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Joh_6:52-53. The Jews rightly add φαγεῖν , borrowing it from the preceding context; but the meaning and reference of the expression, which they certainly recognised as somehow to be taken figuratively, are to them so indistinct, that they fall into a dispute with each other (“non jam solum murmurabant uti Joh_6:41,” Bengel) upon the question: “How can this man give us his flesh ( τὴν σάρκα , also without the αὐτοῦ , a gloss in Lachm.) to eat?” Not as if they had missed hearing something (Luthardt: “the futurity implied in the expression, Joh_6:51”), but they did not understand the enigmatical statement. Instead now of explaining the how of their question, Jesus sets before them the absolute necessity of their partaking, and in still more extreme terms lays down the requirement, which seemed so paradoxical to them; for He nows adds the drinking of His blood, in order thus to bring more prominently into view the reference to His death, and its life-giving power to be experienced by believing appropriation.
τοῦ υἱοῦ τ . ἀνθρ .] This prophetic and Messianic self-designation (Joh_1:51, Joh_3:13-14), which could now less easily escape the notice of His hearers than in Joh_6:27, serves as a still more solemn expression in place of μου , without, however, affecting the meaning of the eating and drinking.
οὐκ ἔχετε ζωὴν ἐν ἑαυτ .] “ye have not life in yourselves,” “life is foreign to and remote from your own inner nature,”—death is the power that ye have in you, spiritual and eternal death; life must first, by that eating and drinking, be inwardly united with your own selves. In that appropriation of the flesh and blood of Jesus, this life flows forth from His life (Joh_6:56-57; Joh_5:26); and it is attached to faith only, not to the use of any outward element (comp. Harless, p. 124).