ยอห์น 7:22 วิจารณ์

In this chapter we have, I. Christ's declining for some time to appear publicly in Judea (Joh 7:1). II. His design to go up to Jerusalem at the feast of tabernacles, and his discourse with his kindred in Galilee concerning his going up to this feast (Joh 7:2-13). III. His preaching publicly in the temple at that feast. 1. In the midst of the feast (Joh 7:14, Joh 7:15). We have his discourse with the Jews, (1.) Concerning his doctrine (Joh 7:16-18). (2.) Concerning the crime of sabbath-breaking laid to his charge (Joh 7:19-24). (3.) Concerning himself, both whence he came and whither he was going (Joh 7:25-36). 2. On the last day of he feast. (1.) His gracious invitation to poor souls to come to him (Joh 7:37-39). (2.) The reception that it met with. [1.] Many of the people disputed about it (Joh 7:40-44). [2.] The chief priests would have brought him into trouble for it, but were first disappointed by their officers (Joh 7:45-49) and then silenced by one of their own court (Joh 7:50-53).

After these things Jesus walked in Galilee,.... That is, after he had fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, near Bethsaida; and had had that long discourse with the Jews at Capernaum, concerning himself, as the bread of life, and about eating his flesh, and drinking his blood; and had been up to the feast of the passover at Jerusalem, said to be nigh, when he went over the sea of Galilee, Joh 6:4; otherwise the above places were in Galilee: but the case seems to be this, that after he had been at Capernaum, he went to Jerusalem, to keep the passover; and finding that the Jews still sought to take away his life, he returned to Galilee, and "walked" there; he did not sit still, or lie at home, and live an inactive indolent life, but went about from place to place, preaching the Gospel, and healing diseases; he walked, and walked about; but not as the enemy of souls, seeking to do all mischief, but to do all good, to the bodies and souls of men: for he would not walk in Jewry; in the land of Judea, where he had been, and tarried, and made disciples; but being rejected and ill treated, he left them; which was a prelude of the Gospel being taken from them, and carried to another people; which afterwards took place, in the times of the apostles: his reason for it was, because the Jews sought to kill him; for healing a man on the sabbath day, and for asserting his equality with God: not that he was afraid to die, but his time was not come; and he had work to do for the glory of God, and the good of men; and therefore it was both just and prudent to withdraw and preserve his life; for like reasons he advised his disciples, when persecuted in one city, to flee to another: and very lawful and advisable it is for good men, when their lives are in danger, to make use of proper means to preserve them, for further usefulness in the cause of God, and for the benefit of men.

If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision,.... As it was certain in many instances he did: that the law of Moses might not be broken; either the law concerning circumcision, which confirmed the law given to Abraham, and required it should be on the eighth day, let it fall when it would, even on a sabbath day; and therefore on that day, male children received circumcision, that that law might be kept, and not be broken: or else the law concerning the sabbath; and the sense be, if circumcision was administered on the sabbath day, "without breaking the law of Moses", as some render the words, which commanded the observation of the sabbath, are ye angry at me; and pursue me with so much wrath and bitterness, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day? or "a man that was whole, sound on the sabbath day"; who was wholly, or all over disordered, every limb of whom shook with the palsy: or as some think the sense is, he was made every whit whole, both in soul and body; and then the argument is, if it was, no breach of the sabbath to make a wound, and lay a plaster on it, as in circumcision; it would be no violation of it, nor ought any to be offended with it, that Christ should heal a diseased man, who was so in every part of his body, and restore health to his soul likewise and nothing is more common with the Jews than to say, the danger of life, and , "the preservation of the soul", or life, drive away the sabbath (b). (b) T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 132. 1.

For, tell me, did God wish the priests to sin when they offer the sacrifices on the Sabbaths? or those to sin, who are circumcised and do circumcise on the Sabbaths; since He commands that on the eighth day-even though it happen to be a Sabbath-those who are born shall be always circumcised? or could not the infants be operated upon one day previous or one day subsequent to the Sabbath, if He knew that it is a sinful act upon the Sabbaths? Or why did He not teach those-who are called righteous and pleasing to Him, who lived before Moses and Abraham, who were not circumcised in their foreskin, and observed no Sabbaths-to keep these institutions?

The Lord reproved those who unjustly blamed him for having healed on the sabbath days. For he did not make void but fulfilled the law by performing the offices of the high priest, propitiating God for people, and cleansing the lepers, healing the sick and himself suffering death, that exiled people might go forth from condemnation and might return without fear to their own inheritance.

On the fifth day the land and water brought forth their progenies. On the sixth day the things that were wanting were created; and thus God raised up man from the soil, as lord of all the things which He created upon the earth and the water. Yet He created angels and archangels before He created man, placing spiritual beings before earthly ones. For light was made before sky and the earth. This sixth day is called parasceve, that is to say, the preparation of the kingdom. For He perfected Adam, whom He made after His image and likeness. But for this reason He completed His works before He created angels and fashioned man, lest perchance they should falsely assert that they had been His helpers. On this day also. on account of the passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, we make either a station to God, or a fast. On the seventh day He rested from all His works, and blessed it, and sanctified it. On the former day we are accustomed to fast rigorously, that on the Lord's day we may go forth to our bread with giving of thanks. And let the parasceve become a rigorous fast, lest we should appear to observe any Sabbath with the Jews, which Christ Himself, the Lord of the Sabbath, says by His prophets that "His soul hateth; " which Sabbath He in His body abolished, although, nevertheless, He had formerly Himself commanded Moses that circumcision should not pass over the eighth day, which day very frequently happens on the Sabbath, as we read written in the Gospel. Moses, foreseeing the hardness of that people, on the Sabbath raised up his hands, therefore, and thus figuratively fastened himself to a cross. And in the battle they were sought for by the foreigners on the Sabbath-day, that they might be taken captive, and, as if by the very strictness of the law, might be fashioned to the avoidance of its teaching.

For if the Law was to be lasting, circumcision would not have been more authoritative than it.

He said not, "Ye are wroth with Me because I have wrought a thing which is greater than circumcision," but having merely mentioned what had been done, He left it to them to judge, whether entire health was not a more necessary thing than circumcision. "The Law," He saith, "is broken, that a man may receive a sign which contributeth nothing to health; are ye vexed and indignant at its being broken, that one might be freed from so grievous a disease?"

"I have done one work, and ye all marvel." Observe how He argueth, where it is necessary to defend Himself, and make His defense a charge against them. For with respect to that which had been wrought, He introduceth not the Person of the Father, but His own: "I have done one work." He would show, that not to have done it would have been to break the Law, and that there are many things more authoritative than the Law, and that "Moses" endured to receive a command against the Law, and more authoritative than the Law. For "circumcision" is more authoritative than the Sabbath, and yet circumcision is not of the Law, but of "the fathers." "But I," He saith, "have done that which is more authoritative and better than circumcision."

"I have done one work, and ye all marvel." And immediately He subjoined: "Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision." It was well done that ye received circumcision from Moses. "Not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers;" since it was Abraham that first received circumcision from the Lord. "And ye circumcise on the Sabbath-day." Moses has convicted you: ye have received in the law to circumcise on the eighth day; ye have received in the law to cease from labor on the seventh day; if the eighth day from the child's birth fall on the seventh day of the week, what will ye do? Will ye abstain from work to keep the Sabbath, or will ye circumcise to fulfill the sacrament of the eighth day? But I know, saith He, what ye do. "Ye circumcise a man." Why? Because circumcision relates to what is a kind of seal of salvation, and men ought not to abstain from the work of salvation on the Sabbath-day. Therefore be ye not "angry with me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath-day." "If," saith He, "a man on the Sabbath-day receiveth circumcision that the law should not be broken" (for it was something saving that was ordained by Moses in that ordinance of circumcision), why are ye angry at me for working a healing on the Sabbath-day? Perhaps, indeed, that circumcision pointed to the Lord Himself, at whom they were indignant, because He worked cures and healing. For circumcision was commanded to be applied on the eighth day: and what is circumcision but the spoiling of the flesh? This circumcision, then, signified the removal of carnal lusts from the heart. Therefore not without cause was it given, and ordered to be made in that member; since by that member the creature of mortal kind is procreated. By one man came death, just as by one man the resurrection of the dead; and by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. Therefore every man is born with a foreskin, because every man is born with the vice of propagation; and God cleanses not, either from the vice with which we are born, or from the vices which we add thereto by ill living, except by the stony knife, the Lord Christ. For Christ was the Rock. Now they used to circumcise with stone knives, and by the name of rock they prefigured Christ; and yet when He was present with them they did not acknowledge Him, but besides, they sought to kill Him. But why on the eighth day, unless because after the seventh day of the week the Lord rose again on the Lord's day? Therefore Christ's resurrection, which happened on the third day indeed of His passion, but on the eighth day in the days of the week, that same resurrection it is that doth circumcise us. Hear of those that were circumcised with the real stone, while the apostle admonishes them: "If then ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting on the right hand of God; set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." He speaks to the circumcised: Christ has risen; He has taken away from you carnal desires, evil lusts, the superfluity with which you were born, and that far worse which you had added thereto by ill living; being circumcised by the Rock, why do you still set your affections on the earth? And finally, for that "Moses gave you the law, and ye circumcise a man on the Sabbath-day," understand that by this is signified the good work which I have done, in that I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath-day; because he was cured that he might be whole in body, and also he believed that he might be whole in soul.

(Tr. xxx. s. 4) As if He said, Ye have done well to receive circumcision from Moses, not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers; for Abraham first received circumcision from the Lord. And ye circumcise on the sabbath. Moses has convicted you: ye received a law to circumcise on the eighth day; and ye received a law to rest on the seventh day. If the eighth day after a child is born happen to be the sabbath, ye circumcise the child; because circumcision appertaineth to, is a kind of sign of, salvation; and men ought not to rest from the work of salvation on the sabbath. (Tr. xxx. 5) Circumcision also was perhaps a type of our Lord Himself. For what is circumcision but a robbing of the flesh, to signify the robbing the heart of its carnal lusts. And therefore it was not without reason that it was applied to that member by which the mortal creature is propagated: for by one man sin entered into the world. (Rom. 5:12) And therefore every one is born with the foreskin, because every one is born with the fault of his propagation. (vite propagenis) And God does not change us either from the corruption of our birth, or from that we have contracted ourselves by a bad life, except by Christ: and therefore they circumcised with knives of stone, to prefigure Christ, who is the stone; and on the eighth day, because our Lord's resurrection took place on the day after the seventh day; which resurrection circumcises us, i. e. destroys our carnal appetites. Regard this, saith our Lord, as a type of My good work in making a man every whit whole on the sabbath day: for he was healed, that he might be whole in body, and he believed, that he might be whole in mind. Ye are forbidden indeed to do servile work on the sabbath; but is it a servile work to heal on the sabbath? Ye eat and drink on the sabbath, because it is necessary for your health: which shows that works of healing are by no means to be omitted on the sabbath.

Many sources in Scripture tell us that we should do no work on the sabbath. We are to rest as it were and quit doing all those tasks that invite sweat and labor. For he says in Exodus, “Six years you shall sow your land and gather in the fruit, but in the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie still.” … Now, it is not the land—which does not even know what work is—that he releases; nor is it to the land that he gives this law. It was given to those who possessed the land. He gave rest to the land so that they would not work on it. In this and many other ways he pointed toward our feast with Christ, a feast in which those who have lived in divine fear will hurry toward that perfect and complete liberty that is in holiness and will run to that most wealthy grace of the Spirit. This is clear in the commands themselves of Moses. It is written, “If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you.” We, who were originally slaves to sin, had, after a fashion, sold ourselves to the devil by taking pleasure in evil. But now, being justified in Christ through faith, we shall mount up to the true and holy keeping of the sabbath, clothed with the liberty that comes through grace and glorified with the good things of God.

Of deep meaning is the word, and hard to be reached the purpose of the text, but it will be manifest through the grace of Him That illuminateth. Defeating then by many words the uninstructedness of the Jews, and manifoldly teaching them that they ought not to go off to unseasonable wrath on account of the breach of the sabbath, by reason the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath day: but having at length attained no good effect by reason of the ill-counsel of the hearers, He passes on to another mode of economy, and endeavours to show clearly that the hierophant Moses himself, the minister of the Law, brake the Law of the sabbath on account of the circumcision, which had extended from the custom of the fathers even unto his own times, that he too might with reason be shown to be an observer of the custom of the fathers, and since God works on the sabbath, therefore He revealing Himself too as a worker holds that it is in no wise a transgression of the sabbath, by reason of His being ever like minded with the Father. Wherefore He also said, My Father worketh hitherto and I work. In order then (He saith) that ye, beholding Me working on the sabbath day, may not marvel as at some strange and most monstrous thing, Moses hath given you circumcision on the sabbath, and he was beforehand in breaking the Law respecting it. And why? He did not think he should be doing right, in dishonouring the Law given to the Fathers, and their custom, on account of the sabbath day. Therefore a man is circumcised on the sabbath day too. But if Moses considered that he ought to honour the custom of the fathers, and made that superior to the honour of the sabbath, why are ye vainly troubled at Me, and marvel at Me, as though I were one of those wont heedlessly to transgress the Law, out of contempt for the Law? albeit (He says) I work equally with the Father, and ever agree with Him in every purpose: and since He works on the Sabbath day, well do I refuse to be idle thereon. He says that Moses gave them, circumcision, although it was not of him according to what has been just said, but of the fathers, because the ordinance of circumcision was given to the fathers, but its rites were more definitely and clearly ordered by Moses. For our forefather Abraham was circumcised, but not on the eighth day, nor was a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons offered for him, in accordance with the rites of Moses.

Jesus then employs a very convincing argument: Moses, he says, established circumcision and the sabbath and ordered that men were to be circumcised on the sabbath. But Moses established the sabbath out of convenience. Indeed, at that time nobody observed it.… He also established circumcision needlessly because it had been already established by the patriarchs. But he established this rule [about circumcision] too, in order to teach that this observance [of the sabbath] does not exist when there are cases of necessity and that sometimes it must be broken. If the sabbath can be broken for circumcision, because Moses ordered it so—and this is not considered to be a violation of the law—why then do you think the fact that a man was healed on the sabbath is a violation of the law? And, he added, making them ashamed: “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” If a transgressor of the law is one who performs something on the sabbath, the first one to be blamed should be Moses. But if Moses is not considered to be a transgressor of the law, my action is the more excellent and I am even more above reproach.

Circumcision was given for three reasons; first, as a sign of Abraham's great faith; secondly, to distinguish the Jews from other nations; thirdly, that the receiving of it on the organ of virility, might admonish us to observe chastity both of body and mind. And circumcision then possessed the same virtue that baptism does now; only that the gate was not yet open. Our Lord concludes: If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at Me because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?

Meanwhile Moses himself, this lawgiver, broke the Sabbath when he commanded that every soul (person) be circumcised on the eighth day (Lev. 12:3). Although circumcision was not from Moses, but from the fathers, nevertheless it, being not from Moses, violated the law concerning the Sabbath given by Moses. For it often happened that the eighth day, on which it was necessary to be circumcised, fell on a Sabbath.

Then he shows that there is no reason why they should be disturbed. First, he recalls the command given to them by Moses; secondly, he states their customary behavior; and thirdly, he presents an argument based on the first two. The command of Moses was about circumcision; so he says: Therefore, i.e., to signify my works, Moses gave you circumcision. For circumcision was given as a sign, as we read, "it will be a sign of the covenant between me and you" (Gn 17:11). For it signified Christ. This is the reason why it was always done on the genital organ, because Christ was to descend, in his human nature, from Abraham; and Christ is the one who spiritually circumcises us, i.e., both in mind and body. Or, it was done to the genital organ because it was given in opposition to original sin. We do not find it explicitly stated that Moses gave circumcision, unless in Exodus (12:44): "Every slave who is bought shall be circumcised." And although Moses did tell them to circumcise, he was not the one who established this practice, because he was not the first one to receive the command to circumcise; this was Abraham, as we see from Genesis (17:10). Now it was the custom among the Jews to circumcise on the sabbath. And this is what he says: you circumcise on the sabbath day. They did this because Abraham was told that a boy should be circumcised on the eighth day: "He circumcised him on the eighth day, as God had commanded him" (Gn 21:4). On the other hand, they were told by Moses not to do any work on the sabbath. But it sometimes happened that the eighth day was a sabbath. And so, in circumcising a boy on that day, they were breaking a command of Moses for a command of the patriarchs.

Jesus continues in Galilee, Joh 7:1. He is desired to go to the feast of tabernacles, Joh 7:2-5. His answer, Joh 7:6-9. He goes up, and the Jews seek him at the feast, Joh 7:10-13. He teaches in the temple, Joh 7:14-24. The Jews are confounded by his preaching, Joh 7:25-27. He continues to teach; they wish to slay him, Joh 7:28-30. Many of the people believe on him, Joh 7:31. The Pharisees murmur, and our Lord reasons with them, Joh 7:32-36. His preaching on the last day of the feast, Joh 7:37-39. The people are greatly divided in their opinions concerning him, Joh 7:40-44. The officers, who were sent by the Pharisees to take him, return, and because they did not bring him, their employers are offended, Joh 7:45-49. Nicodemus reasons with them, Joh 7:50-53.

But of the fathers - That is, it came from the patriarchs. Circumcision was not, properly speaking, one of the laws of the Mosaic institution, it having been given at first to Abraham, and continued among his posterity till the giving of the law: Gen 17:9, Gen 17:10, etc. Ye - circumcise a man - That is, a male child: for every male child was circumcised when eight days old; and if the eighth day after its birth happened to be a Sabbath, it was nevertheless circumcised, that the law might not be broken, which had enjoined the circumcision to take place at that time, Lev 12:3. From this and several other circumstances it is evident that the keeping of the Sabbath, even in the strictest sense of the word, ever admitted of the works of necessity and mercy to be done on it; and that those who did not perform such works on that day, when they had opportunity, were properly violators of every law founded on the principles of mercy and justice. If the Jews had said, Why didst thou not defer the healing of the sick man till the ensuing day? He might have well answered, Why do ye not defer the circumcising of your children to the ensuing day, when the eighth day happens to be a Sabbath? - which is a matter of infinitely less consequence than the restoration of this long-afflicted man.

CHRIST AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. (John 7:1-53) After these things--that is, all that is recorded after Joh 5:18. walked in Galilee--continuing His labors there, instead of going to Judea, as might have been expected. sought to kill him--referring back to Joh 5:18. Hence it appears that our Lord did not attend the Passover mentioned in Joh 6:4 --being the third since His ministry began, if the feast mentioned in Joh 5:1 was a Passover.

Moses . . . gave unto you circumcision, &c.--Though servile work was forbidden on the sabbath, the circumcision of males on that day (which certainly was a servile work) was counted no infringement of the Law. How much less ought fault to be found with One who had made a man "every whit whole"--or rather, "a man's entire body whole"--on the sabbath-day? What a testimony to the reality of the miracle, none daring to meet the bold appeal.