M. Jesus and the Man Born Blind (9:1–38)

1And as he was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth, 2and his disciples asked him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” 3Jesus answered, “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be revealed in him. 4We must work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. 5When I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” 6Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle and smeared the mud on the eyes. 7And he said to him, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam”—which means “sent.” So he went away and washed and came seeing.

8Then the neighbors and those seeing him formerly, that he was a beggar, said, “Isn’t this the one who sits and begs?” 9Some said, “It is he”; others said, “No, but it is like him.” The man said, “It is I.” 10So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?” 11That one answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and smeared my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So when I went away and washed, I could see.” 12And they said to him, “Where is that man?” He said, “I don’t know.”

13They brought him to the Pharisees, the man who was once blind. 14Now it was Sabbath on the day Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15So again the Pharisees also asked him how he could see. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed and I see.” 16So some of the Pharisees were saying, “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath.” Others were saying, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” And there was a split among them. 17So they say to the blind man again, “What do you say about him, because he opened your eyes?” And he said that “He is a prophet.”

18So the Jews did not believe about him that he was blind and could see, until they summoned the parents of the one himself who could see. 19And they asked them, saying, “This is your son, whom you say that he was born blind? How then does he see now?” 20So his parents answered and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind. 21But how he now sees we don’t know, or who opened his eyes we don’t know. Ask him, he is of age, he will speak for himself.” 22These things his parents said because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already reached an agreement that anyone who confessed that he was Christ would be put out of synagogue. 23This was why his parents said that “He is of age, ask him.”

24So for a second time they summoned the man who was blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” 25That one answered, “If he is a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I know, that I was blind and now I see.” 26So they said to him, “What did he do for you? How did he open your eyes?” 27He answered them, “I told you already, and you did not hear. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” 28And they insulted him, and said, “You are that man’s disciple. We are Moses’ disciples. 29We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we don’t know where he is from.” 30The man answered and said to them, “For what is amazing in this is that you don’t know where he is from, and he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is god-fearing and does his will, this one he hears. 32It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of one born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing,” 34They answered and said to him, “You were born altogether in sins, and you are teaching us?” And they drove him out.

35Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of man?” 36And that one answered and said, “And who is he, sir, that I might believe in him?” 37Jesus said to him, “You have not only seen him, but it is that one who is speaking with you.” 38And he said, “I believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.

Despite the efforts of copyists to link what happens next to what preceded at the Tent festival,1 it is best to view this chapter as a new story. The narrative is linked only very loosely to the preceding discourse by the conjunction “And” (kai, v. 1). There is no way to know how long it was after the autumn Tent festival and Jesus’ departure from the temple (8:59) that the events described here are supposed to have taken place. All we are told is that by 10:22 “it was winter,” and that the time of the Dedication festival (now known as Hanukkah) had come. Presumably the events of 9:1–10:21 come somewhere between the two festivals, but except for the notice that the healing of the blind man took place on a Sabbath (see 9:14), no time frame is given.2

Having provided a grim example of aborted faith and illegitimate birth (8:30–59), the Gospel writer now adds a case study in genuine faith, and birth from above (see 3:3, 5). That a new story is beginning is signaled by the presence of Jesus’ disciples with him as he “was passing by” and “saw a man blind from birth” (v. 1). The disciples have been absent throughout the Tent festival (ever since 6:70, in fact), and they make only a cameo appearance here, just long enough to ask one question (v. 2), after which they disappear again, not to reappear until 11:7. The narrative itself consists of the healing of the blind man (vv. 1–7), followed by a succession of scenes between the man and his neighbors (vv. 8–12), the man and the Pharisees (vv. 13–17), his parents and the Pharisees (vv. 18–23), and again the man and the Pharisees, ending with his expulsion from the synagogue (vv. 24–34), after which Jesus finds him and brings him to faith (vv. 35–38).

1 The opening words, “And as he was passing by,” are fully consistent with the notion that the temple discourse of the two previous chapters is over, and that a new sequence of events (at an undetermined time, but still in Jerusalem)3 is under way. The same phrase4 occurs in the synoptic Gospels at the call of Jesus’ disciples by the sea of Galilee (Mk 1:16), and again at the call of Levi (or Matthew) the tax collector (Mk 2:14; Mt 9:9).5 This too is a “call” narrative of sorts, even though Jesus does not command the blind man to “Come after me,” or “Follow me” (as in the synoptic accounts), and the blind man is never explicitly enlisted into Jesus’ company of disciples.6 Rather, the presence of the blind man, aided and abetted by the disciples’ question (v. 2), brings Jesus to a stop, and the story begins.

It is clearly important to the narrative that the man had been blind “from birth.” Judging from the disciples’ question (v. 2), this detail is not just something the Gospel writer is telling the reader, but is obvious to them and to Jesus, either somehow from the man’s appearance or because he was a well-known figure in the city.7 Jesus talked about “birth” in the preceding chapter: birth from Abraham (8:33, 37, 39), legitimate versus illegitimate birth (8:41–42), and birth from God versus birth from the devil (8:44–47). Much earlier, speaking to Nicodemus, he drew a sharp contrast between physical birth and a new birth “from above,” or from “water and the Spirit” (3:3, 5; see also 1:13).8 Now Jesus and his disciples encounter a case in which physical birth has left a person blind.9 As the story goes on, the man’s “birth” defect will continue to be a major issue (see vv. 2–3, 19–20, 32, 34).

2 If readers fail to notice the phrase “from birth,” Jesus’ disciples10 are quick to call attention to it. “Rabbi, who sinned,” they ask Jesus, “this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (v. 2). The notion of “punishing the children for the sins of the fathers” (Exod 20:5; Deut 5:9, NIV; also Tobit 3:3–5) was common enough in the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism (though not without vigorous dissent; see Ezekiel 18). The notion that a person could be held accountable for his own sins prior to birth is less widely attested and therefore more problematic.11 Possibly it arises not so much from a particular theological belief as simply an intuitive feeling that because God is just, human sinfulness must somehow lie at the root of all human misfortune.12 The default assumption was that the victim was to blame, but in the case of someone born blind, the added possibility existed that it might be the parents.

3 While Jesus nowhere rules out such theorizing in principle (see above, 5:14; also Mk 2:5, 9),13 in this instance he is quick to reject both alternatives: “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be revealed in him” (v. 3). What he is saying, of course, is not that the man and his parents are entirely without sin, but that sin is not the reason for the man’s predicament.14 He views the man’s blindness from birth not as tragedy but as opportunity. This is commonly understood to mean that the man’s blindness affords Jesus an opportunity to work a miracle. The “works of God” are understood to be the works of Jesus.15 But this interpretation overlooks the striking similarity between Jesus’ pronouncement here and at 3:21, at the end of his brief discourse to Nicodemus at the first Passover.16 The parallel becomes clear when the two sayings are put side by side:

“Whoever does the truth comes to the Light, so that his works will be revealed17 as works wrought in God”18 (3:21).

“Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be revealed in him” (9:3).19

The parallel suggests that the man born blind is the Gospel writer’s prime example and embodiment of the person who “does the truth” and therefore “comes to the Light.” Consequently, a different interpretation of “the works of God” presents itself: that is, that they are not so much the miracles of Jesus as the working of God in the man’s life, even before he met Jesus, setting him apart as the Father’s gift to the Son (see, for example, 6:37, 39). As such, they are not fully “revealed” or disclosed in the miracle of restored sight, but only later, when the former blind man finally “comes to the Light” (3:21) by believing in Jesus (see 9:38).20 For him the act of believing is not so much a “conversion experience” as a revelation of that which he is already, a person who by the power of God “does the truth” (3:21), in sharp contrast to the person “who practices wicked things” and who therefore “does not come to the Light, for fear his works will be exposed” (3:20). On this interpretation, verse 3 seems to have more to do with the blind man’s spiritual history than with the mission or miracles of Jesus.

4 So which interpretation is correct? Do “the works of God” have to do with the spiritual life of the man born blind, or with the mission and miracles of Jesus? Verses 1–3, as we have just seen, point to the former, while verses 4–5 accent the latter. “We must work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day,” Jesus continues, “Night is coming when no one can work” (v. 4). Having spoken generally of “the works of God” (v. 3), Jesus now seems to call attention to his own mission, and especially the healing he is about to perform. “The One who sent me” is by now a familiar phrase with reference to Jesus’ mission (see, for example, 4:34; 5:24, 30; 6:38; 7:16, 28, 33; 8:26, 29), but what is surprising is the plural “we must” (ἡμᾶς δεῖ) with which verse 4 begins: that is, “We must work the works of the One who sent me.”21 It is commonly argued that Jesus is here enlisting or inviting his disciples (and by extension the readers of the Gospel) to join him in working the works of God,22 but the difficulty is that the disciples play no part whatever in the blind man’s healing or in his coming to faith. In fact, from this point on they disappear from the story. More likely, by “we”23 Jesus means himself and the blind man, as if to say, “He and I must work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day.”24 In this case a distinction must be made between the way in which Jesus “works the works of the One who sent me,” and the way in which the blind man does so. Jesus clearly does so by carrying out his mission, that is, by healing the blind man. But how does the blind man “work the works” of God? Jesus was asked just that question three chapters earlier in Capernaum: “What shall we do that we might work the works of God?” (6:28), and he said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom that One sent” (6:29). There is no reason to suppose that Jesus would have answered the blind man any differently, and in fact the question of belief will emerge explicitly in the last encounter between the two (9:35–38).

The other striking feature of the pronouncement (in addition to the plural “we”) is its urgency: “We must,”25 Jesus insists, “work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day,” adding the cautionary note that “Night is coming when no one can work.” Even those who understand “we” to refer to Jesus’ disciples or to the readership of the Gospel know that they are on shaky ground applying this pronouncement to the church’s mission in the present age. On such a view, “day” would be the time allotted for the proclamation of the Gospel, and “night” the time of judgment when it is too late for sinners to repent (as perhaps implied in the gospel song, “Work, for the Night Is Coming”). Most of the New Testament, by contrast, sees the present as “night” and the “day of the Lord” as just that, “day” (see Rom 13:12; 1 Thess 5:1–11; 2 Pet 1:19). The only way to give the pronouncement an application to the present is to view it in generalized human terms, with “day” as a person’s lifetime on earth, and “night” as senility or death.26

More to the point, as most interpreters recognize, is Jesus’ sense of his own time limitations in the Gospel of John. He has already told his mother, “My hour has not yet come,” with the implication that there was still time to act. Later he told his brothers, “My time is not yet here” (7:6), implying that his decisions and his itinerary were in God’s hand. Still later, the Gospel writer commented, not once but twice, that “his hour had not yet come,” implying that it was drawing near (7:30; 8:20). Jesus himself reinforced the first of these notices with the comment, “Yet a short time I am with you, and I go to the One who sent me” (7:33), and the second similarly with the words, “I go and you will seek me,” and “Where I go you cannot come” (8:21). Now he is saying it again, in different words. Time is running out, but there is still a window of opportunity,27 not just for Jesus but for his disciples (see 11:9–10; 13:33; 16:16), and for all who hear his word (see 12:35–36), in this instance the blind man. Jesus will not be “passing by” again (see v. 1). When “day” turns into “night” (see 13:30), with the arrest and execution of Jesus, it will be too late for him. Therefore, “We,” says Jesus, “—he and I together—must work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day. Night is coming when no one can work.”28

5 Because “day” calls to mind the imagery of “light” (see also 11:9), Jesus adds, “When I am in the world, I am the Light of the world” (v. 5). Here he reiterates the claim he made to the Pharisees at the Tent festival in the preceding chapter (8:12),29 though without the characteristic egō eimi formula,30 and without the accompanying invitation to “follow” and therefore “not walk in darkness,” but “have the light of life.” Instead of the latter, a story will be told in which those promises literally come true.31 What better vindication of Jesus as “the Light of the world” than giving sight to a man born blind? At the same time, the pronouncement revisits the Gospel’s opening claim that “In him was life, and that life was the light of humans” (1:4), illuminating “every human being who comes into the world” (1:9)—even, as Jesus will now demonstrate, one who “came into the world” unable to see.

6 “Having said these things”32 marks a transition (as later in 13:21 and 18:1) from speech (vv. 3–5) to action. The healing miracle is narrated quickly and concisely (vv. 6–7), with no wasted words. The blind man will repeat it himself four times, each time more concisely than before (vv. 11, 15, 25, and 30). All we are told is that Jesus “spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle and smeared the mud on the eyes” (v. 6). He neither introduces himself to the blind man, nor verifies that he was in fact born blind, nor does he ask him, “Do you want to get well?” (see 5:6). He simply acts. His use of spittle recalls two healing stories in Mark, one in which he put his fingers in the ears of a deaf mute and then “spit and touched the man’s tongue” (Mk 7:33, NIV), and another (specifically involving a blind man) in which he “spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him” (Mk 8:23, NIV), healing him in two stages (see vv. 24–25).33 An interpretation as old as Irenaeus identifies Jesus’ action here as a mirror image of the work of God in creation.34 In contrast to the healing of the sick man at the pool, Jesus healed “not by means of a word, but by outward action; doing this not without a purpose, … but that He might show forth the hand of God, that which at the beginning had moulded man.”35 More specifically, he adds, “that which the artificer, the Word, had omitted to form in the womb [namely, the blind man’s eyes], He then supplied in public, that the works of God might be manifested in him, in order that we might not be seeking out another hand by which man was fashioned, nor another Father; knowing that this hand of God which formed us at the beginning, and which does form us in the womb, has in the last times sought us out who were lost, winning back His own, and taking up the lost sheep upon his shoulders, and with joy restoring it to the fold of life.”36

Many centuries have passed, yet no better interpretation of the verse has been offered.37 As Irenaeus rightly saw, the accent is on the “mud,” not the spittle.38 The latter is simply a means of making a ball of mud, lending realism to the narrative. A literal reenactment of Genesis would obviously have required Jesus’ “breath” rather than “spittle,” just as God “breathed” into Adam the breath of life (see Gen 2:7), but it would have destroyed the story’s credibility. For that “breath of life” the reader must wait until 20:22, where Jesus “breathed” (enephysēsen) on his disciples to give them the Spirit after his resurrection. The Spirit goes unmentioned in this account of Jesus and the blind man, but (in characteristically Johannine fashion) water takes the Spirit’s place.

7 To finish the healing, Jesus tells the blind man, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” The Gospel writer inserts a comment that “Siloam” means “sent,”39 and then adds that the blind man “went away and came seeing” (v. 7). The etymology of the name (whatever its origin and whatever its merits)40 is not strictly necessary to the story, but for that very reason is important to the author—and consequently to the reader. The one preeminently “sent” in this Gospel is Jesus himself (one need look no further than v. 4, “the One who sent me”), but John too was twice said to be “sent” (1:6; 3:28), as Jesus’ disciples will also be (4:38; 17:18; 20:21), and as the Spirit will be sent, whether by the Father (14:26) or by Jesus (15:26; 16:7). The perfect participle “sent” is used of John, but not of Jesus,41 or the disciples, or the Spirit.42 Still, in light of this Gospel’s use of water as an image for eternal life (4:14), or for the Spirit (see 3:5–6; 7:39), the notice that Siloam’s waters are “sent” points to their origin “from above,” whether immediately from the Gihon Spring up the hill, or ultimately (in the form of rain) “from heaven,” or “from God.”43 Beyond that, the notice hints (without quite saying so) that Siloam’s waters, like the “water and Spirit” of which Nicodemus was told (3:5), will give the man born blind another birth, and therefore new eyes.44 While Jesus promises nothing,45 the blind man, without a word, “went away and washed and came seeing.”46

8–9 The preceding verse left it unclear precisely where the man “came” on returning from the pool of Siloam, and who was there to witness that he could now see. If he returned to the place where Jesus met him, Jesus was evidently no longer present, because later in the chapter he shows no sign of recognizing Jesus (see vv. 36–38). Whether in the same place or elsewhere, the first to notice him were “the neighbors and those seeing him formerly, that he was a beggar,”47 and they are confused (v. 8). Although the term is not used, there is a division among them over his identity, recalling earlier “splits” in the crowd at the temple over the identity and behavior of Jesus (see 7:12, 25–27, 40–43). “Isn’t this the one who sits and begs?” they ask (v. 8), and they cannot agree among themselves, as “Some said, ‘It is he,’ ” and “others said, ‘No, but it is like him’ ” (v. 9).48 Their confusion stems not just from possible changes in the man’s appearance and demeanor, but from their natural difficulty in believing that such a miracle could ever occur (see v. 32). Finally, the man speaks up and identifies himself in a manner recalling Jesus’ own repeated self-identification: “It is I”49 (v. 9; see 4:26; 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58). While this is, strictly speaking, “an instance of a purely secular use of the phrase,”50 it creates an effect strangely similar to what it would have had on Jesus’ lips, for it confirms the reality of the miracle, and consequently the presence in Jerusalem of a miracle worker.

10–12 “The neighbors and those seeing him formerly,” momentarily divided (v. 9), now speak with one voice. “How were your eyes opened?” (v. 10) they ask the former blind man.51 This gives him his first opportunity to tell the story for himself, and he does so: “The man called Jesus made mud and smeared my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So when I went away and washed, I could see” (v. 11). From this we learn that Jesus must have introduced himself by name, even though the author has not told us so, but we learn little else. There is no mention of the spittle (which he probably knows nothing about), but only of the mud (which he would have felt), and the command Jesus gave him to “Go to Siloam and wash.”52 Clearly, the accent is on Jesus. This is only the third time in the Gospel that anyone has spoken Jesus’ name, and this time the speaker is someone who knows nothing else about him (for example, that he was “son of Joseph,” or “from Nazareth”).53 For now, he knows the healer simply as a man,54 “the man called Jesus.” Later on, in defiance of the Pharisees, he will call him “the prophet” (v. 17) and a man “from God” (v. 32), but still later he will admit that he does not know who this “Jesus” is (“And who is he, sir, that I might believe in him?” v. 36).

The man’s neighbors, accordingly, having learned of the “how” (v. 11), now pursue the question of who this “man called Jesus” is and “where” he can be found. “Where is that man?” they ask, and the former blind man replies, “I don’t know” (v. 12). The question “Where is that man?”55 echoes word for word the question of “the Jews” at the start of the Tent festival (7:11), reminding the reader that Jesus is still wanted by the religious authorities, and that his life is still in danger (see 5:18; 7:1, 19, 25; 8:37, 40, 59). That his whereabouts are unknown also hints that he is perhaps still, or again, “hidden” (see 8:59). After his brief encounter with the blind man, he seems to have “ducked out,” much as he did on an earlier occasion (5:13) after healing the sick man at Bethsaida. He will not be seen again until verse 35, where he is said to have “found” the former blind man again and questioned him about his belief.56 For now, the neighbors and the Pharisees must content themselves with interrogating the former blind man, who functions in the narrative as Jesus’ surrogate, and for the Gospel writer as a kind of spokesman for the truth.

13–14 That the man’s “neighbors and those seeing him formerly, that he was a beggar” (v. 8) are not just curiosity seekers but are in some way in league with the religious authorities is clear from what they do next: “They brought him to the Pharisees, the man who was once blind” (v. 13). If not quite a citizens’ arrest, their action raises the seriousness of the interrogation, and consequently the sense of impending danger, to a higher level, signaled by the Gospel writer’s factual notice, “Now it was Sabbath on the day Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes” (v. 14; compare 5:9). Why does it matter that it was the Sabbath? Once again (as in 5:9), the issue will be Sabbath breaking, this time not by the one healed (in picking up his mat, 5:10), but by Jesus himself, who “made the mud and opened his eyes.”57 The notice comes very late in the story, and changes the whole character of the story. From now on, Sabbath observance will be the overriding issue between the man born blind (who in a way becomes a stand-in for Jesus himself) and the Jewish authorities.58

15 The former blind man’s interrogation moves into a second stage, as “again the Pharisees also asked him how he could see” (v. 15a, as in v. 10, “How were your eyes opened?”). His answer is also the same, but more concise than before: “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed and I see” (v. 15b; compare v. 11). The repetition drives home the point that the man sticks to his story because it is true, yet at the same time the story grows shorter and simpler because readers of the Gospel can fill in the gaps for themselves. For example, the pool is not named this time, and (perhaps more significantly) the man does not say that Jesus “made mud” (as in vv. 6, 11, and 14), only that he “put mud on my eyes”—omitting the detail that may have provoked the charge of Sabbath breaking.

16 The simple answer provokes a “split”59 among the Pharisees, not over what happened, but (like the ‘split’ in the crowd in 7:40–43) over the identity and character of Jesus, who made it happen (v. 16). “Some” of them concluded, “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath,” while “others” asked, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” At this point no one, not even he who was born blind, is suggesting that Jesus is more than “a man,” whether “the man called Jesus” (v. 11), or a “man from God,”60 or “a sinful man” (v. 24).61 A “man from God” would presumably be a prophet like John, “a man sent from God” (1:6). “Some” appealed to Sabbath law, arguing that no true prophet would break the Sabbath, while “others” appealed to the stubborn fact of the healing to reply that no “sinful man” could have performed “such signs.”62

The comment of this second group recalls those at the early Passover in Jerusalem who were said to have “believed” in Jesus on the basis of “the signs he was doing” (2:23), and Nicodemus, who told Jesus that “no one can do these signs you are doing unless God is with him” (3:2). They also sound like the “large crowd” that followed Jesus in Galilee “because they could see the signs he was doing for those who were sick” (6:2), and those in the crowd at the Tent festival who “believed in him,” saying “The Christ, when he comes, will he do more signs than this man did?” (7:31). “Signs” have not been mentioned since then, and Jesus has performed only one more. In none of the other instances was there conclusive evidence of genuine faith, and the same is true here. All that is evident that the Pharisees do not present a united front. There is indeed “a split” among them, but it is also true that the second group, even though not believers, function in the narrative as a voice of reason, speaking for the Gospel writer: “How can a sinful man do such signs?” How indeed?

17 The former blind man is drawn into the “split,” much as he was drawn into the previous dispute over his own identity (v. 9). This time the issue is not his identity but that of Jesus, as “they say to the blind man again, ‘What do you say about him, because he opened your eyes?’ ”63 His answer is characteristically simple: “He is a prophet” (v. 17). It is unclear whether he is simply siding with those Pharisees who had asked, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” (v. 16), implying that he was in some sense a man “from God,” or whether he is saying something more. His reply could be also translated, “He is the Prophet,”64 but this is as unlikely here as it would have been in the case of the Samaritan woman (see 4:19). Rather, he is doing little more than sticking to his story by suggesting that Jesus is “a prophet,” or “man from God,” perhaps in much the same sense that the Pharisees had determined that John was (see 5:33–35).65 In identifying Jesus as “a prophet,” he is merely making explicit what one faction of the Pharisees (the “others” of v. 16) already implied.

18–19 The Pharisees, who are now called “the Jews” (the terms being still used interchangeably) seem to pay no attention to the man’s pronouncement that Jesus is “a prophet” (v. 17). Instead, we are told, “they did not believe66 about him that he was blind and could see” without questioning his parents for verification. They seem to suspect either that he had his sight all along while pretending to be blind, or that he is a stranger now falsely claiming to be a beggar who was known to be blind. Instead of going to them, they “summoned the parents of the one himself who could see” (v. 18),67 suggesting a formal interrogation (or inquisition) and raising the threat level still higher, primarily to their son, but also to them and in the long run also to Jesus. Presumably the former blind man is still present when they ask the parents, “This is your son, who you say that he was born blind?” (v. 19).68 The emphatic “you say”69 suggests that the authorities already have reason to believe that the parents will testify to exactly that, even if it means that some will blame them for their son’s condition (see v. 2). “How then does he see now?” they continue, repeating what they previously asked the man himself (v. 15), and what his neighbors asked him before that (v. 10). There is no reason the parents should have known that, not having been present at the healing, unless their son had told them. “The Jews” obviously do not like the answer they have been given, and are questioning the parents in the hope that their son may have told them a different story.

20–21 The parents provide little help. To the authorities’ first question, they reply, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind” (v. 20), telling them what they already seem to have known. To the second question, “How does he then see now?” they reply, “how he now sees we don’t know.” Then, surprisingly, they volunteer an answer to a third question that has not been asked: “or who opened his eyes we don’t know.” They understand that behind the question “How” is the more loaded question “Who”—that is, that the issue in the minds of the religious authorities is christological. Jesus, while not on the scene, is at the very center of the story. The neighbors recognized this when they asked, “Where is that man?” (v. 12), and the authorities’ real question now, as yet unspoken, is “Who is that man?” The parents, anticipating that question, are quick to insist, “We don’t know.” Finally, they end the conversation by urging the questioners to ask their son, because “he is of age, he will speak for himself” (v. 21). It is unclear whether or not the parents know that the authorities have already done that (see vv. 13–17), but if their son is in fact present (see n. 68), the opportunity exists for further interrogation right then and there.

22–23 At this point the Gospel writer breaks in with a narrative aside, explaining what motivated the parents to say what they did.70 They said it, we are told, “because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already reached an agreement that anyone who confessed that he was Christ71 would be put out of synagogue” (v. 22). Then, somewhat redundantly, he adds, “This was why his parents said that ‘He is of age, ask him’ ” (v. 23).72 The point at issue—though never acknowledged as such—is whether or not Jesus is “Christ,” or “the Messiah” (see 1:41; 4:25). This is surprising, because that title has not come up in the present chapter. The question has been whether or not Jesus is “from God” (v. 16) or “a prophet” (v. 17), not specifically “the Christ.” Some in the crowd at the Tent festival had called him that, and others had denied it (see 7:41–43), but now it suddenly becomes clear that no one is allowed to confess him as “Christ” with impunity. The “fear of the Jews” that intimidated the crowds even then (7:13) seems to have grown, and the same fear silences the parents of the man born blind. They were afraid of being put “out of synagogue.”73 The point is not that they themselves have necessarily believed in Jesus, but that, like the Jerusalem crowds earlier, they are reluctant even to “speak about him publicly” (again, see 7:13).

The term “out of synagogue” occurs here and in two other places in John’s Gospel (12:42 and 16:2), but (aside from patristic references to those three texts) nowhere else in ancient Greek literature. It may have been the Gospel writer’s own coinage,74 and as such its meaning would have been readily understood. Synagogue discipline, involving temporary excommunication (for varying lengths of time and for a variety of reasons), was common enough in early Judaism.75 Yet the notion of being “put out of synagogue” does raise questions. There is no independent evidence that allegiance to a false Messiah was ever explicitly made grounds for excommunication (though it may have been so obvious as to go without saying). Moreover, it is widely assumed by modern interpreters that the reference goes way beyond temporary excommunication, and has to do rather with a final break between the Jewish synagogue and the Christian movement that is supposed to have occurred near the end of the first century. This is said to have been precipitated by the so-called Birkath ha-Minim, or “Heretic Benediction,” actually a malediction or curse inserted into the synagogue prayer known as the Shemoneh Esreh, or “Eighteen Benedictions.”76 This added twelfth “benediction” said, “For the renegades let there be no hope, and may the arrogant kingdom soon be rooted out in our days, and the Nazarenes77 and the minim78 perish as in a moment, be blotted out from the book of life, and with the righteous may they not be inscribed. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant.”79 Its effect is said to have been to make it impossible for Jewish Christians to worship any longer in the synagogue with fellow Jews. Possibly something of the kind is reflected in Justin Martyr’s repeated references in his Dialogue with Trypho to the Jews’ practice of “cursing in your synagogues those who believe in the Christ” (Dialogue 16.4; also 96.2), or to “those in the synagogues who have anathematized and do anathematize those who believe in this very Christ” (Dialogue 47.4), or to “insulting the Son of God” and “scoffing at the King of Israel, as your synagogue rulers teach you, after the prayer” (Dialogue 137.2).80

If this is what is meant by “out of synagogue,” the Gospel writer’s narrative aside is an anachronism, reading back into Jesus’ ministry the situation Jewish Christians faced in his own day, presumed to be around A.D. 90 or later.81 Yet the Gospel writer is quite explicit and intentional about what he wants to say: that is, that the policy of excommunication did not begin only after the Christian movement was under way (see 16:2), but was “already”82 in place during Jesus’ earthly ministry. If it is an anachronism, it is a very bold and deliberate one.83 Moreover, it is not limited to a brief narrative aside by the Gospel writer, but becomes part and parcel of the narrative itself, as “the Jews” continue to question the man born blind, and finally, we are told, “drove him out” (v. 34). The difficulty with the widely held theory that the Birkath ha-Minim is in play here is that the Gospel of John says nothing about any “curse” or “anathema” on those who are expelled, nor does the later policy amount to formal excommunication. It appears to have been rather a not-so-subtle strategy to persuade “heretics” (including Jewish Christians) to leave on their own.84

More likely, “put out of synagogue” refers to some form of temporary exclusion in effect already in Jesus’ day (see above, n. 75), enforced only as local synagogues saw fit. Jesus himself, after all, was allowed to speak freely in the synagogue at Capernaum (see 6:59),85 and when questioned after his arrest, he will claim that “I have spoken publicly to the world; I always taught in synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews come together, and I spoke nothing in secret” (18:20). The surprised comment of the “Jerusalemites” at the Tent festival, “And look, he is speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to him,” and the question, “Do the rulers truly know that he is the Christ?” (see 7:26) could just as easily have been uttered “in synagogue” as “in the temple.” In short, the decree “that anyone who confessed that he was Christ would be put out of synagogue” seems to have been enforced only sporadically, if at all. Its only victim, so far as we know, was the former blind man himself (v. 34).86 During Jesus’ ministry on earth (both here and in 12:42), the Gospel writer seems more concerned with the threat (and consequently the fear) of excommunication than with the carrying out of the threat—this in contrast to Jesus’ flat prediction later, “They will put you out of synagogue” (16:2), pointing in all likelihood to the actual experience of some in the writer’s own community, doubtless leading up to the Birkath ha-Minim, or “Heretic Benediction,” but probably not equivalent to it.

Even with the Birkath ha-Minim out of the picture, it may still be the case that John’s Gospel (like the other three) does blur to some extent the distinction between what Jesus’ followers faced during his ministry, and what the Christian community faced at the time the Gospel was written. In the other Gospels, it was not so much a matter of being “put out of synagogue” as of being interrogated and beaten “in the synagogues” (Mk 13:9; also Mt 10:17; 23:34), or “brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities” (Lk 12:11), or delivered “to synagogues and prisons” (Lk 21:12), with the time frame left somewhat ambiguous.87 Perhaps the closest synoptic parallel is Jesus’ warning to his disciples in the Lukan beatitudes, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they separate you and insult you and drive out your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of man” (Lk 6:22). Yet no mention is made there of the “synagogue,” the perpetrators are not called “the Jews” or “the Pharisees” but simply “people,” and in none of the synoptic texts is the issue said to be whether or not Jesus is “Christ,” or Messiah. The issue is over “the Son of man,”88 that is, over the “man” Jesus himself, his identity and his origin, regardless of what title he is given. The same is true in John’s Gospel,89 where (perhaps significantly) the title “Christ” does not occur again until “the Jews” themselves bring it up (10:24). Its role in the present narrative, therefore, should not be exaggerated.

24 Even though they have interviewed the former blind man before (vv. 13–17), “the Jews” take the advice of his parents (v. 21) and question him “for a second time” (v. 24). They could have done so right on the spot (assuming he was present when they questioned his parents),90 but instead they “summoned” him,91 just as they had “summoned” the parents (v. 18), to yet another formal interrogation. The notice that this was the “second” such interrogation heightens the impression of a quasi-judicial proceeding. The former blind man is being given an opportunity to save himself from excommunication. Picking up where their previous conversation left off (see vv. 16–17), they press him to change his story: “Give glory to God.92 We know that this man is a sinner” (v. 24; compare v. 16). “Give glory to God” was simply their way of saying “Come clean,” or “Tell the truth,”93 swearing him in as a witness on his own behalf—against Jesus. Ironically, he will “give glory to God” precisely by sticking to his story and in the end falling down to worship Jesus (v. 38). In adding, “We know that this man is a sinner,” they are trying to put words in his mouth. Their interest is no longer in the factual details of the case, but solely in trying to elicit agreement with their own verdict, handed down in advance, that “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath” (v. 16). The expression “We know,” in contrast to the former blind man’s “I don’t know” (v. 12), and the “We don’t know” of his parents (v. 21), imply that what they were saying about Jesus was a certainty, something with which all right-thinking persons must agree. Yet this was obviously not the case, for some even in their own number had questioned it (see v. 16b, “How can a sinful man do such signs?”).

25 The man born blind changes the subject from the character of Jesus back to the basic facts of the case. Echoing the claims he has just heard about what “we know” (v. 24), he replies, “If he is a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I know, that I was blind and now I see” (v. 25). With this he retells his story a third time (as in vv. 11 and 15), more briefly than before, yet unchanged. Try as they will, his interrogators cannot make the miracle go away.

26–27 Forced to deal with the facts, they press him for more details, looking in vain for discrepancies: “What did he do for you? How [as in vv. 10 and 15] did he open your eyes?” (v. 26). He has told them all that before—at least all they needed to know (see v. 15, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed and I see”), and he now says as much: “I told you already, and you did not hear.94 Why do you want to hear it again?” He might have stopped there, but he cannot resist asking one more mischievous question: “Do you want to become his disciples too?” (v. 27). “His” obviously refers to Jesus, changing the subject again from the healing to the healer—that is, back to christology. Moreover, his emphatic “you … too”95 is a striking giveaway that he now thinks of himself as a “disciple”96 of Jesus, whom he has already judged to be “a prophet” (v. 17). While the form of his question expects a negative answer, the very raising of the question stands as an affront to those now investigating him, and they are quick to respond.

28–29 “The Jews” see no humor in the former blind man’s remark. Stung by his audacity, “they insulted him,” saying, “You are that man’s disciple. We are Moses’ disciples. We know [as in v. 24] that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we don’t know where he is from” (vv. 28–29, italics added). The notice that they “insulted” him97 is as close as the narrative comes to the “cursing” in the synagogues mentioned in later sources.98 The emphatic pronouns (“you” and “we”) put distance between themselves and the man born blind, in effect putting him “out of synagogue,” rhetorically if not yet literally. Their disdain for Jesus shows through not so much in the conspicuous pronouns “that man” (v. 28) and “this man” (v. 29)99 as in their implication that Jesus stands over against Moses the lawgiver, and therefore over against their law, as a “sinner” and Sabbath breaker (see vv. 16, 24).

As far as the reader is concerned, this merely displays their ignorance, for it has been clear from the outset that “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ” (1:17), and Jesus has already told “the Jews” that “if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me” (5:46). They have “not heard” Moses’ words any more than they have heard the testimony of the man born blind (v. 27). The notion of setting Jesus and his disciples over against Moses and Judaism is their idea, not the former blind man’s and certainly not Jesus’ own. Neither Jesus nor the Gospel writer has any quarrel with the claim that “God has spoken to Moses” (see 1:17; 7:19), nor in fact with the accompanying assertion that they “don’t know where [Jesus] is from” (v. 29). But the latter is a damaging admission, as the former blind man will point out (v. 30), validating Jesus’ repeated charge that they do not know God (see 7:28; 8:19, 55; also 15:21; 16:3).100 Moreover, the alert reader will notice the contradiction between what was said at the Tent festival (“No, we know where this man is from, but the Christ, when he comes, no one knows where he is from,” 7:27; italics added) and what is being said here. Even though the contradiction is easily resolved (Jesus himself resolved it in 7:28), it underscores the point that Jesus’ enemies are grasping at straws, looking for any excuse not to listen to his message.

30 The man born blind responds with his longest speech in the chapter (vv. 30–33). It is important to recognize that he is a reliable witness (in the sense in which literary critics sometimes use the term “reliable narrator”), that is, he speaks for the Gospel writer in much the same way that John did in chapter 1 and in 3:27–36, or that Peter did when he said, “Lord, to whom shall we turn? You have words of eternal life, and we believe and we know that you are the Holy One of God” (6:68–69), or that Martha will do when she tells Jesus, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ who is coming into the world” (11:27; compare 20:31). In short, he represents the “Johannine” point of view. Readers of the Gospel are intended to regard his testimony as “the truth,” just as if the Gospel writer or Jesus himself had said it.

At the same time, what he says is also fully “in character” with what little we know of him from the preceding narrative. The style and vocabulary of his speech are not necessarily those of Jesus or the Gospel writer, but are distinctly his own. For example, he cannot resist calling attention to the irony of the fact that “the Jews” do not know where Jesus is from (v. 29). “For what is amazing in this,” he replies, “is that you don’t know where he is from, and he opened my eyes” (v. 30, my italics). The pronoun “you” is emphatic, echoing the emphatic “we” of his interrogators (v. 29), while the claim that “you don’t know” echoes their own disclaimer, “we don’t know,” with reference to Jesus in the same verse. At the same time, the conjunction “and” quite clearly has the adversative force of “and yet,”101 introducing yet a fourth repetition of his story (after vv. 11, 15, and 25), now reduced to its bare essential (“he opened my eyes”). Also worthy of notice is the expression “what is amazing,” or “the amazing thing.”102 While this noun occurs nowhere else in John’s Gospel, Jesus has used the verb “to be amazed” at least three times in the negative sense of being offended or scandalized, particularly in relation to the healing of the sick man at Bethesda (see 5:20, 28; 7:21). But to the man born blind, “what is amazing” is not so much the miracle itself as the delicious irony of the religious authorities’ reaction to it, in particular their ignorance of who Jesus is and where he is from. The man’s “amazement,” unlike theirs, is closer to amusement than offense, as when one savors a good joke and says, “Oh, that’s marvelous!” While he speaks for the Gospel writer, he also speaks in his own style and out of his own personality. Either this unnamed “man born blind” is the creation of a skilled literary artist, or else the Gospel narrative preserves here the memory of a real historical person with very definite character traits. In view of the rather uneven characterizations in the Gospel as a whole, the latter is the more likely alternative.

31 “We know that God does not hear sinners,” the man continues, “but if anyone is god-fearing103 and does his will, this one he hears” (v. 31). “We know”104 mimics and gently mocks the arrogant and twice-repeated “we know” of his interrogators (see vv. 24, 29), but how far does the irony extend? Is the man born blind fully serious in claiming that “God does not hear sinners,” or is he still mimicking the rhetoric of his questioners (see v. 24)? The notion that “God does not hear sinners,” while generally in keeping with Jewish and early Christian belief,105 may come as a surprise to modern readers familiar with Jesus’ story in Luke of the tax collector who prayed, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner” (Lk 18:13), or even the Johannine principle that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous so as to forgive us the sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9). Obviously, under some circumstances God does “hear sinners.”106

Yet the former blind man is being quite serious here, not ironic. His comment reveals something the reader would otherwise not have known, that Jesus accomplished this miracle (and by extension all of his miracles) by prayer.107 This was evident only once up to now, at the feeding of the five thousand (“and when he had given thanks,” 6:11; also v. 23), but Jesus himself will confirm it two chapters later at the raising of Lazarus (“Father, I thank you that you heard me; and I know that you always hear me,” 11:41–42). In saying, “God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is god-fearing and does his will, this one he hears,” the man born blind is not so much excluding sinners from praying and being heard as simply insisting that the prayer itself must be an act of “doing the will of God” (see Mt 6:10; 1 Jn 5:14). Jesus said earlier, “If anyone chooses to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak on my own” (7:17), and the man born blind is now applying that principle to the matter of prayer. The conditional expression, “If anyone,”108 in both passages marks each as a kind of invitation. Jesus was inviting “the Jews” to do God’s will (7:17), so as to learn that his teaching was from God, while the man born blind is inviting them here to do much the same thing109 (v. 31). In one breath he is attempting to vindicate Jesus and at the same time invite “the Jews” as “disciples of Moses” (v. 28) to do what Moses would have done (see 5:45–47), so that their prayers might be heard.

32–33 Playing on the verb “hears,” the man continues: “It is unheard of110 that anyone ever111 opened the eyes of one born blind.112 If this man were not from God,113 he could do nothing” (vv. 32–33). Here more than ever, his voice merges with Jesus’ own voice, claiming to be “from God” (see 6:46, 7:29), and the voice of the Gospel writer, pressing the evidence of Jesus’ “signs” not only on the Jewish community but on all who read his book (see 20:30–31). He also flatly contradicts what “the Jews” have been saying all along, that “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath” (v. 16; see also 5:18). In claiming that if he were not from God Jesus “could do nothing” (v. 33), the man obviously means not that Jesus could do nothing at all, but that he could not have done what he has in fact done—that is, “work the works of the One who sent me” (v. 4). In the larger context of the Gospel, the man’s remark anticipates Jesus’ own later reminder to his disciples that without him they too “can do nothing” (15:5). In short, the man born blind becomes the spokesman and surrogate for the Johannine Jesus, once again confronting “the Jews” with the same claims they have refused to accept all along.

34 The outcome is all too predictable. All that the man’s speech accomplishes is to turn the charge of being a “sinner” (see v. 24) against himself. In their anger, his examiners reply, “You were born altogether in sins, and you are teaching us?” (v. 34, my italics). They are half right. He is “teaching” them, just as Jesus tried to teach them in the preceding two chapters (7:14; 8:20), but they are no more receptive to him than they were to Jesus.114 Where they are wrong is in singling him out (with the emphatic “you”) as one “born altogether115 in sins.”116 The comment revisits the question with which the chapter began, but in a very heavy-handed way. Nothing so subtle as, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (v. 2). Instead, only the blanket assertion that the man is, and was, a “sinner” from birth, and consequently a “disciple” (v. 28) of the “sinner” Jesus (see vv. 16, 24). Reasoning backward from his allegiance to Jesus, whom they consider a sinner and Sabbath breaker, they conclude that he himself must have been “born altogether in sins.” The reader knows they are wrong, first because Jesus has already laid such a notion to rest (see v. 3, “Neither this man sinned nor his parents”), and second because his physical birth is in any case irrelevant. The “man born blind” is no longer blind, for he has been reborn at the hands of Jesus and in the waters of Siloam (vv. 6–7).

Nevertheless, “the Jews” act swiftly on the conclusion to which they have come: “And they drove him out”117 (v. 34b). “Drove him out”—of where? Out of the room where the interrogation took place? Out of the synagogue? Out of the temple? No specific setting has been given (see v. 24). The reader may notice a striking contrast to Jesus’ own promise that “the person who comes to me I will never drive out” (6:37),118 but the only plausible reference point within the chapter is the Gospel writer’s earlier notice that “the Jews had already reached an agreement that anyone who confessed that [Jesus] was Christ would be put out of synagogue” (v. 22). It appears that the threatened excommunication has now gone into effect. Even though the title “Christ” has never come up, the Jewish authorities have interpreted the former blind man’s speech as a confession that Jesus is indeed “the Christ,” or Messiah, and are acting accordingly.

35–36 Jesus, absent ever since he told the man to “Go wash in the pool of Siloam” (v. 7), seems to have been waiting for just such a development. As soon as he “heard that they had driven him out,” we are told, Jesus “found him,” just as he “finds” in the temple the sick man he had healed at Bethsaida (5:14; see also 1:43). While he has not yet introduced himself as “the Good Shepherd” (see 10:11, 14), Jesus is already acting like the shepherd in one of his well-known synoptic parables (see Mt 18:13; Lk 15:4–6). This would have been an appropriate time for Jesus to reveal himself to the former blind man with a characteristic “I am” formula, and claim credit for the miracle. He could have said again, “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (8:12; see also 9:4), but he does not. Instead, he distances himself from the man born blind and his healing, asking about “the Son of man” who healed him as if he himself were a stranger to the whole incident.119 “You,” he asks him, “do you believe in the Son of man?” (v. 35). The emphatic “you” is all too familiar to the man (see above, vv. 28, 34), but now he is hearing it not from an accuser but from someone who cares about him.120

The question, “Do you believe in the Son of man?” comes as a surprise, for we would have expected “the Son of God” (as, for example, in 1:34, 11:27, and 20:31). Nowhere else in the Gospels is “the Son of man”121 ever used as a title by those confessing their faith in Jesus. No one but Jesus even uses the term, except when echoing Jesus’ own words (as in 12:34).122 Even the manuscript tradition had trouble with “the Son of man” in this verse, persistently replacing it with “the Son of God.”123 The reader, of course, knows what Jesus means, for it is evident by this time that Jesus himself is “the Son of man.” In asking, “Do you believe in the Son of man?” he is simply asking “Do you believe in me?” But this is by no means evident to the man born blind. Nowhere up to this point has any of Jesus’ listeners commented directly on Jesus’ use of this self-designation—neither Nathanael (1:51), nor Nicodemus (3:13, 14), nor “the Jews” in Jerusalem (5:27, 8:28), nor “the crowd” in Galilee (6:27), nor Jesus’ unfaithful “disciples” in Galilee (6:53, 62). It is unclear, therefore, just what Jesus is expecting from the man born blind. Does he expect him to understand that the real question is, “Do you believe in me?” More specifically, does he expect him to equate “the Son of man” with “the Christ,”124 so as to reaffirm his purported confession of Jesus as “the Christ”—the very reason for his expulsion from the synagogue (v. 22)?

It is doubtful that the man would have been able to come to such conclusions unaided, and in fact he is quick to admit that he cannot: “And who is he, sir,125 that I might believe in him?” (v. 36). Not having read the earlier chapters of the Gospel, the former blind man has no way of knowing who Jesus means by “the Son of man.” To him, the term can only refer to the man who healed him,126 “The man127 called Jesus” (v. 11) whom he has never seen,128 but whom he considers “a prophet” (v. 17) or a man “from God” (v. 33). Ironically, he knows that “the Son of man” is “Jesus,” yet he does not know that this same Jesus is speaking to him, referring to himself as “the Son of man”!129 He also has no idea of what it can mean to “believe in” such a man. He can be grateful to him, but how can he “believe” in someone he has never seen? His reaction, therefore, is a natural one. In asking “Who is he, sir?” he is not so much asking the healer’s name (which he already knows, v. 11), or whether he is “the Christ,” or “the Prophet,” or some other messianic figure (as in 1:19–22), as simply asking to see him. It is as if he had said, “Where is he, sir, that I might believe in him?” He seems to regard “belief” not as a mere inward conviction but as a face-to-face encounter with a visible, tangible person, and that is exactly what his belief will turn out to be (see v. 38, “he worshiped him”).

37 Here again (as in v. 35) an opportunity presents itself for Jesus to reveal himself in the classical Johannine way, with an “I am” pronouncement, whether understood as “I am [God],” as in 8:58, or simply “It is I” (that is, identifying himself as the man’s healer). That is exactly what he did in his encounter with the Samaritan woman when she spoke of “the Christ,” and he said, “It is I—I who am speaking to you” (4:26). But again Jesus passes up the opportunity, continuing to speak from a distance, as it were, in the third person: “You have not only seen him,130 but it is that one who is speaking with you”131 (v. 37). Why he continues to speak of himself in the third person is not altogether clear. Possibly it is just a corollary of speaking of himself as “Son of man” in the third person. Jesus in this Gospel (as in all the Gospels) speaks of himself as “I” and as “the Son of man” almost interchangeably (see, for example, 6:53–56), yet he never says explicitly, “I am the Son of man” (not even in 8:28, as we have seen).132 He is quite consistent, therefore, in not doing so here, yet the effect is the same as if he had said “It is I—I who am speaking to you,” just as he did to the Samaritan woman.

38 At this point a textual problem presents itself because our manuscripts diverge. A few important early manuscripts omit verse 38 entirely, as well as the opening words of verse 39 (“And Jesus said”), so as to move directly from Jesus’ speech identifying himself to the former blind man (v. 37) to the more general pronouncement, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see might see, and that those who see might go blind” (v. 39). The man born blind disappears from the narrative without a trace, and is never heard from again.133 On this reading, Jesus shifts abruptly from a conspicuous use of the third person to an equally conspicuous first person, and from addressing the man born blind to addressing a very indefinite audience and being heard not by him but by “some Pharisees” (v. 40).

Some have suggested that this reading might be original, the confession of the man born blind having been added from an early baptismal liturgy.134 But the transition is too abrupt. Some kind of reply is needed from the man born blind, and it comes appropriately in his confession, “I believe, Lord,” followed by the notice that “he worshiped him” (v. 38). This in fact is what we find in most of our earlier and more significant textual witnesses,135 and it brings closure to the former blind man’s story. “I believe, Lord”136 (v. 38a) signals his awareness that his question, “And who is he, sir, that I might believe in him?” (v. 36), has now been answered. The vocabulary is the same, but because he now knows to whom he is speaking, the address kyrie no longer means “sir,” but “Lord.” In keeping with that designation, “he worshiped him”137 (v. 38b). The verb “worshiped” implies a visible act of obeisance, signaling his allegiance to Jesus as “Lord” by falling prostrate at his feet.138 In this sense, he could not “worship” Jesus until he had seen him face to face. Jesus’ silence139 signals his acceptance of the man’s worship, in contrast to the angel in the book of Revelation in the presence of the prophet John (Rev 19:10; 22:9), or Peter in the presence of Cornelius. Even though he is “Son of man” (v. 37), Jesus does not, like Peter, tell his prostrate worshiper, “Get up. I myself am a man too!” (Acts 10:26; see also Acts 19:15). By giving no answer, he acknowledges his deity.

The blind man’s story has now been told. He and Jesus together have “worked the works of the One who sent me” (v. 4), just as Jesus said they would. Nothing is said of the forgiveness of his sins, for Jesus has long before made it clear (v. 3) that his sins (whatever they may have been) are not the issue here. Rather, he has simply “come to the Light” (see 3:21), and “the works of God” in his life have been revealed (v. 3). Blind “from birth” (v. 1), he has had his sight restored, signaling nothing less than a new birth. Like the rebirth of which Jesus told Nicodemus (3:5), it is a birth “from water,” water from the pool of Siloam “sent” (v. 7) from above. In that sense he was “baptized,” so to speak, and as a result “put out of synagogue” (vv. 22, 34). Now he has confessed Jesus as “Lord” and “worshiped him” (v. 38). His is a classic case study in Christian conversion, or so it appears.140 The only difficulty is the order of events. Confession is supposed to go with Christian baptism, but the blind man made no confession of faith in Jesus when he washed in the pool of Siloam. Jews who confessed Jesus as the Christ were to be put out of the synagogue (v. 22), but the former blind man did not make his confession of faith until after he had been put out of synagogue. When he finally did so, his confession was not accompanied by water baptism, so far as we are told, even though the Gospel of John makes no secret of the fact that Jesus—or at least his disciples—did in fact perform baptisms (see 3:22, 26; 4:1). The Gospel writer knows what baptism is, and knows what it is to wash clay off one’s eyes in a pool, and there is no reason why he would confuse one with the other. The man could have said, with Philip’s Ethiopian eunuch, “What hinders me from being baptized?” (see Acts 8:37), and Jesus could have said, as he said later to his disciples, “He who has bathed does not have need to wash” (see 13:10), but nothing of the kind is reported. If a baptism took place, the Gospel writer is silent about it, just as he is about any baptismal activity after 4:1–2. Water baptism at this point in the narrative would have been anticlimactic in any case.

While in a general sense the man born blind does provide a kind of case study in the new birth, and perhaps also expulsion from the synagogue (bringing to realization something that seems not to have happened in the life of Nicodemus), the fact remains that the Gospel writer is attempting to write a historical account of something that happened in Jesus’ ministry, not in his own time and place. It is not a parable or allegory, but at most a cautionary tale. The author’s historical intent places certain constraints on him to narrate what happened “back then,” not to bend the facts to conform to whatever may have been the pattern of Christian conversion and separation from the synagogue in his own community. Despite all that has been written in the last forty years or so, we know almost nothing of the author’s community, not even whether it was predominantly Jewish Christian or Gentile Christian. Conversions there surely were, and baptisms, and confessions of faith, and perhaps in some instances expulsions from synagogues, and in others voluntary departures. Almost anything can be imagined,141 but it is doubtful that any one pattern can be imposed on this theoretical “Johannine community.”142 All we know is that in the narrative the man born blind “worshiped” Jesus—worshiped him, we may safely conclude, “in Spirit and truth” (see 4:23, 24).

N. Blind Guides and the Good Shepherd (John 9:39–10:21)

39And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see might see, and so that those who see might go blind.” 40Some of the Pharisees, those who were with him, heard these things and said to him, “Are we blind too?” 41Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now you say that ‘we see.’ Your sin remains. 10:1Amen, amen, I say to you, the one who does not enter through the door into the courtyard of the sheep, but goes up from elsewhere, that one is the thief and robber. 2But the one who enters through the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3To this one the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he summons his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5But a stranger they will never follow, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6This parable Jesus told them, but they did not understand what things they were that he was saying to them.

7So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you that I am the Door of the sheep. 8All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9I am the Door. Through me, if anyone goes in he will be saved, and will go in and go out and find pasture. 10The thief does not come except that he might steal and slaughter and destroy. I came that they might have life, and have [it] in abundance. 11I am the good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The one who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees—and the wolf seizes and scatters them—13because he is a hireling and it does not matter to him about the sheep. 14I am the good Shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16And other sheep I have, which are not from this courtyard. Those too I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock, one Shepherd. 17That is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I might receive it back again. 18No one took it away from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to receive it back. This command I received from my Father.”

19Again a split came about among the Jews on account of these words, 20and many of them were saying, “He has a demon and is mad! Why do you listen to him?” 21Others were saying, “These are not the words of one demon-possessed. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

Jesus’ next words (v. 39) are a generalization, directed not to the man born blind but to the readers of the Gospel. Within the narrative, a new audience overhears him, “some of the Pharisees, those who were with him” (v. 40), and he speaks to them at some length (9:41–10:5), introducing a new set of metaphors involving a shepherd and his sheep. The author pauses to tell us that these Pharisees “did not understand what he was saying to them” (10:6), but Jesus goes on anyway (vv. 7–18), using the same metaphors and presumably addressing the same audience. As the discourse progresses, the metaphors subside as Jesus speaks more directly of himself and the Father (vv. 14–18). By the time he has finished, his audience, now renamed “the Jews” (v. 19), is divided in a “split” or “schism” over his words (vv. 19–21), confirming the notion that they “did not understand.”

39 In contrast to verse 37, where we learn what Jesus “said to him,” that is, to the former blind man, here we are told only what Jesus “said.” No hearers are specified until the following verse, and they are not said to be the intended audience. The man born blind has disappeared from the scene, and will not be heard from again.1 Jesus’ words seem to be addressed to a more general audience, as general as the Gospel’s entire readership: “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see might see, and so that those who see might go blind.”

The pronouncement is a riddle2 or paradoxical saying, the kind that “historical Jesus” research might be quite willing to accept as authentic if it were in the Synoptics instead of John. The riddle offers two contrasting reasons why Jesus “came into this world,” the first positive and the second negative:

(a) “so that those who do not see might see,”

(b) “so that those who see might go blind.”

Such “reversal” sayings are common enough in the synoptic Gospels (see, for example, Mk 8:35; 10:43–44; Mt 23:12),3 and here too the pronouncement stands on its own (like those in the Synoptics), not as part of an extended discourse. This particular saying is deeply rooted in the Old Testament, particularly Isaiah,4 yet is introduced in a characteristically Johannine way, with Jesus claiming that “I came into the world” (see 12:46; 16:28; 18:37).5 In John’s Gospel, Jesus comes into the world as “light” (see 1:9; 3:19; 12:46), and the first part of the pronouncement (a) revisits rather straightforwardly his claim to be “the Light of the world” (8:12; 9:4), with the implication that as “the Light” he came so that (quite literally) “those who do not see might see”—that is, that the blind man might receive his sight. The difficulty comes in the second part of the pronouncement (b), for nothing has prepared us for any intention on Jesus’ part “that those who see might go blind”—least of all literally blind! This sends a signal that the first part (a) does not refer primarily to literal blindness either, but to spiritual blindness, the inability to recognize Jesus as God’s “Son of man” and worship him as “Lord” (see v. 38).6

More important, the opening words, “For judgment I came into the world,” make it clear from the start that the accent is on the negative assertion (b), not the positive one (a). That is, the emphasis is on the intent that “those who see might go blind,” rather than that “those who do not see might see.” The latter is of course also true. We have just seen it happen, at considerable length and in marvelous detail. But it is not what Jesus wants to talk about just now. Instead, he echoes what he said six chapters earlier: “This then is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and human beings loved the dark and not the Light, because their works were evil” (3:19).7 At the same time, he anticipates the verdict on his entire public ministry given three chapters later in Isaiah’s words: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with the eyes and understand with the heart and turn, and I heal them” (12:40; see also Mt 13:14–15; Mk 4:12; 8:18). In short, there is both good and bad news in Jesus’ pronouncement, but for the moment at least the bad news predominates.

40 No audience for these words has been identified, but an audience (whether the intended one or not) now makes its appearance: “Some of the Pharisees, those who were with him, heard these things and said to him, ‘Are we blind too?’ ” (v. 40). They are not necessarily to be identified with the religious authorities who had repeatedly questioned the former blind man, designated in the narrative either as “the Pharisees” (vv. 13, 15) or “the Jews” (vv. 18, 22). Rather, they are “some of the Pharisees,”8 possibly a random group or possibly one faction in the dispute mentioned earlier over whether or not Jesus was “from God.” Back in 9:16, “some of the Pharisees”9 were identified as those who said, “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath,” but it cannot be assumed here that the expression necessarily refers to the same faction, only that it refers to one faction out of two (or perhaps more). They could just as easily be identified with those who asked, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” (v. 16). This would be quite consistent with the notice given here that these Pharisees were “with” Jesus.10 This could just mean that they were nearby, within earshot (see RSV, NRSV, REB), but it could also imply that they were at worst neutral or at best even sympathetic to his cause.11 In any event, there is no overt hostility in their question, “Are we blind too?”

Still, the form of the question12 does expect a negative answer, as if to say, “Surely we are not blind too?” It is not altogether clear whether they have in mind literal or figurative blindness. If the former, they are merely presupposing the obvious: unlike the beggar in the preceding narrative, they can see. If the latter, they are already defending themselves against any implication that they are spiritually blind in refusing to fall down and worship Jesus. The wording of their question argues for the former, as if to ask, “Are we too literally blind, like that beggar?” Obviously not.13 Such a misunderstanding sounds almost too crude to be true, yet it is fairly typical of the ways in which Jesus’ words are often misunderstood or taken literally in this Gospel (see, for example, 2:20, 3:4, 4:11, 6:52, 7:35, 8:22, 11:12, and 13:9). If they are not actually blind, they argue, how can Jesus claim to give them sight?14 They sound a little like “the Jews” at the Tent festival a chapter earlier who said, “We are Abraham’s seed, and have never been in slavery to anyone. How do you say that ‘You will become free’?” (8:33). That was of course the beginning of a very hostile confrontation, but only the beginning. Here too a confrontation ensues, albeit a milder one (see vv. 6, 19–21), and it is Jesus who provokes it.

41 The confrontation begins with Jesus’ explanation of his riddle. Now that he again has a specific audience, he speaks “to them” (v. 41). “If you were blind,” he says, “you would not have sin. But now you say that ‘we see.’ Your sin remains” (v. 41). The “explanation” is as much a riddle as the riddle itself. Like the riddle it purports to explain (see v. 39), it divides naturally into two parts, the first positive and the second negative:

(a) “If you were blind, you would not have sin.”

(b) “But now you say that ‘we see.’ Your sin remains.”

The first part (a) is a contrary-to-fact conditional sentence. In the second part (b), “But now”15 brings us back to reality. As in the preceding riddle, the first part revisits in straightforward fashion the story of the man born blind, where he who was literally blind did not “have sin” (see v. 3, “Neither this man sinned nor his parents”). The second part drives home Jesus’ indictment of the Pharisees, even these relatively friendly Pharisees. In asking, “Are we blind too?” (v. 40), they had implied that of course they were not, and Jesus calls them on it, rephrasing their puzzled question as an explicit claim that “We see” (v. 41).16 In doing so, he abruptly changes the subject from literal blindness and sight respectively to what has been his preoccupation all along: their response, or lack of it, to himself and to his word. To “see” is to recognize who Jesus is and worship him, as the blind man finally did. In saying, “We see,” therefore, they are lying, for they have not believed in Jesus. The likely point is that everyone is “born blind” in the sense of being unable to “see the kingdom of God” or enter it without a second birth (see 3:3, 5). This in itself is not sin. Nicodemus, for example, was never accused of sin. The sin comes in the lie that “We see,” and that consequently no new birth is needed or wanted (see 8:44–45, “When he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own, because he is the liar and the father of it. But I, because I speak the truth, you do not believe me”).

“Sin”17 in John’s Gospel is consistently understood as unbelief (see, for example, 8:24; 16:9), and this passage is no exception. Jesus can tell these Pharisees, “Your sin remains” simply on the basis of what he views as their pretension to “see,” and their consequent unwillingness to do what the man born blind has just done.18 He does not explain himself any further to them, yet six chapters later he tells his disciples about them (and others like them) in greater detail and in a grammatically similar way, with two contrary-to-fact conditional sentences about sin followed by a statement of what is “now” in fact the case (see 15:22, 24). Such is Jesus’ verdict on these “Pharisees who were with him” (v. 40), and they offer no reply (not even in 10:6, where we are told only that “they did not understand”). The expressions “to have sin” and “your sin remains” seem to refer to being guilty of sin.19 Ironically, Jesus never explicitly forgives anyone’s sin in this Gospel, but in these two instances (plus 8:21–24) he explicitly withholds forgiveness (see 20:23, where the power to forgive or withhold forgiveness is passed on to his disciples). We are left wondering why Jesus is so hard on these supposedly neutral (or even friendly) questioners.

The synoptic Gospels offer a clue. There too (on the basis of Scripture), Jesus points out that in his ministry “the blind see” (Mt 11:5; Lk 7:22; compare Lk 4:18), yet he repeatedly denounces the Pharisees as “blind” (Mt 23:17, 19; also 23:26), or more specifically as “blind guides” (Mt 15:14a; 23:16, 24). “Can a blind person guide the blind?” he asks. “Won’t they both fall in a ditch?” (Lk 6:39; compare Mt 15:14b).20 John’s Gospel retains some of the vehemence of such texts, though without speaking of “guides.” Instead, as we will see, Jesus drops the metaphor of blindness as he begins to speak of “shepherds,” and consequently of “sheep.”21

10:1–2 Jesus introduces the subject of sheep and shepherds with the fifteenth of his “Amen, amen” pronouncements. Here (as in 8:34–36, and possibly 3:11–21) the “Amen, amen” formula seems to govern not just a verse, but an entire paragraph (10:1–5), which the Gospel writer finally characterizes as “this parable” (v. 6). “Amen, amen, I say to you,” Jesus begins, “the one who does not enter through the door into the courtyard of the sheep, but goes up from elsewhere, that one is a thief and robber” (10:1). That the “parable” begins negatively is not as surprising as it might otherwise be, given the negative tone of what has just preceded it (9:41). Moreover, the negative pronouncement has a positive sequel: “But the one who enters through the door is the shepherd of the sheep” (v. 2).22

Whether or not this “parable”23 is comparable to Jesus’ use of parables24 in the other three Gospels could be debated at length. Its closest kinship is with certain parables of “normalcy,” describing what is natural or appropriate in everyday life. Doctors, for example, are normally for sick people, not those who are well (see Mk 2:17). Fasting is normal when someone has died, but not at a wedding celebration (Mk 2:18–20). New wine normally goes in new bottles (Mk 2:22). If a sheep falls into a pit, its owner will normally pull it out, even on the Sabbath (Mt 12:11). If a shepherd loses track of even one sheep out of a hundred, he will normally leave the rest to fend for themselves while he goes out to look for it (Lk 15:4). If not common occurrences, these are at least common responses to everyday life situations, or even to emergencies. Similarly here, the first thing that gives legitimacy to the shepherd of the sheep is that he enters the courtyard in the normal fashion, “through the door” (v. 1). If we see someone climbing over the wall instead of entering in the normal way, it is fair to assume he is not the shepherd or owner of the sheep, but most likely a “thief and robber”25 (v. 1). Even today, someone seen climbing into a house through a window is more likely than not up to no good.

The “courtyard” is a walled enclosure usually attached to a building,26 serving a variety of purposes27 but here envisioned as a pen or corral for sheep. It is not altogether clear whether all the sheep in the courtyard belong to the one shepherd, or whether several shepherds’ flocks are kept together in a common courtyard.28 The phrase, “the shepherd of the sheep” (v. 2),29 suggests that the shepherd who “enters through the door” is shepherd to all the sheep in the courtyard, or at least all that figure in the story.30 If there are other sheep and other legitimate shepherds who also enter “through the door,” they go unmentioned. The contrast is between the one shepherd who enters legitimately, and the “thief and robber” who “goes up from elsewhere”31 to gain access to the sheep.

3 Two more details (in addition to entrance “through the door”) signal the shepherd’s legitimacy. One is that “the doorkeeper32 opens” to him, and the other is that “the sheep hear his voice, and he summons his own sheep by name and leads them out” (v. 3).33 The presence of a “doorkeeper” is the only hint in the text that other shepherds may have their sheep within the courtyard, but this detail is more likely just part of what a reader might have visualized as a normal courtyard setting (see 18:15–17). It is worth noticing that “the sheep,” not “his sheep”—thus presumably all the sheep in the courtyard—“hear his voice.” Everywhere else in the chapter, to “hear” is to heed and follow (see vv. 8, 16, 27).34 There is no suggestion that all the sheep in the courtyard “hear” the shepherd’s voice but that only “his own sheep” are summoned “by name” and led out of the courtyard. More likely, “the sheep” (that is, all the sheep in the courtyard) are in fact the shepherd’s “own sheep,” so that the courtyard is in fact emptied out. The phrase “his own sheep”35 is not introduced in order to distinguish his sheep from someone else’s, but simply to accent that they belong to him as objects of his love and care.36

The verbs in the present tense (“opens,” “hear,” “summons,” “leads out”) refer not to a particular occasion, but to what is normally or customarily true in any courtyard where a shepherd takes care of his sheep and leads them to pasture each day. While it is also customary in any sheepherding culture for shepherds to give nicknames to certain sheep with identifiable features or characteristics, the notion that a shepherd calls every sheep “by name”37 is an exaggeration prompted by the reality to which the imagery points, that is, Jesus’ intimate knowledge of, and love for, “his own” disciples (see 13:1).38 The shepherd “summons” his sheep, much as Jesus will summon Mary to meet him outside Bethany (11:28), or summon Lazarus from the tomb (12:17),39 and then “leads them out” to freedom and food and water (see v. 9).

4–5 The parable continues with a notice of what happens next, after the shepherd “has brought out all his own” (v. 4). The phrase “all his own”40 echoes “his own sheep” in the preceding verse.41 The strong verb “brought out” (literally, “driven out”)42 reminds us that in spite of the implied application to himself and his disciples, Jesus is still speaking in a parable, and therefore about sheep, not persons. Earlier he had said (using the same verb), “the person who comes to me I will never drive out” (6:37), and in the present setting it was the Pharisees, not Jesus, who “drove out” the man born blind (9:34, 35). Here the verb, in the weakened sense of “brought out,”43 merely resumes the verb “leads them out” in the preceding verse, avoiding a repetition of the same verb. It is not where the emphasis lies.

The verse’s main point is rather that the shepherd “goes ahead of them”44 and the sheep “follow him,” just as Jesus’ disciples “followed” him from the beginning (1:37–38, 40, 43; see also 8:12). They do so “because they know his voice,” reinforcing the point that “the sheep hear his voice” (v. 3). “Knowing” is the result of “hearing,” but it is also the result of being known. That the shepherd knows his sheep is evident from the fact that he calls them “by name” (v. 3), and we now learn that this knowledge is in some way mutual, as Jesus will later make explicit (see v. 14). By contrast, the sheep “do not know the voice of strangers” (v. 5), and consequently will follow no one but their proper shepherd.45 The “stranger”46 (v. 5) is for the moment undefined, but the contrast with which the parable began suggests that “the thief and robber” mentioned there is still in view (v. 1). This is confirmed by the notion that the sheep “will flee from him” (v. 5), and then by the further mention of “thieves and robbers” in verse 8, and “the thief” in verse 10. The parable ends on the same negative note with which it began (see v. 1).

6 The story might have continued, but it does not. Nothing is said of where the shepherd leads the sheep, or what happens next. Instead, the Gospel writer pauses to identify the preceding five verses as “this parable”47 (v. 6), and to make it clear that Jesus aimed it at those Pharisees who were “with him” and had asked him, “Are we blind too?” (9:40). The notice that Jesus “told them” and the reference to “things … he was saying to them” echo 9:41, where “Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now you say that ‘we see.’ Your sin remains” (my italics). The reader is supposed to understand that the audience is the same. Jesus’ verdict against them is now confirmed by the notice that “they did not understand48 what things they were that he was saying to them” (v. 6). Unlike the sheep who “know” the shepherd’s voice (v. 4), they do not know what Jesus is telling them. Their inability to see (9:41) is compounded by an inability to hear or understand.

If the Gospel writer goes out of his way to tell the reader that the Pharisees “did not understand,” does this mean he expects the reader to understand the parable, or is an explanation needed? If so, is the explanation to be found in verses 7–10, or in verses 11–18, or both? If not, what is the reader to make of the parable as it stands? At the very least, verse 6 seems to invite the reader to make a provisional assessment of the parable’s meaning. The efforts of commentators to find in verses 7–18 any kind of coherent or consistent interpretation of the parable invariably end, if not in frustration at least with an acknowledgment of severe limitations.49 It appears that the model derived from Mark and Matthew, in which Jesus tells a “parable” and then supplies a detailed “interpretation” for the initiated (see Mk 4:1–9, 13–20; 7:14–15, 17–23; Mt 13:24–30, 36–43), is not a useful model here. Instead, verses 1–5 should be allowed to speak for themselves before moving on, and the notice that the Pharisees “did not understand” is as good a place as any for the reader to reflect on the parable’s intrinsic meaning and purpose. If verses 1–5 are in fact a single parable, as the phrase “this parable” implies (see above, n. 33), its accent is not on the “door” (vv. 1–2) or the “doorkeeper” (v. 3), but overwhelmingly on the response of the sheep to the shepherd and the relationship between shepherd and sheep (vv. 3–5). The shepherd’s legitimacy rests finally not with the doorkeeper or the door, but with the fact that the sheep “hear his voice” (v. 3), and “know” it so well that they can distinguish it from “the voice of strangers” (vv. 4–5). At the same time, the “sheep” are those whose names the shepherd knows, and in being able to recognize the shepherd’s voice speaking their names, they also legitimize themselves as “his own” sheep (vv. 3–4). Not sight but hearing makes all the difference.

7–8 Even though the Pharisees “did not understand” (v. 6), Jesus speaks “again,” presumably addressing the same audience:50 “Amen, amen, I say to you that I am the Door of the sheep” (v. 7). This comes as a surprise to the reader, who might have expected Jesus to identify himself first of all with “the shepherd of the sheep” (v. 2), or if not that at least to “the doorkeeper” (v. 3). Instead, by repeating the “Amen, amen” formula (now for the sixteenth time in the Gospel), Jesus calls attention to the parable’s opening line, with its own “Amen, amen,” and its key phrase, “through the door”51 (v. 1).

As “the Door” Jesus claims to be the protector of the sheep from “the thief and robber” (v. 1b). “All who came before me are thieves and robbers,” he continues, “but the sheep did not hear them” (v. 8). “Before me”52 could be either temporal (“all who came before I came”),53 or spatial (“all who came and stood before me to gain entrance”).54 The temporal understanding can appeal to 9:39, where Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world,” and to verse 10, where he will say, “I came that they might have life,” yet the language of “coming” is not easily compatible with the metaphor of Jesus as “the Door.” Moreover, the temporal understanding raises the difficult question of what is then implied about Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and John, who came “before” Jesus in time. Are they “thieves and robbers”?55 “All” sounds very inclusive, yet Jesus has explicitly endorsed Abraham (8:39–40, 56), Moses (5:46–47), and John (5:33–35) as his legitimate predecessors.56 Possibly for this reason, a few ancient manuscripts omit the “all,” and many more omit the phrase “before me.”57

More likely, therefore, the phrase “before me” has a spatial reference. “Thieves and robbers” have come “before” Jesus as before a door.58 As “the Door,” he is a closed door to all who confront him and threaten the sheep. These “thieves and robbers” are presumably “the Jews” or “the Pharisees” who have challenged him repeatedly, and have now driven out the man born blind.59 Throughout the preceding chapters, Jesus confronted these enemies alone, but we now learn that in doing so he was also protecting those whom he said the Father had given him (see 6:37, 44). In this way, his intention “that of all he has given me I might not lose anything” (6:39) is certain to come to pass (see vv. 27–29). “Thieves and robbers” are denied access to the sheep, both because “the Door” stands closed before them and because “the sheep did not hear them” (v. 8b). The latter assertion is true by definition, for throughout the chapter Jesus’ “sheep” are identified as those who hear the voice of the Shepherd and of no one else (see vv. 3, 4, 5, 14, 16, 27; also 18:37). Those who listen to other voices are ipso facto not his sheep (see v. 26).

9 Jesus repeats the “I am” pronouncement, just as he repeated, “I am the Bread of life” (6:35, 47), and “I am the Light of the world” (8:12; 9:5), and just as he will shortly repeat “I am the good Shepherd” (vv. 11, 14). “I am the Door,” he continues, “Through me, if anyone goes in he will be saved, and will go in and go out and find pasture” (v. 9). The difference is that now he presents himself as an open door, open not to “thieves and robbers” but to the sheep. It is no longer a matter of coming “before” the door (v. 8) and being denied entrance, but of going “through” the door60 to a place of safety. As in 6:35, 47 and 8:12, the “I am” pronouncement is followed by an invitation and promise, introduced by “if anyone,”61 recalling such classic promises as 6:51 (“If anyone eat of this bread, he will live forever”) or 7:17 (“If anyone chooses to do his will, he will know about the teaching”), or 8:51 (“If anyone keeps my word, he will never ever see death”).62 Like these others, it is an invitation to “anyone” to believe in Jesus and thereby gain eternal life. But because it stands within the metaphorical world of sheep and shepherds, its vocabulary is distinctive. To “go in” and “go out” implies an enclosure, in this instance the “courtyard” (v. 1) housing the sheep. The promise of being “saved,”63 uncommon in John’s Gospel,64 is probably chosen here to highlight the thought of sheep being “rescued” or “kept safe” from harm, whether from “thieves and robbers” or natural predators (see v. 12).65 Those addressed, therefore (and “anyone” implies a very general invitation), are promised entry to Jesus’ “courtyard,” with all the benefits of a shepherd’s care. The “courtyard,” however, is neither a prison nor a fortress, for the sheep, Jesus promises, “will go in and go out and find pasture”—another way of saying, “if the Son sets you free, you will really be free” (8:36). The metaphors of shepherds and sheep and the courtyard are still at work—not least in the term “pasture,”66 which sustains animal, not human, life—but the reality to which the metaphors point is also clearly visible, and becoming more so. As the discourse continues, the metaphors will begin to fade, having served their purpose, and Jesus will speak more and more straightforwardly of his mission and his relationship to the Father.

10 Jesus now returns briefly to the subject of the “thieves and robbers,” before stating in classic Johannine terms why he came into the world. “The thief does not come except that he might steal and slaughter and destroy,” he continues, adding that “I came that they might have life, and have [it] in abundance” (v. 10). The stark contrast between “the thief” and Jesus is striking, as if to guard against any misunderstanding of certain traditional sayings attributed to Jesus in which his “coming” is actually compared to the coming of a thief (see Mt 24:43–44; Lk 12:39–40; Rev 3:3; 16:15; also 1 Thess 5:2, 4). That a thief “steals” is a truism, but “slaughter” and “destroy” are more surprising. These words are part of the metaphor, because “slaughter”67 has to do with the killing of animals (in this instance, sheep).68 The supposition is that sheep are stolen not in order to be added to someone else’s flock, but to be slaughtered for food, and thus “destroyed.” The accent is on “destroy,”69 for being “destroyed” or “lost” is in this Gospel the very opposite of gaining “eternal life” (see 3:16; 6:39–40). Here the thief comes to “destroy,” while Jesus comes “that they might have life.” “Life” corresponds to “pasture” within the metaphor, except that the “life” Jesus gives is “in abundance,” that is, more than mere survival or safety (v. 9), more than “pasture” (v. 9) in the sense of basic sustenance for a sheep or a human.70 “Life” is nothing less than “eternal life” with God (just as in 3:16 and 6:40, and frequently throughout the Gospel).71

11 Abruptly changing the metaphor, Jesus continues, “I am the good Shepherd.”72 Why “the good Shepherd”? Why not simply “the Shepherd of the sheep” (as in v. 2), corresponding to “the Door of the sheep” (v. 7)? Jesus seems to use the adjective “good” in much the same way that the adjective “true” is used in other instances (see, for example, 1:9, “the true Light”; 6:32, “the true bread”; 15:1, “the true Vine”), to refer to what is “real” or “genuine” in God’s sight, the very model or prototype of what a shepherd should be.73 What makes a shepherd “good” is that he “lays down his life for the sheep,” that is, he puts his very life on the line to protect his flock. With this, Jesus leaves behind the imagery of the opening parable (vv. 1–5), with its picture of the shepherd entering through the door and leading the sheep out to pasture. Instead, we see the shepherd and the sheep in the fields outside the courtyard, facing the possible attacks of predators.

In the translation, I capitalized “Shepherd” in “I am the good Shepherd,” but not in the next sentence, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The reason is that in the second instance the definite article appears to be generic (like “the doorkeeper” in v. 3, “the thief” in v. 10, or “the hireling” in v. 12).74 Jesus is speaking of what any “good shepherd” (as opposed to a “hireling”) would do for his sheep. “Life” (literally, “soul”)75 refers here not to the “spiritual” or immaterial side of a person’s being, but, quite the contrary, to a person’s physical life in this world (see 12:25),76 in contrast to the eternal and abundant “life”77 that Jesus gives (v. 10).78 The point initially is not that a good shepherd dies for his sheep (that would hardly benefit them),79 but that he puts himself in danger in order to ensure their safety. Yet the metaphor is moving toward a reality a few verses later in which Jesus as “the good Shepherd” actually “lays down his life” in death to gain for his sheep eternal life (see vv. 15, 17–18; 15:13).

12–13 For the moment, still working with the image of what is expected from any “good shepherd,” Jesus drives the imagery home by invoking a contrast. The opposite of “the good shepherd” is “the hireling,”80 who is no shepherd at all, and has nothing to lose if the sheep are slaughtered because they do not belong to him in the first place. He envisions a scene in which the hireling “sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees” (v. 12), precisely because he is only a hireling, “and it does not matter to him about the sheep” (v. 13). The outcome is inevitable: “the wolf seizes and scatters them.” Whether the predators are humans (as in v. 10), or wild animals as here, the sheep are at their mercy without a “good shepherd” to protect them. Jesus intends no specific identification of “the hireling” any more than for “the doorkeeper” or even “the thief” (while Jesus may have thought of “the Jews” or “the Pharisees” as “thieves and robbers,” the singular “thief” remains a generic figure within an imaginative story).81 He is not even attaching any particular blame to “the hireling,” who is simply acting out his role as one who has no investment in the sheep. All that Jesus is saying is that “the hireling” is not a “good” (that is, proper) shepherd, in that he is by definition not a shepherd at all (v. 12).82 Jesus adds, almost redundantly, that this is “because he is a hireling and it does not matter to him about the sheep” (v. 13), but not before offering a glimpse of the grim but inevitable outcome of the story, in which “the wolf seizes and scatters” the sheep, so that the flock is destroyed (v. 12b). For the reader of the other Gospels, his language evokes a scene just after the Last Supper, on the Mount of Olives, in which Jesus quoted the text, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Mk 14:27/Mt 26:31, from Zech 13:7).

14–15 Again (as in v. 9) Jesus repeats the “I am” expression: “I am the good Shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (vv. 14–15a). Here the metaphor of shepherd and sheep begins to give way to the characteristic pairing of Jesus with “the Father.” We have heard nothing of “the Father” since 8:54, but from here to the end of the chapter he will be very much a part of the discussion (see vv. 17, 18, 25, 29, 30, 32, 36, 37, 38). That “I know mine and mine know me” builds (albeit vaguely) on the notion in the introductory parable that “the sheep hear his voice,” and that the shepherd summons them “by name” (v. 3). The neuter pronoun for “mine”83 probably has as its antecedent “the sheep” or “his own sheep” from that scene (vv. 3, 4) and from the later contrast between the shepherd and the hireling (v. 12; see also v. 27).84 Yet “the Father” is no necessary part of the imagery of shepherd and sheep, and the analogy between the mutual knowledge of Father and Son and of the Son and his disciples is by no means dependent on the Son being visualized as Shepherd and the disciples as sheep (see, for example, Mt 11:27 and Lk 10:22).85 It is the Father, in fact, who makes it possible for Jesus to make the role of a “good shepherd” (v. 11) his own: “And I lay down my life for the sheep” (v. 15). But this time Jesus is not simply telling what any “good shepherd” customarily does for his sheep (as in v. 11), but is instead revealing what he himself does as “good Shepherd.” The verb “I lay down”86 is present (as in v. 11), but points toward the future, when Jesus will give himself over to arresting authorities in order to spare his disciples (18:8), and eventually give himself up to death on the cross (19:30).87 Still, it is not exactly a futuristic present, for Jesus’ life is already at risk, and has been ever since “the Jews began pursuing” him (5:16), and “kept seeking all the more to kill him” (5:18; see also 7:1, 19, 25; 8:37, 40).88

16 It would be easy and natural to move directly from verse 15 to verse 17, where Jesus continues, “That is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I might take it back again.” But in between comes a different pronouncement: “And other sheep I have, which are not from this courtyard. Those too I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock, one Shepherd” (v. 16). This parenthetical comment89 looks beyond the “courtyard” of Palestinian Judaism, and probably beyond Judaism itself to the Gentile world. In that world, Jesus is saying, there are those who are already his “sheep,” and they will prove it by “hearing his voice,” as his own sheep always do (see vv. 3, 4, 14, 27). Later, the Gospel writer will confirm Jesus’ pronouncement (and dissolve the metaphor) with the striking comment that even the Jewish High Priest had “prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation alone but in order that the children of God who are scattered might also be gathered together into one” (11:52).90 Here too the assumption is that Jesus will die (by “laying down his life”), but—oddly—that he will survive death, so as to “bring”91 these “other sheep” under the Shepherd’s care. His survival of death, moreover, is not a mere possibility, but a certainty, something that “must”92 happen, just as surely as “the Son of man must be lifted up” (3:14; also 12:34). The whole scenario recalls Mark 14:27–28, where Jesus quotes a Scripture hinting at his death (“I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered,” v. 27), yet quickly adds, “but after I am raised up, I will lead you into Galilee” (v. 28; also 16:7).

The outcome is that all the sheep (both those “from this courtyard” and the “other sheep”) “will become93 one flock,” with “one Shepherd.” Not one “courtyard” or “fold,” as in the Vulgate,94 but “one flock,”95 a metaphor for the church used only here in John’s Gospel.96 “One flock” is a corollary of “one Shepherd.” Jesus’ vision is not that Gentiles will be brought into “this courtyard,” understood as Judaism, for it is the Shepherd’s care, not a particular “courtyard,” that defines the “flock.” At this point, “one Shepherd” appears to be a self-reference, for Jesus has been the “Shepherd” all along (explicitly so in vv. 11 and 14). Yet in light of what follows later in the chapter the “one Shepherd” could just as easily be God (as consistently in the Old Testament),97 for Jesus and the Father share in the common work of protecting the sheep and keeping them safe (see vv. 28–30). It is precarious to read into the text any definitive assumption as to what the precise relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christian congregations, or between Jews and Gentiles in any single congregation, should be. With or without the metaphor of shepherd and sheep, Jesus’ intent is simply that all his disciples, Jew or Gentile, present and future alike (see 17:20), will become “one” in their relationship to God, their love for each other, and their mission to the world (see 11:52; 17:11, 21, 23).

17 Picking up the thread of verse 15, Jesus continues, “That is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I might receive it back again” (v. 17). His point is not that the Father’s love for him is conditional on “laying down his life” for his sheep (see 3:35, 5:20, and 15:9, where the Father’s love for the Son is a given, and 17:24, where Jesus says, “you loved me before the foundation of the world”). Rather, Jesus’ love for his sheep and his willingness to die for them is part and parcel of his very nature as God’s Son, and therefore as the object of the Father’s love.98 As Shepherd he risks his life for his sheep (v. 11), but as the Father’s Son he does more (vv. 15, 17), giving himself up to death on their behalf (see 3:16). That Jesus has now begun to speak explicitly of his death is confirmed by the next clause, “that I might receive it back again.”99 This clause would have no meaning in relation to a shepherd putting his life in danger for his sheep, but in the present context it points to Jesus’ resurrection—his clearest pronouncement so far on the subject (see 2:19; 6:62).

18 “No one took it away from me,” Jesus continues, “but I lay it down on my own.” The aorist “took away”100 could be a gnomic or timeless aorist,101 but more likely Jesus is looking back at those earlier instances in which his enemies tried to arrest or stone him and failed to do so (see 7:30, 32, 44; 8:20, 59). His words, “I lay it down on my own,” come as a surprise in light of his insistence all along that “I can do nothing on my own” (5:30; see also 7:17, 28; 8:28, 42). The distinction is that Jesus acts “on his own” initiative in contrast to the initiative of others who tried unsuccessfully to take his life.102 He never acts “on his own” in relation to the Father (see 5:19; 7:18).

Jesus will shortly make the distinction explicit, but first he states even more strongly that he acts on his own initiative: “I have authority103 to lay it down, and I have authority to receive it back.” He has mentioned “authority” only once before, in claiming that the Father “gave him authority to do judgment, because he is Son of man” (5:27), in just the same way that “he gave to the Son to have life in himself” (5:26). In both places, Jesus’ “authority,” including his ability to act “in himself” (5:26), or, as he says here, “on my own,” is not something intrinsically his by nature, but something conferred on him by the Father.104 His pronouncement here about “authority” provides a point of reference for Pilate’s unintentionally ironic claim nine chapters later, that “I have authority to release you, and I have authority to crucify you” (19:10). There Jesus is quick to remind him that “You would have no authority against me at all if it were not given you from above” (19:11). Part of the irony is that by then the reader knows that the same is true of Jesus himself, and his own authority, except that his authority is from God and not from Rome. For him, the principle articulated by John still stands: “A person cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven” (3:27). Here, therefore, he is quick to add, “This command I received from my Father.”

“Received”105 is the same verb used twice before, in the clauses, “that I might receive it back again” (v. 17) and “I have authority to receive it back” (v. 18a). It is not a case of an active “taking” in the first two instances (as in the NIV and NRSV, “to take it up again”) and a more passive “receiving” in the third. Rather, the verb should be translated the same way all three times. Jesus has the authority to “receive” back his life from the Father, because he has first “received” a “command” from the Father, and obeyed it by laying down his life. There is a kind of analogy between the “authority” granted to Jesus from the Father and the “authority” Jesus grants to those who “receive” him (see 1:12, “But to as many as did receive him he gave authority to become children of God”). “Command,”106 mentioned here for the first time,107 encapsulates in a single noun all that is involved in the notion that God “sent” his Son (see 3:17, 34; 5:36, 38; 6:29, 57; 7:29; 8:42), accenting the Father’s intention that the Son “lay down his life” and “receive it back again.” Implicit in the “command” is the “authority” to do just that. With this, Jesus ends his speech (vv. 7–18) on a rather defiant note.

19–21 If the first part of Jesus’ speech to “the Pharisees … who were with him” (9:40) resulted in incomprehension (10:6), the second part (vv. 7–18) divides them. “Again a split108 came about among the Jews,” we are told, “on account of these words” (v. 19). “Again” reminds us that there have been other such “splits,” whether “in the crowd” (7:43) or among “the Pharisees” (9:16). Probably only the second of these is in view here, for “the Pharisees” and “the Jews” are, as we have seen, largely interchangeable terms. “Many,” perhaps the majority, say to their companions, “He has a demon and is mad! Why do you listen to him?” (v. 20), and the “others” reply, “These are not the words109 of one demon-possessed. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” (v. 21). The charge of demon possession has been leveled before, whether simply as another way of saying he was mad (7:20), or in a more serious vein, linking him to the hated Samaritans (see 8:48, 52). Here the charge of madness is explicit. While demon possession and madness were not necessarily identical in the ancient world, they were closely associated.110 Here the answer of the “others” (v. 21) suggests that they took the rhetoric of demon possession seriously, even if not quite literally. “Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” they ask, on the assumption that the actions of a demoniac are essentially the actions of the “demon”111 possessing him. Again (as in 9:16) this second group (even though they do not necessarily believe in Jesus) speak for the Gospel writer, echoing the words of the man born blind, “It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of one born blind” (9:32). Just as the question “How can a sinful man do such signs?” (9:16) went unanswered because the answer was obvious to the reader, so too those who asked, “Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” are given the last word here.112 Their question in a way echoes Jesus’ own question in the synoptic tradition, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” (Mk 3:23). It also brings the whole section (9:39–10:21) back to the point at which it began, the healing of the man born blind. The dispute over Jesus’ “words” (vv. 19, 21) comes down finally to his “works.”

O. Titles and Works (10:22–42)

22Then came the Rededication in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. 24So the Jews surrounded him, and were saying to him, “How long will you take away our life? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name, these testify about me. 26But as for you, you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28And I give them eternal life, and they will never ever be lost, and no one will seize them out of my hand. 29That which my Father has given me is greater than all things, and no one can seize [it] out of my Father’s hand. 30I and the Father are one.”

31Again the Jews lifted stones that they might stone him. 32Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father. For which work among them are you stoning me?” 33The Jews answered him, “It’s not about a good work that we are stoning you, but about blasphemy, and because you, being a man, are making yourself God.” 34Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law that ‘I said you are gods’? 35If he said that those to whom the word of God came were ‘gods,’ and the Scripture cannot be abolished, 36then you’re telling him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world that ‘You blaspheme,’ because I said ‘I am the Son of God’? 37If I do not do the works of my Father, don’t believe me. 38But if I do them, even if you don’t believe me, believe the works, so that you might learn and know that the Father is in me and I in the Father.”

39So they sought to arrest him again, and he went out from their hand. 40And he went back again across the Jordan, to the place where John was at first baptizing, and remained there. 41And many came to him, and they were saying that “Though John did no sign, still everything John said about this man was true.” 42And many believed in him there.

The writer pauses to sketch a new scene at the Jewish festival of Rededication (known today as Hanukkah), and a new stage in Jesus’ debate with “the Jews.” The scene accomplishes two things: first, it attempts to resolve the “split” (v. 19) over Jesus’ claim to be “the good Shepherd,” drawing on the “sheep” imagery of verses 1–18 (see vv. 26–27); second, it recalls the earlier confrontation at the Tent festival (chapters 7–8), in that “the Jews” continue to challenge Jesus about his claims more generally, focusing now on such titles as “the Christ” (v. 24), “God” (v. 33), and “the Son of God” (v. 34). He answers by repeatedly downplaying the importance of titles, and calling attention instead to “the works I do in my Father’s name” (see vv. 25, 32, and 37–38). The outcome is the same as before. “The Jews” try to stone him (v. 31; see 8:59), or, failing that, arrest him (v. 39a), but again without success (v. 39b; see 7:30; 8:20, 59). It remains true that no one has taken Jesus’ life from him. Only he has “authority to lay it down” and “authority to receive it back” (see vv. 17–18). His “words” (v. 19) to that effect are thereby vindicated. Once he has made his escape, Jesus leaves the scene of his lengthy debates with “the Jews” for good, returning for a time to revisit the place “across the Jordan” where John testified about him long before (see 1:19–34) and where he had found his first disciples (vv. 40–42). History repeats itself, as “many believed in him there” (v. 42).

22–23 The new scene begins with the notice, “Then came the Rededication in Jerusalem” (v. 22). “Then” is used to set the time frame not for what precedes (9:1–10:21), but for what follows.1 This is evident from the verb “came” or “came about.” When the writer wants to set the time for what has preceded, he uses such expressions as “These things he said teaching in synagogue in Capernaum” (6:59), or “These words he spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple” (8:20). Here by contrast he is not summarizing, but moving on.2

The “Rededication”3 was an eight-day festival, beginning on the 25th of Kislev (or December), commemorating Jewish independence under Judas Maccabaeus and the consecration of the temple in Jerusalem in 164 B.C., three years to the day after its desecration by the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes (see 1 Maccabees 4:59). The author of 2 Maccabees compared it to the Tent festival (2 Maccabees 1:9; 10:6), and Josephus (Antiquities 12.325) called it “the festival of Lights.”4 The writer does not explicitly identify it as a festival “of the Jews” (see 2:13, 5:1, 6:4, and 7:2), possibly assuming that even his Gentile readers are by now reasonably familiar with such observances. Instead, he simply locates it on the Jewish calendar of festivals by adding, “It was winter” (v. 22b). Three months have elapsed since the Tent festival (7:2). Jesus has presumably been in Jerusalem the whole time, but the events of 9:1–10:21 have had no definite time frame, and no particular relationship either to the Jewish festivals or to the temple. “Rededication” brings Jesus to the temple again, this time not to “the treasury” (see 8:20), but to “the portico of Solomon,” a traditional place for teaching and disputation (see Acts 3:11; 5:12).5 Clearly, Jesus was “walking” there to teach and invite discussion (as in Mk 11:27), not simply to escape the cold weather, as some have supposed.6 “Walking” implies that he simply carried on his ministry as before, on the other side of Jordan (1:36) and in Galilee (6:19, 66; 7:1). This time, in contrast to the Tent festival, he does not publicly or formally “begin teaching” in the temple (7:14), much less “cry out” to all who would listen (7:28, 37), but instead waits for the challenge to his authority that will surely come (see Mk 11:27–28).

24 Accordingly, we are told, “the Jews surrounded him,”7 possibly with hostile intent,8 as if with stoning already in mind (see vv. 31–33). “How long will you take away our life?” they ask. “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly” (v. 24). The question, “How long will you take away our life?”9 (v. 24a), virtually defies translation. Most noticeably, it echoes Jesus’ own words a few verses earlier, “No one took it away from me,” referring to his own “life” or soul, “but I lay it down on my own” (v. 18). If the meaning is the same, they are turning his pronouncement upside down by asking, “How long will you take our life away?” or “kill us.”10 But they can hardly have meant such a thing literally. They have been trying to kill Jesus, not the other way around.11 Therefore most English versions render it, “How long will you keep us in suspense?” (RSV, NRSV, NIV, REB, NAB, etc.). While this translation makes excellent sense in the context, no such meaning is attested in biblical, classical, or Hellenistic Greek.12

It appears that the language of “killing” or “taking away life” is used here metaphorically, as in our colloquial English expression, “the suspense is killing me.” While examples from the Greek Old Testament are markedly different, they do exhibit a kindred note of “breathless” expectancy: “To you, Lord, I lifted up my soul” (see Pss 25[24]:1; 86[85]:4; 143[142]:8).13 Here, however, the expectancy is not a good thing, for someone else is “lifting up” or “taking away” their “soul,” or life, and not toward God. In the wake of the “split” dividing them (v. 19), they are uncertain what to expect, for they are no longer in control. The notion of “killing” or a prolonged death, therefore, is by no means inappropriate as a metaphor for their frustration.

The overriding question is what it has been all along, the subject of all the “splits” among “the crowd” (7:40–44), “the Pharisees” (9:16), and “the Jews” (vv. 19–21): Who is Jesus? Behind the disputes over whether he is “from God” or “a sinner” (9:16), “demon-possessed” or not (vv. 19–21) is the persistent issue of whether or not he is, or is claiming to be, “the Christ” (see 7:26–27, 31, 41–42). This is what frames the anguished demand, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly” (v. 24b). By “plainly”14 they seem to mean not just “publicly” (as in 7:4, 26; 18:20), but “in so many words,” rather than in metaphors such as Bread, Light, Shepherd, or Door (see 11:14; 16:25, 29). Any reader familiar with other Gospels will recall the High Priest’s words at Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin: “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” (Mk 14:62), or “Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (Mt 26:63). There, “the Christ” called forth as its companion title, “the Son of God” (or something equivalent), and in much the same way the subsequent debate here will center less on the issue of whether Jesus is “the Christ” than on whether he is “God” (v. 33) or “the Son of God” (v. 36). Even though the title “Christ” or “Messiah” in early Judaism (see 1:41) did not necessarily imply divinity, in the world of John’s Gospel it does, not only to the author (see 20:31) and those who believe in Jesus (see 11:27),15 but even at some level to Jesus’ opponents.16 Their intense interest in whether or not he is “the Christ” seems to grow, directly or indirectly, out of their initial impression that he “was claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God” (5:18). Here as in chapters 7–8, it will turn out that the issue of Jesus as “the Christ” is only preliminary to the issue of Jesus as “Son of God” or “God.” Moreover, in asking him now to speak “plainly,” “the Jews” show themselves ignorant of the fact that he has already done so (see 7:26). In retrospect, he will insist that “I have spoken plainly to the world; I always taught in synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews come together, and I said nothing in secret” (18:20).

25 Jesus answers them with a fairly lengthy speech (vv. 25–30). His opening words, “I told you,17 and you do not believe” (v. 25a), are not literally true. Even though he has spoken “plainly” (7:26), he has never told them in so many words that he was “the Christ.” He has claimed this only once, in a very different setting, when the Samaritan woman said, “I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ,” and Jesus told her, “It is I—I who am speaking to you” (4:25–26). But he immediately explains himself: “The works18 that I do in my Father’s name, these testify about me” (v. 25b). With this, he explains not only the sense in which he can say “I told you,” but also the sense in which he can claim that they “do not believe.” What they have failed to believe is the testimony of his “works.” These works, he reminds them, are in his Father’s “name,” that is, they are the Father’s own works. With this, he takes them back to where their unbelief began, when he said, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (5:17), and they “kept seeking all the more to kill him, because he … was claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God” (5:18). This, and not the title “Christ,” he reminds them, is the real issue. Nor is it purely a question of who Jesus is, for, as he says, “The works that I do” are done in “my Father’s name.” Despite the emphatic “I,” they are the Father’s works and not his own.

26 For emphasis, Jesus repeats himself: “But as for you, you do not believe,” adding the reason for their unbelief, “because you do not belong to my sheep” (v. 26).19 Reintroducing the sheep metaphor, he revisits the parable of verses 1–5 and the discourse of verses 7–18. One might have expected rather, “You do not belong to my sheep because you do not believe,” but the wording here is in keeping with the theology of the Gospel. The fact that sheep hear their shepherd and recognize his voice does more than simply legitimate the true Shepherd in contrast to “strangers” (see vv. 3–5, 8, 14, 16); it also legitimates them as his sheep. “Hearing” and “knowing” the Shepherd’s voice is what identifies the sheep.20 Here for the first time, Jesus defines “hearing” or “knowing” the shepherd’s voice more specifically as “believing.” Those who do not “believe” prove thereby that they are not Jesus’ sheep. Behind it all is a strong accent on election: those who “believe” do so because they are already Jesus’ sheep (see v. 16, “other sheep I have”), his gift from the Father.

27–28 Jesus now goes on to speak positively about his sheep (vv. 27–28), not so much for the benefit of his immediate hearers as for the readers of the Gospel, those whom he wants to assure that he is “the Christ, the Son of God,” so that they might “in believing have life in his name” (20:31). “My sheep hear my voice,” he begins, “and I know them, and they follow me” (v. 27), largely repeating what he said before (vv. 3–4, 14). To this he adds the strong assurance that “I give them eternal life, and they will never ever be lost, and no one will seize them21 out of my hand” (v. 28). Here too he builds on what has preceded, but with particular emphasis on his sheep never being “lost” or “destroyed.” The corollary of “eternal life,” he claims, is eternal safety from predators (see vv. 10, 12) under his protective “hand.” Jesus’ goal for his disciples is what it was four chapters earlier, “that of all he has given me I might not lose anything” (6:39). This goal will come to realization within the narrative, and when it does, first Jesus (17:12) and then the Gospel writer (18:9) will call it to our attention.

29–30 So far, aside from the phrase “in my Father’s name” (v. 25), Jesus’ claims about his disciples have been largely centered on himself and his own initiative: “the works that I do … testify about me” (v. 25); “you do not belong to my sheep” (v. 26); “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (v. 27); “And I give them eternal life, … and no one can seize them out of my hand” (v. 28, italics added). Now, however, he acknowledges (as in 6:39) that his “sheep” are in fact a gift from his Father: “That which22 my Father has given me is greater than all things, and no one can seize [it] out of the Father’s hand” (v. 29).23 “Father” is where the emphasis lies, for it is where the Greek sentence both begins and ends: literally (following the Greek word order), “My Father, that which he has given me is greater than all things, and no one can seize [it] out of the hand of the Father.”24 Perhaps for this reason, the majority of manuscripts, including some early ones, have the relative pronoun and the adjective as masculine, yielding the translation, “My Father, who has given to me, is greater than all things” (italics added). This more familiar reading is an easy, almost too easy reading (see n. 22), for the notion that God the Father is “greater than all things” is something that should go without saying. Moreover, it places all the emphasis on the Giver without mentioning the gift at all.25

By contrast, the point of the reading adopted here is that because the Father is who he is, his gift (“that which he has given me”) is “greater than all things.” The conclusion that “no one can seize [it] out of the Father’s hand” closely parallels what Jesus has just said about himself, that “no one will seize them out of my hand” (v. 28). This can only mean that the gift “greater than all” is Jesus’ “flock” (v. 16), that is, his sheep viewed collectively as “That which he has given me.”26 That believers in Jesus are God’s gift to him, a gift of inestimable value, comes as a strong word of comfort and assurance to the Gospel’s readers. It may come as a surprise to later Christians grounded in the Reformation who have been taught that in ourselves we are corrupt and worthless sinners. “In ourselves” this may be true, but, as we have seen, the Gospel of John views us through a different lens.27 Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and in this case the Beholder is God.28 This immeasurable value of Jesus’ sheep, moreover, is their intrinsic value, for what could be more “intrinsic” than the value assigned to a person or community by God the Creator and Redeemer?

With this Jesus creates a syllogism, not just for the readers’ benefit, but as a direct challenge to “the Jews”: if (a) no one can seize Jesus’ sheep out of his hand, and (b) no one can seize them out of his Father’s hand (v. 29), then (c) “his hand” and “his Father’s hand” are doing the same work, in this instance providing security and protection to the flock. To “the Jews” the syllogism reopens an old wound, recalling the day Jesus began (as they saw it) “claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God” (5:18). Without hesitation, he draws the explicit and inevitable conclusion: “I and the Father are one” (v. 30), an assertion every bit as provocative as “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (5:17), if not more so. As commentators are fond of pointing out,29 “one” is neuter,30 not masculine,31 which would have meant “one person,” and might have been viewed as inconsistent with the later doctrine of the Trinity.32 Still, it may not be wise to draw the distinction too sharply, in view of the phrase “one Shepherd”33 back in verse 16, which, as we have seen, could refer to the Father as easily as to the Son, or to the Father working through the Son. As for the neuter, it would not have to mean more than the two working together in harmony (see 1 Cor 3:8), but the force of the syllogism and the precedent of 5:17 will make it unmistakably clear to “the Jews” that Jesus is in fact “making himself God” (see v. 33). The readers of the Gospel have even more to go on, for they cannot have forgotten the programmatic claims of 1:1 (“and the Word was God”) and 1:18 (“God the One and Only … right beside the Father”).34 At the same time, “one” also makes it clear that Jesus is not claiming to be a “second God” in defiance of Jewish monotheism, but is in some way claiming identity with “the Only God” (see 5:44), the God of Israel.

31 The immediate response of “the Jews” is predictable, as “again”35 they “lifted stones that they might stone him.” “Again” looks back at 8:59, when they did exactly the same thing in response to Jesus’ pronouncement, “before Abraham came to be, I am” (8:58). At that time, their action terminated the long debate, as Jesus “was hidden, and went out of the temple” (8:59b). Not so here. The debate is just getting started.

32 Instead of pressing the explicit claim that “I and the Father are one” (v. 30), Jesus resumes speaking of his “works” (see v. 25). “I showed you many good works from the Father,” he replies, with more than a touch of irony, “For which work among them are you stoning me?” (v. 32). Evidently the works of “the good Shepherd” (vv. 11, 14) are by definition “good,”36 most recently the healing of the man born blind. Jesus’ “good” works, he reminds them, are “many,” bringing to mind as well the healing at the pool of Bethsaida, which aroused their hostility in the first place (see 5:16; 7:21–23), and perhaps others of which they had only heard reports.37 Possibly his use of the adjective “good” also revisits the Sabbath question (see 5:16; 9:16), about which (in other traditions) he said, “It is lawful to do good38 on the Sabbath” (Mt 12:12; see also Mk 3:4; Lk 6:9; 13:15–16; 14:5). His point is one he has made before, in very different words: “The thief does not come except that he might steal and slaughter and destroy. I came that they might have life, and have [it] in abundance” (v. 10). His works are “good” in that they involve the giving, not the taking, of life.

33 Ignoring the irony, “the Jews” respond in all seriousness, “It’s not about a good work that we are stoning39 you, but about blasphemy, and because you, being a man, are making yourself God.”40 The charge is prompted by the pronouncement, “I and the Father are one” (v. 30). Here for a third time (just as in 5:18 and 8:53), “the Jews” take offense at what Jesus is supposedly “making himself” to be. Twice before (see 5:19–23 and 8:54–55) he explained that he was not “making himself” anything, but simply acting on behalf of his Father and allowing the Father’s works to speak for him.

34–36 Jesus makes the same point again by appealing to “the works of my Father” (v. 37), but not before engaging “the Jews” on the basis of their own Scriptures: “Is it not written in your law,”41 he asks, “that ‘I said you are gods’?42 (v. 34). The citation is word for word from Psalm 81(82):6, LXX, addressed originally to gods of other nations, rebuking them for their favoritism toward sinners and indifference to the poor (see vv. 2–4). In some traditions, both Jewish and Christian, the passage has been taken to refer to judges in Israel (perhaps on the basis of such biblical texts as Exod 21:6 and 22:7–9, 28, where the term “God” seemed to refer to the courts).43 Jesus, for his part, goes on to identify these “gods” as those “to whom the word of God came”44 (v. 35a), an expression more appropriate to biblical prophets than to either gods or judges.45 He quickly adds, “and the Scripture cannot be abolished” (v. 35b),46 in effect claiming eternal validity not only for the cited text but for his interpretation of it.47 By “the Scripture”48 Jesus means nothing other than what he has just said to be “written in your law” (v. 34), and his acknowledgment that it “cannot be abolished” signals his acceptance of “your” law (that is, the whole of Jewish Scripture) as his own. The accent is not so much on the inerrancy of Scripture (which is, however, taken for granted by both parties) as on its everlasting authority and applicability, right down to Jesus’ time.

In later Jewish traditions, the text was frequently applied to Israel as a whole, by virtue of Israel’s election and reception of the law at Mount Sinai, sometimes accompanied by the warning, “But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler” (Ps 82:7, NIV).49 It is tempting to assign such an interpretation to Jesus here as well, in view of his likely reference to the Sinai revelation in 5:37–38 (“You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word dwelling in you, because he whom that One sent, him you do not believe”). While that passage has in common with the present one the mention of “the word” of God, or of the Father, and of Jesus as him “whom that One sent” (see 10:36), the reference here is more general. The expression, “those to whom the word of God came,” lacks any explicit reference to the Sinai theophany, nor is there any explicit rebuke (as in 5:38), much less a warning about “dying like mere men.” Whatever the precise scope and limits of Jesus’ interpretation, he seems to assume that his hearers share it, at least broadly speaking, just as they share his conviction that “the Scripture cannot be abolished.” On that basis he creates his argument from the greater to the lesser. If50 God called human beings “gods” because “the word of God” came to them, then how could his accusers say, “You blaspheme,” just because he had said, “I am the Son of God”?51 Actually, he had said no such thing explicitly, any more than he had ever told them, “I am the Christ” (see v. 25), yet in speaking again and again of God as his “Father,” he had essentially made that claim.

The reader of the Gospel sees more. The mention of those to whom “the word of God came”52 evokes for the reader the programmatic announcement, “the Word came in human flesh”53 (1:14)—something “the Jews” at the Rededication festival know nothing about. This is in fact Jesus’ only use of the phrase “the word of God” in the entire Gospel,54 and the reader wonders: What is the relationship between this coming of “the word of God” to those whom the psalm called “gods,” and the coming of Jesus the Word “in human flesh”? Robert Gundry has argued that the two “comings” are the same, so that the “gods” to whom “the word of God came” are none other than—or, at least, include—“the Jews” to whom Jesus is now speaking at the Rededication festival.55 This interpretation is intriguing, because it could provide an appropriate postscript to Jesus’ repeated warnings to “the Jews” two chapters earlier that “you will die in your sins” (8:21, 24; see Ps 82:7, “you will die like mere men”). Still, it will not do simply to identify the respective “comings,” for the “coming of the word of God” to Israel corporately or to its prophets individually appears to have taken place repeatedly over centuries, while “the coming of the Word in human flesh” is by contrast an unprecedented, once-for-all redemptive event in the person of Jesus. “Those to whom the word of God came” are all Jews up to the time of Jesus, some of whom, like Moses and the prophets, received and became vehicles of the word, while others proved disobedient.56 To that extent, Gundry is correct: Jesus’ immediate hearers cannot be excluded. They are “gods” only implicitly, however, not explicitly. Yet even an implicit application to them serves to underscore how meaningless the designation really is. Titles do not matter, even when they are grounded in sacred Scripture that “cannot be abolished.”

What matters, as Jesus will shortly reiterate (vv. 37–38), are the “works” of God that he has done. The emphasis falls, accordingly, not on such titles as “the Christ” (v. 24), or “God” (v. 33), or “the Son of God” (v. 36), which lend themselves to easy categorization, or even “the Word of God” (see 1:14). Jesus could have phrased it, “If God said that those to whom the word of God came were ‘gods,’ then how can you accuse the Word of God himself of blasphemy?” Instead he adopts a rather nuanced and cumbersome self-designation centering not on himself as “the Word” but on the Father. He is simply the one “whom the Father consecrated57 and sent into the world” (v. 36). He himself is only a pronoun (“whom” in the preceding sentence). All the initiative belongs to the Father, who did the “consecrating” and the “sending.” Jesus is the Father’s agent, acting on the Father’s behalf.

That the Father “sent” Jesus into the world is what he has been saying all along (for example, in 3:17; 5:38; 6:29, 57; 7:29; 8:42), but he adds here that the Father “consecrated” him to this mission. Thus, while avoiding the actual title, he confirms publicly what Peter and the Twelve had acknowledged to him in private, that he was “the Holy One of God”58 (6:69). But what does “holiness” or “consecration” contribute to Jesus’ mission to the world? The terminology is used in a variety of ways, but conspicuous among them is the application to priesthood and sacrifice.59 It is worth remembering that Jesus spoke first of God having “given” his Son (3:16) by being “lifted up” on the cross (3:14), and only after that of having “sent” his Son into the world (3:17). In 6:69, Peter’s recognition of Jesus as God’s “Holy One” comes in the wake of his rejection by other “disciples” for having spoken so explicitly of his violent death (see 6:51–58, 60, 66).60 And here the reference to the Father having “consecrated” him in connection with his “sending” recalls the Father’s “command” (v. 18) empowering him to both “lay down his life” and “receive it back again” (vv. 17–18). All of this lends a certain priestly quality to Jesus’ mission, suggesting that he is “sent” specifically to offer himself as a sacrifice. This priestly aspect to his ministry will become explicit in his final report back to “the Father who sent him” (see 17:17–19).

37–38 Having demonstrated from Scripture that titles mean little or nothing, Jesus returns to his main point, his “works,”61 which he had tried (unsuccessfully) to talk about twice before (vv. 25, 32). At the same time, he revisits previous debates, for in his first confrontation at Jerusalem he had claimed (as his “testimony greater than John’s”) that “the works that the Father has given me that I might complete them, the very works that I do testify about me that the Father has sent me” (5:36). And later, at the Tent festival, he had told “the Jews” that one’s “works” make known one’s paternity: “If you are Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works of Abraham” (8:39), and “You are doing the works of your father” (that is, the devil; see 8:41–44). Applying the same principle to himself, he now invites “the Jews” to take account of his “works” and assess his parentage: “If I do not do the works of my Father, don’t believe me. But if I do them, even if you don’t believe me, believe the works” (vv. 37–38a). All he asks for is simple fairness, just as earlier, after an argument based on Scripture (7:22–23), he had invited the crowd in Jerusalem to “judge the right judgment” (7:24). Instead of reminding “the Jews” that they “do not believe” (v. 25), he renews his long-standing invitation to “believe,” if not to believe him at least to believe his “works”62 (v. 38a), which he has repeatedly identified as “the works of my Father” (v. 37).

These are Jesus’ last words in the Gospel to “the Jews,” and it is striking that after all the recrimination that has gone on through five chapters, he can still end with an open invitation to believe—plus the hope “that you might learn and know that the Father is in me and I in the Father” (v. 38b). Not since 8:32 (“and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”) has he sounded such a positive note toward “the Jews,” and there it was to “the Jews who had believed him,” inviting them to become “truly my disciples” (8:31). But it ended badly, with an attempted stoning (8:58), and this time will be no better. “That you might learn and know” is, literally, “that you might come to know63 and continue to know”64—another way of urging them (as in 8:32) to “know the truth” by becoming his disciples. Realistically, this is not going to happen. The notion “that you might learn and know that the Father is in me and I in the Father” is not so much an actual expectation for these “Jews” at the Rededication as it is an explanation to the reader of what those who “believe” in Jesus (or in his works) can expect to know and understand by virtue of their faith. It is something of which they have not yet been told, but of which they will hear more, the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son. “The Father is in me,”65 Jesus claims, “and I in the Father.”66

Mutual indwelling goes a step beyond mutual knowledge: “I know mine and mine know me,” Jesus had said earlier, “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (vv. 14–15). But only once before (in 6:56) has he used the language of mutual indwelling, and that in relation to himself and his disciples (those who “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood”), not himself and the Father.67 In each instance, the reference was “wasted” on its immediate audience, “the Jews,” being intended instead for the reader of the Gospel. Jesus will spell it out (without quite explaining it) for the Gospel’s readers four chapters later, in his farewell discourse. After expressing surprise that Philip does not yet believe that “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:10), he will tell them all explicitly, “Believe me, that I am in the Father and the Father in me,” adding (just as he said to “the Jews”) “or if not, believe on account of the works themselves” (14:11). Finally—mystery of mysteries—he will draw even the disciples themselves into the intimate mutual relationship between himself and the Father (see 14:20; 17:21, 23).

The mystery remains, because in such expressions as “the Father is in me and I in the Father,” or “You are in me and I in you,” the pronoun “in” is being used in two contrasting senses. The Father is not “in” the Son in quite the same sense that the Son is “in” the Father. Nor are the disciples “in” Jesus in quite the same sense that he is “in” them. In both instances the mutuality is limited, in that the Father and the Son (much less the Son and his disciples!) do not have interchangeable roles. As we have just seen (v. 36), the Father “consecrated” and “sent” the Son into the world, not the other way around! All that can be said of the expression of mutual indwelling here is that it restates and reinforces what Jesus said earlier, “I and the Father are one” (v. 30).68 That much even “the Jews” can grasp, and inevitably their reaction will be much the same as before.

39 Without hesitation “they sought to arrest him again, and he went out from their hand” (v. 39). “Again” is striking, for we must look all the way back to the Tent festival for a previous attempt to arrest Jesus (see 7:30).69 The writer in fact repeats almost word for word the language of 7:30: “So they sought to arrest him, and no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.” Yet the circumstances of the two abortive “arrests” are quite different. The first was an official act of “the Pharisees” involving a delegation of officers (see 7:32–36, 45–47), while the present one appears to have been as impulsive and spontaneous as “lifting stones that they might stone him” a few moments before (v. 31). The reader can visualize “the Jews” still with stones in their hands at least through verse 33, and quite plausibly throughout Jesus’ entire speech in verses 34–38. Now in saying “they sought to arrest him again,” the writer seems to be making the point that they were simply trying to seize70 him in order to carry out their stated intention of stoning (see v. 33). In contrast to the confrontation at the Tent festival, which began with a failed arrest (7:30) and ended with a failed stoning (8:59), stoning and “arrest” here are seen as pretty much interchangeable. This is confirmed in the next chapter, when Jesus’ disciples will remind him, “Just now the Jews were seeking to stone you, and you are going there again?” (11:8). Yet the outcome is much the same as before: Jesus “went out from their hand” (v. 39),71 just as two chapters earlier he “was hidden and went out of the temple” (8:59). Here too an exit from the temple is presupposed, though not stated (see v. 23, “in the temple, in the portico of Solomon”).

40 It is tempting to view verses 40–42 as an introduction to chapter 11 rather than as a conclusion to chapter 10, because they identify where Jesus was when he first heard of the illness of his friend Lazarus in Bethany of Judea (11:1, 3), and where he waited two days before making a journey there (see 11:5). Yet the natural sequence from “he went out” (v. 39) to “he went” (v. 40) ties these next three verses more closely to what has preceded than to what follows.72 The reader who wants to know where Jesus “went” when he “went out” learns the answer immediately: he “went back again across the Jordan, to the place where John was at first baptizing, and remained there”73 (v. 40). It was also called “Bethany” (see 1:28), but the name is omitted here, concealing the odd coincidence of a journey from one Bethany to another (see 11:3, 18). It was the place where Jesus had been “with” John (3:26), where John had hailed him as “the Lamb of God” (1:29, 36) and “the Son of God” (1:34), and where he had taken up at least temporary residence (1:39) and gained his first disciples (see 1:35–51). That he “went back again”74 and again took up residence for a time (as in 1:38–39) is therefore not surprising. But why just now?

The two sojourns at “Bethany across the Jordan” stand like bookends to Jesus’ public ministry. After the rejections and attempted stonings at the Tent festival and the Rededication in Jerusalem, Jesus returns to where faith and discipleship began. Unbelief is not the end of the story. The principle that “He came to what was his own, and his own did not receive him” (1:11) still has as its sequel, “But to as many as did receive him he gave authority to become children of God” (1:12). Before the public ministry of Jesus ends, therefore, we see a kind of reenactment, brief and anonymous though it may be, of the call of his first disciples.75 We are not told that those first disciples (now twelve in number, see 6:70) accompanied him across the Jordan. Even though he has spoken of them fondly as his “sheep” and a gift from the Father, they have not been participants in the story since the healing of the man born blind (9:2). Yet by the time Jesus learns of Lazarus’s illness, their presence with him is presupposed, and the reader learns (belatedly) that they were also with him in Jerusalem (see 11:8, where they remind him of the recent attempted stoning). For the moment, attention will focus instead on a new group of believers (vv. 41–42), who will replicate the disciples’ initial encounter with Jesus and (possibly) join their number.

41 To the Gospel writer, the memory of John still haunts the place where he first baptized and bore testimony to Jesus, and where Jesus’ first disciples acknowledged him as “Messiah” (1:41), “Son of God,” and “King of Israel” (1:48). Even though Jesus claimed a “testimony greater than John’s,” the testimony of his works (see 5:33–36), and even though he has just said that titles mean little in comparison to his works (see vv. 34–38), the Gospel writer reminds us that John’s testimony and the titles of Jesus to which he testified are valid as well, now confirmed in retrospect by those who heard him. When Jesus arrived, “many came to him, and they were saying that ‘Though John did no sign, still everything John said about his man was true’ ” (v. 41).76 They were saying this repeatedly, almost axiomatically,77 not to Jesus but to one another, or to no one in particular. Such down-to-earth wisdom, while quite different from the divine revelation that Jesus brings, still represents the Gospel writer’s viewpoint, and like other such comments in the Gospel is characteristic of those who believe in Jesus—or at least give him a fair hearing. Its closest parallel is perhaps the rhetorical question of some in the crowd at the Tent festival, “The Christ, when he comes, will he do more signs than this man did?” (7:31).78

The notice bristles with unanswered questions. Who were the “many” who came to Jesus? Had they been disciples of John, or were they simply residents of the place? If we assume that they were John’s former disciples, their comment represents a very different perspective from those at Aenon (3:23) who had complained to John that Jesus was “baptizing, and they are all coming to him!” (3:26). Now they themselves have “come to him,”79 and the questions multiply. Are they now “coming to Jesus” for baptism? Or are they simply coming to welcome him back? None of these questions are answered for us. The comment that “John did no sign” could imply an ongoing difficulty that his disciples—and others—had had with him during the course of his ministry. If some thought he was “the Christ,” or “Elijah,” or “the Prophet” (see 1:19–21), miraculous signs may well have been expected of him. But if this were the case, his immediate disclaimers should have lowered such expectations. Perhaps more likely, the notion that he “did no sign” arose simply out of the inevitable comparison with Jesus, who was known to have done many signs (see 2:23, 3:2, 6:2, and 7:31).80 This does not mean that Jesus performed signs right here on the spot (as, for example, in Lk 7:21) for the benefit of those who remembered John. Nothing is said to that effect. Rather, just as he had been seen as “making and baptizing more disciples than John” (4:1), so it was by now common knowledge that Jesus performed miracles and John did not.

In any event, the point of the notice is not that “John did no sign,” as if to accent the contrast between John and Jesus (that has already been amply demonstrated), but rather the affirmation that “everything John said about this man was true.” “Everything”81 embraces all that John said about Jesus at “Bethany, across the Jordan” (see 1:19–34), and probably all that he said at “Aenon near the Salim” (3:23) as well (see 3:27–36)—that is, that Jesus was “the Lamb of God” (1:29) and “the Son of God” (1:34), “the bridegroom” to whom “the bride” belonged (3:29), that he was “from above,” or “from heaven” (3:31), that the Spirit was his “without measure” (3:34), that the Father loved him and gave him all things (3:35), and that only those who believe in him have eternal life (3:36). “Everything” embraces even what has not yet happened—that Jesus will “take away the sin of the world” (1:29), and “baptize in Holy Spirit” (1:33)—assuring us that these things will in fact happen.82 In short, virtually all that we learn about Jesus in the first three chapters of the Gospel finds confirmation here, in the endorsement of John’s testimony—without even using the words “testify” or “testimony.”

42 The conclusion is natural, almost anticlimactic. “And many believed in him there” (v. 42) is little more than an echo of the preceding verse, “And many came to him,” for in this Gospel “coming to Jesus” and “believing” in him are closely linked, in some cases almost synonymous (see, for example, 3:26; 6:35, 37; 7:37–38). “There” (ekei) accents once again that this was the very “place” (v. 40) where John had first baptized, and where Jesus now “remained” (v. 40) for a second time (as in 1:39).83 The reader has never been told explicitly whether John is alive or dead, but the notice that “many believed” signals that the purpose of his mission, “that they all might believe through him” (1:7), has now been fulfilled. His work is done, and his name will not be mentioned again. Nor will we learn anything more about these new believers. Did they remain “there” (ekei), “across the Jordan,” possibly forming the nucleus of a community known decades later to the author of the Gospel? Or did they accompany Jesus back to the other Bethany, the home of Lazarus and Mary and Martha (see 11:7–16)? Those questions too will remain unanswered.

P. Going to Bethany (11:1–16)

1Now there was a certain man who was sick, Lazarus from Bethany, from the village of Mary, and Martha her sister. 2And it was Mary, who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. 3So the sisters sent to him, saying “Lord, look, one whom you love is sick.” 4And when he heard it, Jesus said, “This sickness is not toward death, but for the glory of God, so that through it the Son of God might be glorified.” 5Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6Then, as soon as he heard that he was sick, he remained in the place where he was two days. 7Next after this he says to the disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” 8The disciples say to him, “Rabbi, just now the Jews were seeking to stone you, and you are going back there?” 9Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of the day? 10If someone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if someone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”

11These things he said, and after this he says to them, “Lazarus, our friend, has fallen asleep, but I am going that I might wake him up.” 12So his disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get better.” 13Now Jesus had been speaking about his death, but they thought he was speaking of natural sleep. 14So then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus died, 15and I am glad for your sake, so that you might believe, that I was not there. But now, let us go to him.” 16So Thomas, the one called Didymos, said to the fellow disciples, “Let us go too, that we might die with him.”

Jesus is still “across the Jordan” (10:40), where “many believed in him” (10:42). There he receives news of the sickness of his friend Lazarus, in Bethany near Jerusalem (11:3). From the start, Jesus promises that the story will not end in death, but will turn out to “the glory of God” (v. 4). The question is whether or not he will put his own life in danger by returning to Judea. The passage invites comparison with 7:1–13, where his brothers urged him to go to Judea and he finally went, but on his own initiative and only after a delay. Here, after a two-day delay, he announces his intention to go back there, and his disciples urge him not to, because of the danger (vv. 7–8). He insists that they are in no immediate danger (vv. 9–10), reasserts his intention to go (v. 11), and again invites them to join him (v. 15). Still unconvinced, they join him nonetheless (v. 16), and with that, disappear from the story.

1 The introduction of Lazarus with the words, “Now there was a certain man1 who was sick, Lazarus from Bethany,” recalls two similar introductions earlier in the Gospel. In Capernaum “there was a certain royal official whose son was sick” (4:46), and at the pool of Bethsaida “a certain man there who was thirty-eight years into his sickness” (5:5). Here as before, the Gospel writer is less than specific about the nature of the “sickness,” but in contrast to the two preceding instances the “sick man” is named.2 More than that, he is identified in relation to someone with whom the readers of the Gospel are expected to be familiar, someone named “Mary,” who had a sister, “Martha.” Given those names, anyone familiar with Luke’s Gospel will remember Luke 10:38–39 as well, where Jesus entered “a certain village, and a certain woman by the name of Martha received him, and her sister was called Mary.” John’s Gospel presupposes here an acquaintance, if not with Luke’s Gospel per se, at least with Luke’s story (or some story) about these two sisters and their “village.” The village is now identified as “Bethany,” and Lazarus too is identified, not immediately as their brother, but first simply as someone from their village.3

2 “Mary,” in turn, is identified as the one “who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair,” and almost in the same breath we learn that “it was Mary … whose brother Lazarus was sick” (v. 2, italics added). Mary is mentioned not just because she and Lazarus lived in the same village, but because Lazarus was her own brother (and therefore Martha’s as well). Anyone reading the Gospel for the second or third time will notice that the reference to Mary “anointing the Lord with perfume” anticipates a story to be told in the next chapter (see 12:3), but what is the first-time reader to make of it? It makes no sense at all to such a reader, unless the Gospel writer is assuming some familiarity with a narrative other than his own, just as in the preceding verse he seems to assume familiarity with some kind of story about “Mary and Martha.”

There are two such stories in the canonical Gospel tradition, one in Luke 7:36–50 and one in Mark 14:3–9 (paralleled in Mt 26:6–13). In each of these, the woman who anoints Jesus is anonymous, but the second is located specifically in Bethany, and, perhaps more significantly, is said to be a story destined to be told and retold (see Mk 14:9 and Mt 26:13). Readers acquainted with the telling of that story in some form—not necessarily Mark’s version, or Matthew’s—would be able to appreciate the Gospel writer’s comment that the woman who anointed Jesus at Bethany was in fact none other than Mary, sister to Martha, probably familiar as well from another story now found in Luke, and that the “sick man” here at Bethany was in fact their brother. A small world indeed! Still, there are discrepancies. The anonymous woman in Mark and Matthew anoints Jesus’ head, not his feet, with perfume (see Mk 14:3 and Mt 26:7), and consequently nothing is said about her “wiping his feet with her hair.” Those very details, however, are present in Luke’s story (set not in Bethany of Judea, but in Galilee, in the house of a Pharisee named Simon) about a prostitute who abruptly brought in “an alabaster jar of perfume,” stood behind Jesus weeping and “began to wet his feet with her tears, … wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them” (see Lk 7:37–38, NIV). The story to which John’s Gospel refers (for the full story, see 12:1–8) preserves the setting of Mark’s account, yet with a number of details preserved not in Mark or Matthew, but in Luke’s story about the prostitute.4 This suggests that John’s Gospel is drawing not on any one Gospel’s account, but on one of the many retellings to which Jesus refers in Mark 14:9 and Matthew 26:13. He offers no hint that the woman who anointed Jesus was “a woman who had lived a sinful life” (Lk 7:37, NIV), and he differs from both other accounts in giving her a name and placing her in a family that Jesus knew well (Lk 10:38–42) and “loved” (see vv. 3, 5). The point of the notice is simply to inform the reader who Lazarus was and why his sickness matters.

3 The story of Lazarus, the “certain man who was sick” (v. 1), is linked to Jesus at his retreat across the Jordan by a notice that “the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, look, one whom you love is sick” (v. 3). We are not told how they knew where Jesus was, nor are we introduced to the messengers. Nor do the sisters ask Jesus in so many words to come. Instead they content themselves with a simple statement of fact, not unlike his mother’s remark at the Cana wedding that “They have no wine” (2:3). Their comments to Jesus later on (see vv. 21 and 32) reveal that their message was indeed (like his mother’s) an implied request. They did expect him to come, and sooner than he did, but the wording of their message reflects a certain almost familial intimacy, and a confidence that he would know what to do. It stands in striking contrast to the very explicit plea of the royal official at Capernaum, a stranger to Jesus, who said, “Lord, come down before my little child dies!” (4:49). Lazarus is not named, but identified simply as “one whom you love.”5 The masculine pronoun is expected to make clear to Jesus that Lazarus is meant. He is the first individual Jesus is explicitly said to have “loved” in this Gospel, although “Martha and her sister” are added almost immediately (v. 5), and one of his disciples is singled out in later chapters as one “whom he loved” (13:23; see also 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20).6

4 On hearing the message, “Jesus said, ‘This sickness is not toward death, but for the glory of God, so that through it the Son of God might be glorified.’ ” To whom was he speaking? Above all, to the reader of the Gospel, but to whom within the actual narrative? Possibly to his disciples, although at this point there is no evidence that his disciples are even present. They have not been mentioned since 9:2, and do not make an appearance here until verse 7. He could have been speaking to the “many” new disciples who had “believed in him” here across the Jordan (10:42), but there is no way to verify this, for nothing more is said about them. More likely, his words represent an answer to the message he has just received, an answer sent back by messenger to the two sisters in Bethany. This too is unverified for the moment, but appears to be verified later on, when Jesus reminds Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” (v. 40). The only place he could have “told” her such a thing was here, with the assurance that her brother’s sickness was not “toward death,7 but for the glory of God.” Then, explaining what “the glory of God” means, he continues, “so that through it [that is, the sickness] the Son of God might be glorified.”

There is more here than the sisters can hope to understand, and much to misunderstand. On the face of it, the promise that Lazarus’s sickness was not “toward death” seemed to imply that he would not die, when in fact he would die, and may have been already dead (see vv. 11–14).8 Jesus will resolve this issue with Martha later (see vv. 25–26), but for the moment at least his words are misleading. The sisters, as practicing Jews, would presumably have understood “the glory of God,” and Martha at least will shortly demonstrate a knowledge that “the Son of God” is Jesus (see v. 27). But what would they have made of the prospect that he would be “glorified”9 (v. 4), much less that it would happen because of their brother’s sickness? Jesus has promised nothing of the kind before. Only the Gospel writer, in one narrative aside, has mentioned his “glorification” (see 7:39, “because Jesus was not yet glorified”), and only a few remarks in passing at the Tent festival (7:18; 8:50, 54) have even hinted at a mutual “glorification” of the Father and the Son. Jesus will make it all clearer later on (see 12:23, 28; 13:31–32; 17:1, 4–5), but for the time being it is a riddle even to the first-time reader of the Gospel, and much more so to Martha and Mary. The missing link is the thought that Jesus’ “glorification,” like his “exaltation” or “lifting up” (3:14; 8:28; 12:32–33), comes to realization paradoxically in his death on the cross (see 12:23–24).10 Ironically, the sickness that Jesus says is not “toward death” as far as Lazarus is concerned will in the end result in his own death, and consequently in his “glorification”—for “the glory of God.”

5 Like his reply to his mother at the Cana wedding (2:4), Jesus’ reply here (v. 4) could suggest that he was content to let matters take their course. But this is no more the case now than it was then. He does plan to take action, but in his own time and his own way. He will do so, the Gospel writer assures us, because he “loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (v. 5). The comment reinforces and validates the message of the sisters that “one whom you love is sick” (v. 3),11 making it clear that Jesus loved not only Lazarus but the two sisters as well. Initially, Mary was introduced first and then Martha in relation to her, because Mary was presumed to be known to the readers on other grounds (see vv. 1–2). But now that this has been established, Martha is mentioned first and Mary only as “her sister,” without repeating the name. Lazarus is named last because Jesus’ love for him is already a given (v. 3), and the accent is now on Jesus’ response to the communication just received from the sisters. Of the two, possibly Martha was presumed to have been primarily responsible for the message to Jesus because he says to her later, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” (v. 40).

6 The comment that “Jesus loved” the sisters and Lazarus (v. 5) was necessary in part because what comes next could suggest the opposite. On hearing that Lazarus was sick, Jesus “remained in the place where he was two days” (v. 6). Why the delay, if Jesus “loved” them? Part of the answer, as we have just seen, is surely his determination not to have his hand forced by the wishes of others (besides 2:4, see also 7:6–9). Moreover, anyone who knows the end of the story might well suspect that he waited until Lazarus had died so as finally to raise him from the dead instead of merely healing him, thus adding to “the glory of God.” This appears to be confirmed on his arrival when first Martha (v. 21) and then Mary (v. 32) say to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” and some of “the Jews” who came to comfort them complain that Jesus, having opened a blind man’s eyes, could have “made it so that this man would not die” (v. 37). Yet when Jesus arrives at Bethany, Lazarus is already “four days in the tomb” (v. 17). Even if he had left immediately, and therefore arrived two days sooner, Lazarus would have been at least two days dead.12 Still more to the point, the healing of Lazarus seems not to have depended on the actual presence of Jesus, given the precedent of the healing of the royal official’s son (see 4:50). If Jesus could heal a total stranger from a distance, why not a dear friend?

The point of the delay, therefore, must lie elsewhere. The notice is very precise, both as to time and place: “Then … he remained in the place where he was13 two days.” “The place where he was” is clearly “across the Jordan, … the place where John was first baptizing,” where Jesus had “remained” already for an indefinite length of time (10:40; that is, Bethany: see 1:28), and where “many came to him” and “there” believed (10:41–42). The interval of “two days” recalls Jesus’ visit to Sychar in Samaria, where the Samaritans who had just “believed in him” (4:39) then “asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.”14 The question there was why Jesus left after the “two days.” The question here is why he waited “two days” before leaving. What the two passages have in common is a possible obligation on Jesus’ part to stay on for a measurable length of time (however brief) to nurture the faith of “many” (4:39; 10:41) who “believed in him.” That is, Jesus seems to have “entrusted himself” to the Samaritans at Sychar and to these believers “across the Jordan” here in a way he did not to those whose faith he did not accept as genuine (see 2:24–25). These ties cannot be broken instantly, even though both the itinerant character of Jesus’ ministry,15 and here more specifically Jesus’ love for “Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (v. 5), dictate that they must in fact be broken. Consequently, Jesus “remained in the place where he was,” but for only “two days.”

7–8 After the two days, we read, “Next after this he says to the disciples, ‘Let us go back to Judea’ ” (v. 7). This is the only place in the Gospel where the question of going to Judea or Jerusalem comes up in connection with something other than one of the Jewish festivals. The command, “Let us go,”16 is one that Jesus will repeat more than once as his ministry draws to a close (see v. 15; also 14:31), each time summoning his disciples to a decisive crisis or confrontation (see also Mk 14:42).17 Perhaps sensing this, they say to him, “Rabbi, just now the Jews were seeking to stone you, and you are going back there?” (v. 8). This is the first we hear of “the disciples” being present with Jesus “across the Jordan.” Clearly, “the Twelve” who have been his disciples all along are meant (see 6:70), not the “many” who have just now believed (10:42).18 This is evident both from Jesus’ language, “Let us go back19 to Judea,” implying that they had been there before, and from their awareness that “just now the Jews were seeking to stone you” (see 10:31). The reader learns (belatedly) that “the Twelve” had been with Jesus all along, even though not mentioned.20 As for the “many” who believed in Jesus “across the Jordan,” like the Samaritans at Sychar they will not be heard from again.

Here as elsewhere “the Jews” are the Jewish religious authorities, but with a geographical reference as well: Jesus should hesitate to go back to “Judea,” his disciples are saying, because “the Jews”21 are seeking to take his life. Even though “the Jews” challenged him in Galilee as well (6:41, 52), only in Judea (more specifically, Jerusalem) have they tried to kill him (see 5:18; 7:1; 8:37, 40, 59; 10:31). To go back there is to put his life in danger. Unlike his brothers in Galilee, who urged him to “Leave here, and go to Judea” so as to “reveal yourself to the world” (7:3–4), his disciples fear for his safety—and possibly their own. Ironically, if Lazarus’s illness is indeed “for the glory of God, so that through it the Son of God might be glorified” (v. 4), the advice of Jesus’ unbelieving brothers would have been more appropriate!

9–10 In his longest speech so far here on the other side of the Jordan, Jesus replies, “Are there not twelve hours of the day?22 If someone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if someone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” On the face of it, this is simply a long and elaborate way of saying, “My hour has not yet come” (2:4; see also 7:30 and 8:20). At the same time it echoes what he said to these same disciples earlier in the presence of the man born blind, about the need to “work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day. Night is coming when no one can work” (9:4). The point is the same here. The “hour” of Jesus’ death is drawing ever nearer. When it is finally announced (12:23, 27; 13:1), it will come as no surprise but as something signaled well in advance. But until then, Jesus is perfectly safe. Just as at the Cana wedding, there is still time to act (see 2:4), and just as in the case of the man born blind, there is still “work” to be done (see 9:4–5). Only when “night” comes (see 13:30) is Jesus in danger.

But is this the full extent of what he is saying? The reader will notice that he drives the point home not with the customary “I” pronouncement (such as “My hour has not yet come”), but with a kind of parable, centering not on himself but on “someone” or “anyone” (v. 10).23 What is true of his mission, he implies, is true of everyone. A person who walks in daylight can see where he is going and will not stumble, but a person who walks at night is at risk because “the light is not in him.”24 Once the pronouncement is set free from its present context, it is no longer about Jesus (or at least not just about him), but about the disciples themselves, or about anyone who hears his message. As he told them earlier, “Night is coming when no one can work” (9:4b, italics added). Later, in a very different setting, and with “light” and “darkness” rather than “day” and “night” as the operative metaphors, this interpretation will assert itself: “Yet a short time the light is in you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you, and the person who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going” (12:35). The notion of “walking in darkness” or “in the light” (see 8:12; also 1 Jn 1:6–7; 2:11) introduces ethical connotations which are not present here in connection with “walking in the day” or “in the night.” Here, Jesus is speaking of ordinary sunlight, “the light of this world,” not “the Light of the world” as he claimed to be in his own person (see 8:12; 9:5). His disciples could infer from his language that they too were safe for the time being, until their own appointed “hour” of danger and possible death (see 16:2, 4, 21).

11 Jesus’ speech continues, but the Gospel writer is careful to create an interval separating the metaphor he has just used (vv. 9–10) from the one he will now introduce: “These things he said,25 and after this he says to them, ‘Lazarus, our friend, has fallen asleep,26 but I am going that I might wake him up’ ” (v. 11). The designation of Lazarus as “our friend”27 echoes the message from the sisters that “one whom you love is sick” (v. 3), but the pronouncement makes no sense when taken literally. If Lazarus were merely sleeping, he would be awake by the time Jesus arrived at Bethany, and would not need Jesus to wake him! Jesus’ language is no more realistic here than in the house of Jairus in Mark when he said of Jairus’s daughter, “The child is not dead, but sleeps” (Mk 5:39). As in that case, the reader is expected to understand that “sleep” is a metaphor for death. Jesus is announcing his plan to raise Lazarus from the dead. Sleep was a familiar metaphor for death in the ancient world even when no resurrection was expected, and it becomes all the more so in Judaism and early Christianity in light of a firm resurrection faith.28 The principle that “he himself knew what he was going to do” (6:6) is presumed to be still in effect.

12–13 Like those who were present at the raising of Jairus’s daughter (see Mk 5:40), Jesus’ disciples take the reference to “sleep” literally: “Lord,29 if he has fallen asleep, he will get better” (literally, “he will be saved”).30 That is, sleep will be good for him, and he will recover. Jesus will not have to risk his life by going to Judea (see v. 8). The Gospel writer intervenes in his customary way to explain what may have been obvious to most readers: “Now Jesus had been speaking about his death, but they thought he was speaking of natural sleep.”31 For the moment, readers of the Gospel—even the less perceptive ones who needed the narrative aside—are one step ahead of the disciples within the story.

14–15 The disciples are quickly brought up to speed, as “Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus died’ ”32 (v. 14). “Plainly” or “openly,”33 translated elsewhere as “publicly” (see 7:4, 26), refers here to literal as opposed to metaphorical speech (see 10:24; also 16:25, 29, where it is explicitly contrasted with speech “in parables” or metaphors).

What he says next is not so clear, either to the disciples or to the reader: “and I am glad for your sake, so that you might believe, that I was not there” (v. 15).34 He seems to be assuming what Lazarus’s sisters will tell him when he arrives (vv. 21, 32), that if he had been with Lazarus in Bethany, Lazarus would not have died, and he is “glad” that this was not the case—that is, that Lazarus did in fact die. Jesus is “glad,” he tells the disciples, not for Lazarus’s sake nor for his own, but “for your sake,” and he explains immediately what he means by this: “so that you might believe.” The disciples have “believed” before (2:11; 6:69), but he addresses them as if he wants them to “believe” now for the first time.35 In the subsequent narrative, the disciples are never explicitly said to “believe” (in fact, they are not even said to be present), but others do believe: first Martha (v. 27), and then “many of the Jews” who had come to comfort her and her sister (vv. 42, 45; see also v. 48).36 Jesus’ rather obscure pronouncement (v. 15) must be read in light of the equally mysterious message he sent back to the sisters earlier: “This sickness is not toward death, but for the glory of God, so that through it the Son of God might be glorified” (v. 4). Jesus is “glad” he was not “there”37 because he knows that if he had been present he would not have been willing to allow his friend to die. From a distance he had a choice. He could either have healed Lazarus as he healed the royal official’s son (4:50), or he could have allowed nature to take its course. He chose the latter, knowing that the death of Lazarus had a dual purpose: first, “so that … Son of God might be glorified” (v. 4), and then, as far as the disciples are concerned, “so that you might believe” (v. 15). These purposes can only come to realization if death is not the end of the story—that is, if Lazarus rises from the dead, as Jesus implied when he said, “Lazarus … has fallen asleep, but I am going that I might wake him up” (v. 11). In such a case, Lazarus’s illness is not after all “toward death,” but “for the glory of God,” just as Jesus promised (see v. 4).

Without pausing to find out whether or not the disciples have grasped all this, Jesus concludes with something they will have no difficulty understanding: “But now,38 let us go to him”39 (v. 15), echoing verse 8, “Let us go back to Judea.” The choice of words is striking. He does not call his disciples to go to Mary and Martha to comfort them, but “to him,” that is, to Lazarus himself, as if he were not dead.40 Again, Jesus’ language is consistent with—if it does not actually require—a clear intention to raise Lazarus from the dead.

16 As in 6:68, the disciples respond through a spokesman, not Simon Peter this time but someone not named before, “Thomas, the one called Didymos” (v. 16).41 “Didymos” meant “twin,” but nothing is made of the name.42 Only later is Thomas further identified as “one of the Twelve” (20:24). Here he speaks not to Jesus but “to the fellow disciples.”43 “Let us go too, that we might die with him.” Thomas proposes, echoing Jesus’ words, “Let us go to him” (v. 15). The command, “Let us go too,” sounds strangely redundant, as if Thomas were somehow speaking to a different group, that is, “we too”44 in addition to Jesus and those he has just addressed.45 But no other group is present. Thomas and his “fellow disciples” can hardly be distinguished from “the disciples” mentioned in verses 7, 8, and 12.46 Therefore Thomas is addressing the same group, seconding what Jesus has just said—yet with a shocking difference. Instead of simply “going to” Lazarus for an undisclosed purpose (as in v. 15), Thomas urges them to go “that we might die with him.”47

Die with whom? With Lazarus, or with Jesus? Commentators almost unanimously agree that Thomas is urging his fellow disciples to die with Jesus.48 A few admit that a reference to Lazarus is “grammatically possible” even though “highly improbable.”49 In fact, however, the reference to Lazarus is more than “grammatically possible.” It is, if not grammatically certain, at least the more natural way of reading of the text. The reasons are, first, Thomas’s stated intent “that we might die with him” (v. 16) echoes Jesus’ announcement, “Lazarus died”50 (v. 14). Despite the presumed danger (v. 8), nothing has been said explicitly about Jesus “dying.” Second, the pronouns in Jesus’ pronouncement and that of Thomas are the same, and the reader has a right to expect the same antecedent. Jesus urged that the disciples go “to him” (v. 15), that is, to Lazarus, and Thomas wanted them all to die “with him” (v. 16). Moreover, in the next verse we will learn that when Jesus arrived in Bethany he found “him51 already four days in the tomb” (v. 17). If the first and third of these pronouns refer clearly to Lazarus, it is unnatural to assume that the middle one abruptly refers to Jesus! Consequently the conventional wisdom of commentators should be reversed. It is “grammatically possible” that Thomas speaks of dying with Jesus, but more likely that “with him”52 means with Lazarus.

If Thomas is referring to Lazarus, what does it tell us about Thomas and his faith? Obviously it puts him at odds with Jesus’ opening statement that “This sickness is not toward death, but for the glory of God, so that through it the Son of God might be glorified” (v. 4). As far as Thomas is concerned, the sickness of Lazarus is “toward death,” both for Lazarus himself and for Jesus and the disciples—consequently not “for the glory of God.” His is a counsel not of faith but of unbelief and despair, for he has failed to grasp either the prospect that “the Son of God might be glorified” (v. 4), or the meaning of Jesus’ promise that “I am going that I might wake him up” (v. 11).53 So despite his words, “Let us go too,” which imply that they did accompany Jesus to Bethany, he and his fellow disciples disappear at this point and are not seen again until Jesus withdraws to a town called Ephraim near the desert, where he remained “with the disciples” (v. 54). Jesus had expressed to them the hope “that you might believe” (v. 15), but nothing is said of their faith (or even their presence) at the raising of Lazarus. Jesus’ hope is fulfilled instead by Martha (vv. 27, 40), and by “many of the Jews” who had come to comfort her and her sister Mary on their brother’s death (see v. 45). They, not the disciples, “believed.”