it comes; he feels its attraction, but he knows not whither it leads. These several elements in the delineation are so distinctly indicated by Jesus, that we cannot be satisfied with the mere general point of incomprehensibleness in the comparison (Hengstenberg), upon the basis of Ecc_11:5.
[156] Concerning the personality of the Holy Spirit as taught in John, see especially 14–16.