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Joh_7:7-8. οὐ δύναται ] “psychologically it cannot, because you are in perfect accord with it.” “One knave agrees with another, for one crow does not scratch out the eye of another crow,” Luther; τὸ ὅμοιον τῷ ὁμοίῳ ἀνάγκη ἀεὶ φίλον εἶναι , Plato, Lys. p. 214 B; comp. Gorg. p. 510 B.
ὁ κόσμος ] not as in Joh_7:4, but with a moral significance (the unbelieving world). Comp. here 1Jn_5:19.
ἐγὼ οὐκ ἀναβαίνω , κ . τ . λ .] not an indefinite answer, leaving the matter spoken of uncertain (Hengstenberg), but, as the Present shows, a direct and categorical refusal: I, for my part, do not go up. Afterward He changed (Joh_7:10) His intention not to go up to the feast, and went up to it after all, though as secretly as possible. Porphyry’s reproach (in Jerome) of inconstantia is based upon a correct interpretation, but is not in itself just; for Jesus might alter His intention without being fickle, especially as the particular motive that prompted the change does not appear. In the case of the Canaanitish woman also, Mat_15:26 ff., He changed His intention. The result of this change was that once more, and for some length of time before the last decision, He prosecuted His work by way of opposition and instruction at the great capital of the theocracy. The attempt to put into οὐκ the sense of οὔπω , or to find this sense in the context, is as unnecessary as it is erroneous. Either the Present ἀναβ . has been emphasized, and a νῦν introduced (Chrysostom, Bengel, Storr, Lücke, Olshausen, Tholuck), or ἀναβ . has been taken to denote[259] the manner of travelling, viz. with the caravan of pilgrims, or the like; or the meaning of ἑορτήν has been narrowed (Apol.: Οὐ ΜΕΤᾺ ἹΛΑΡΌΤΗΤΟς ; Cyril: ΟὐΧ ΟὝΤΩς ἙΟΡΤΆΖΩΝ ), as, besides Hofmann, Weissag. u. Erf. II. p. 113, and Lange,[260] Ebrard’s expedient of understanding the feast “in the legally prescribed sense” does; or οὐκ has been regarded as limited by the following ΟὔΠΩ (De Wette, Maier, and most), which is quite wrong, for ΟὔΠΩ negatives generally the fulfilment of the ΚΑΙΡΌς in the present (i.e. during the whole time of the feast). So little does the true interpretation of the οὐκ justify the objection of modern criticism against the evangelist (B. Bauer: “Jesuitism;” Baur: “the seeming independence of Jesus is supposed thus to be preserved;” comp. also Hilgenfeld), that, on the contrary, it brings into view a striking trait of originality in the history.
Observe in the second half of the verse the simple and emphatic repetition of the same words, into which ΤΑΎΤΗΝ , however, is introduced (see the critical notes), because Jesus has in view a visit to a future feast. Observe also the repetition of the reason already given in Joh_7:6, in which, instead of ΠΆΡΕΣΤΙΝ , the weightier ΠΕΠΛΉΡΩΤΑΙ occurs.
[259] Comp. Bengel, Luthardt (who would supply “as ye think”), Baumgarten, p. 228; Baeumlein; in like manner Godet, who explains ἀναβαίνω , “I go not up as King Messiah.” As if one had only to foist in such interpolations!
[260] See his Leben Jesu, II. 927: He did not actually visit the feast, but He went up in the second half of the week of the feast, and not before. Jesus never resorted to any such subtleties.