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Joh_8:33. Ἀπεκρίθησαν ] No others can be the subject, but the πεπιστενκότες αὐτῷ Ἰουδαῖοι , Joh_8:31. So correctly, Melancthon (“offensi resiliunt”), Maldonatus, Bengel, Olshausen, Kling, B. Crusius, Hilgenfeld, Lange, Ewald, and several others, after the example of Chrysostom, who aptly observes: κατέπεσεν εὐθέως αὐτῶν ἡ διάνοια · τοῦτο δὲ γέγονεν ἀπὸ τοῦ πρὸς τὸ κοσμικὰ ἐπτοῆσθαι . John himself has precluded us from supposing any other to be intended, by expressly referring (Joh_8:31) to those Jews among the πολλοί (Joh_8:30) who had believed, and emphatically marking them as the persons who conduct the following conversation. To them the last word of Jesus proved at once a stone of stumbling. Hence we must not suppose that Jews are referred to who had remained unbelieving and hostile (as do Augustine, Calvin, Lampe, Kuinoel, De Wette, Tholuck, Lücke, Maier, Hengstenberg), and different from those who were mentioned in Joh_8:31 ( ἀπεκρ . they, indef.); nor do the words ζητεῖτέ με ἀποκτ . in Joh_8:37 necessitate this supposition, inasmuch as those πεπιστευκότες might have at once veered round and returned again to the ranks of the opposition, owing to the offence given to their national pride by the words in Joh_8:32. Accordingly, there is no warrant for saying with Luthardt that the reply came primarily from opponents, but that some of those who believed also chimed in from want of understanding. The text speaks exclusively of πεπιστευκότες .
σπέρμα Ἀβρ . ἐσμ .] to which, as being destined to become a blessing to, and to have dominion over, the world (comp. Gen_22:17 f., Joh_17:16), a state of bondage is something completely foreign. As every Hebrew servant was a son of Abraham, this major premiss of their argument shows that they had in view, not their individual or civil (Grotius, Lücke, Godet), but their national liberty. At the same time, in their passion they leave out of consideration the Egyptian and Babylonian history of their nation, and look solely at the present generation, which the Romans had, in accordance with their prudent policy, left in possession of the semblance of political independence (Joseph. Bell. vi. 6. 2). This, according to circumstances, as in the present case, they were able to class at all events in the category of non-bondage. Hence there is no need even for the distinction between dominion de facto and de jure, the latter of which the Jews deny (Lange, Tholuck). Selden had already distinguished between servitus extrinseca and intrinseca (the latter of which would be denied by the Jews). On the passionate pride taken by the Jews in their freedom, and the ruinous consequences it brought upon them, sea Lightfoot, p. 1045. According to Luthardt, they protest against spiritual dependence, not indeed as regards the disposition (B. Crusius), but as regards their religions position, in virtue of which all other nations are dependent on them, the privileged people of God, for their attainment of redemption. But the coarser misunderstanding of national freedom is more in keeping with other misapprehensions of the more spiritual meaning of Jesus found in John (comp. Nicodemus, the Woman of Samaria, the discourse about the Bread of Life); and what was likely to be more readily suggested to the proud minds of these sons of Abraham than the thought of the κληρονομία τοῦ κόσμου (comp. Rom_4:13), which in their imaginations excluded every sort of national bondage? Because they were Abraham’s seed, they felt themselves as αἷμα φέροντες ἀδέσποτον (Nonnus).