Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 9:4 - 9:4
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_9:4. By means of the participative ἡμᾶς (see the critical observations), Jesus includes the disciples with Himself as helpers and continuers of the Messianic activity. The further progress of the discourse is indicated by the pronoun which, for the sake of emphasis, is placed at the beginning of the sentence; the subject is thus specified through whose activity the φανέρωσις mentioned in Joh_9:3 is to be accomplished. “It is we who are destined by God to work His works as long as we live, and until death put an end to our activity.” There is no hint whatever in the text that Jesus wished to meet the scruples of the disciples on account of the healing which He was about to perform on the Sabbath (Kuinoel); indeed, as far as the disciples were concerned, to whom Sabbath healings by Jesus were nothing new, there was no ground for such a procedure.
τοῦ πέμψ . με ] Jesus does not again say ἡμας ;[44] for His mission involved also that of the disciples, and it was He who commissioned the disciples (Joh_13:20, Joh_20:21).
ἕως ] so long as, denoting contemporaneous duration, very frequently so in the classical writers subsequently to Homer, with the praes. or imperf. See Blomfield, Gloss. ad Aesch. Pers. 434.
Day and Night are images, not of tempus opportunum and importunum, nor even of αἰὼν οὗτος and ΜΈΛΛΩΝ (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Ruperti, and others); but (for Jesus was thinking of His speedy departure out of the world, Joh_9:5) of life and death (comp. Hom. Il. ε . 310, Λ . 356; Aesch. Sept. 385; Pers. 841; Plat. Apol. p. 40 D, and Stallbaum thereon; Hor. Od. 1. 28. 15). The latter puts an end to the activity of every one on earth (even to that of Christ in His human manifestation). By the different use made of the same image in Joh_11:9 f., we are not justified in regarding it as including the period of the passion (Hengstenberg). Moreover, Christ was still working whilst He hung on the cross. Olshausen’s view is wrong: ἡμέρα denotes the time of grace, which was then specially conditioned by the presence of Christ, the Light of the world; with His removal darkness assumed its sway. Against this view the general and unlimited form of the expression on ὅτι οὐδεὶς δύναται ἐργάζεσθαι (which Olshausen arbitrarily restricts by adding “for a time,” and “in spiritual matters”) is in itself a decisive objection; not to mention that Jesus regarded His death, not as the beginning of spiritual darkness, but as the very condition of greater enlightenment by the Spirit (Joh_17:7, Joh_15:26, Joh_14:26, al.). With Olshausen agrees substantially B. Crusius; comp. also Grotius, Bengel, and several others. Luthardt also refers day and night to the world, whose day-time coincided with the presence of Christ in the world, and whose night began when He departed out of the world; as soon as He should leave the world, no other could occupy His place in the accomplishment of redemption; from that time onward, there would be no longer a redemptive history, but merely an appropriation of redemption. But apart from the hair-splitting character of the distinction thus drawn, the grounds adduced against Olshausen hold substantially good against this explanation also, especially that ἐργάζεσθαι —which here has no determining object, as in the previous case—and ΟὐΔΕΊς are quite general; and accordingly, ἜΡΧΕΤΑΙ ΝῪΞ
ἘΡΓΆΖΕΣΘΑΙ must be regarded as a commonplace. Godet finds in ΝΎΞ the thought of the evening rest, which Christ was to enjoy in His heavenly state. This is incorrect, however, because it is not evening but night that is mentioned, and because δύναται would then be inappropriate.
[44] Which Ewald prefers in opposition to his own translation. But see the critical note.