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Mat_20:23. The disciples reply: δυνάμεθα , not because they did not quite understand what Jesus meant (Mat_20:18 f.), but because they were animated by a sincere though self-confident determination, such, too, as was afterwards sufficiently verified in the case of both, only in somewhat different ways.
οὐκ ἔστιν ἐμὸν δοῦναι , ἀλλʼ οἷς ἡτοίμ . ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρ . μ .] sc. δοθήσεται : is not my business (does not behove me) to give, but it will be given to those for whom it has been prepared (has been put in readiness, Mat_25:34; 1Co_2:9) by my Father. For ἐμὸν ἐστί with infinitive, comp. Plat. Legg. ii. p. 664 B: ἐμὸν ἂν εἴη λέγειν . Jesus thus discourages the questionable request by frankly declaring that the granting of what has just been asked is one of those things which God has reserved to Himself; that it is a matter with which He, the Son, must not interfere. For another instance of such reservation on the part of the Father, see Mat_24:36; Mar_13:32. This evident meaning of the words is not to be explained away or modified. The former has been done by Chrysostom and his successors, also by Castalio, Grotius, Kuinoel, who took ἀλλά as equivalent to εἰ μή ; the latter by Augustine, Luther, according to whom the words as man (“secundum formam servi”) are to be understood, and Bengel, who modifies οὐκ ἔστιν ἐμὸν δοῦναι by erroneously supplying the words: till after my death. Further, the words τὸ μὲν ποτήρ . μ . πίεσθε are to be regarded as expressing the Lord’s unfeigned trust and confidence in the δυνάμεθα of the disciples; He feels confident that they will verify it by their actions. His words, therefore, are only indirectly tantamount to a prediction, and that not exactly of death by martyrdom, which was certainly the fate of James, Acts 12, though not of John,[5] but of suffering generally in the interests of the Messiah’s kingdom (Rom_8:17; 2Co_1:5). It is probable, however, that the apocryphal story about John swallowing a cup full of poison (see Fabricius, ad Cod. Apocr. I. p. 576; Tischendorf, Act. ap. apocr. p. 269), and that without being anything the worse (Mar_16:18), as well as the legend about the attempt to scald him to death in boiling oil (Tertullian, de praescr. 36), owe their existence and propagation to the present passage. Origen views our Lord’s words on this occasion in connection with the banishment of John to Patmos.
[5] The statement of Gregorius Hamartolos (quoted by Nolte in the Tüb. theol. Quartalschr. 1862, p. 466), to the effect that, in his λόγια , Papias declares that John was put to death by the Jews, cannot outweigh the testimony of the early church to the fact that he died a natural death. For the discussion of this point, see Hilgenfeld in his Zeitschr. 1865, p. 78 ff.; Overbeck, ibid. 1867, p. 68 ff.; Holtzmann in Schenkel’s Lex. III. p. 333; Keim, III. p. 44 f.; Steitz in the Stud. u. Krit. 1868, p. 487 ff.