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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - John 19:34 - 19:34
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34. ἔνυξεν. Pricked or stabbed, a milder word than ἐξεκέντησαν (Joh 19:37). All ancient Versions mark the difference between the two verbs. The Vulgate (aperuit) and Philox. Syriac indicate a reading ἤνοιξεν. The object of the νύττειν was to make sure that He was dead. The word occurs here only in N.T.
αἶμα κ. ὕδωρ. There has been very much discussion as to the physical cause of Christ’s death; and those who investigate this try to frame an hypothesis which will at the same time account for the effusion of blood and water. Two or three such hypotheses have been put forward. But it may be doubted whether they are not altogether out of place. It has been seen (Joh 19:30) how the Evangelists insist on the fact that the Lord’s death was a voluntary surrender of life, not a result forced upon Him. Of course it may be that the voluntariness consisted in welcoming causes which must prove fatal. But it is more simple to believe that He delivered up His life before natural causes became fatal. ‘No one,’ neither Jew nor Roman, ‘took it from Him’ by any means whatever: He lays it down ‘of Himself’ (Joh 10:18). And if we decline to investigate the physical cause of the Lord’s death, we need not ask for a physical explanation of what is recorded here. S. John assures us that he saw it with his own eyes, and he records it that we may believe: i.e. he regards it as a ‘sign’ that the corpse was no ordinary one, but a Body that even in death was Divine.
We can scarcely be wrong in supposing that the blood and water are symbolical. The order confirms this. Blood symbolizes the work of redemption which had just been completed by His death; and water symbolizes the ‘birth from above,’ with its cleansing from sin, which was the result of His death, and is the means by which we appropriate it. Thus the great Sacraments are represented. Some Fathers see in the double effusion the two baptisms, of blood (in martyrdom) and of water. Others see the Church, the Spouse of Christ, issuing in the Sacraments from the side of the sleeping Second Adam, as Eve from the side of the first Adam.