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Joh_9:5. A more precise description of His earthly vocation, characteristically expressed in relation to the sight which was to be bestowed on the blind man. Ὅταν , however, is neither quamdiu (as it usually is) nor quandoquidem (so Lücke and Fritzsche, ad Marc. p. 86),—which latter usage is foreign to the N. T., and is only apparently found in passages such as Thuc. 1. 141. 5, 142. 1,—but: When (quando, at the time in which) I am in the world, I am the Light of the world. It expresses the necessary contemporaneity of the two relations. He cannot be in the world, says Christ, without at the same time enlightening the world. Thus, also, did it behove Him to show Himself in the case of this blind man. φῶς is employed, it is true, in a spiritual sense, as in Joh_1:5 ff., Joh_8:12, but also with a significant reference to the sight which was to be restored to the blind man. In healing him, that enlightening activity of Jesus by which those who did not see were to be made to see (see Joh_9:39), is set forth in a transaction which, though primarily sensuous, was also suggestive of spiritual enlightenment (Joh_9:37 f.). In itself the first clause of the verse
Ὅταν … ὦ —might have been dispensed with (Joh_8:22); its utterance, however, in connection with Joh_9:4, was occasioned by the consciousness that He was soon to depart from the world, and that after His departure the present mode and action of the φῶς εἶναι , which were bound up with His corporeal earthly career, must come to an end. Then Christ would work through the Paraclete and through the vehicles of the Paraclete, as the Light of the world.