The Hour Arrives Through the Grain That Dies

The Book of John has begun counting days to the Passover, as it counted the days of the first week in chapters 1 and 2. If the next day’s entry fell on the tenth of the month, it matched the day on which each household chose its Passover lamb (Exodus 12:3), a link many readers draw.

“Supper” is deipnon, the main evening meal. Mark 14:3 sets a similar anointing in the house of Simon the leper. “Served” is diakoneo, the root of the word deacon, and “sat at the table” means reclined, the posture of a festive meal.

A Roman pound was about twelve ounces. Spikenard came from a plant of the Himalayas and was carried all the way from India. The Song of Solomon has the bride say, “While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof” (1:12). For a woman to loosen her hair in company was itself remarkable.

This is the only time Judas Iscariot speaks in the Book of John. He is introduced by the act he has not yet done, “which should betray him”, so the reader never hears him without that label attached.

Three hundred pence was about a year’s wages for a labourer. Philip’s two hundred pennyworth (6:7) would not have given five thousand a bite each; this jar was worth half as much again. Gifts to the poor were customary at Passover, which is why the disciples misread Judas’s errand in 13:29.

“The bag” is glossokomon, originally a case for the reed of a flute and later any box for money; the Greek Old Testament uses it for Joash’s collection chest in the temple (2 Chronicles 24:8). “Bare” is bastazo, to carry, which could also mean to carry off, much as English says “lift”.

The best manuscripts read “Let her alone, that she may keep it for the day of my burying”, which is puzzling if the whole pound has just been poured out. Some take it to mean she kept it until now for this purpose; the King James smooths the grammar into that sense.

The words match Mark 14:7 and Matthew 26:11 almost exactly. A few ancient witnesses, including Codex Bezae and the Old Syriac, lack this whole verse, perhaps because a copyist’s eye skipped from one line to the next.

The crowd comes to look at a living proof. Lazarus himself never says a word anywhere in the Bible, before his death or after it. His silence makes him the evidence rather than the witness.

“Consulted” is the verb of 11:53, where the council “took counsel” against Jesus. The chief priests were mostly Sadducees, who denied the resurrection of the dead (Acts 23:8), so a man walking about after four days in the grave was an awkward fact for their doctrine as well as their politics, though the book does not say so.

“Went away” is imperfect: people were steadily going over, a drain rather than a single event. The raising of one man had become a cause of belief that could not be argued away, only removed.

These are pilgrims, not residents of Jerusalem. Josephus reckoned the Passover crowds in the hundreds of thousands or more, and although his figures are inflated the city swelled many times over. “The next day” continues the count begun in verse 1.

Only John mentions palms. They were a national symbol: Simon Maccabeus entered the citadel “with thanksgiving, and branches of palm trees” (1 Maccabees 13:51), and Jewish rebels later struck palms on their coins. “Hosanna” is Hebrew for “save, we pray” (Psalm 118:25). “King of Israel” is Nathanael’s title from 1:49.

The Book of John does not tell how the animal was fetched, which the other Gospels relate in detail (Mark 11:1–7). “Young ass” is onarion, a diminutive, a little donkey. The quotation follows the action rather than preceding it.

Zechariah 9:9 begins “Rejoice greatly”; here it begins “Fear not”, words found in Zephaniah 3:16, “Fear thou not: and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack.” The quotation also drops Zechariah’s “just, and having salvation; lowly”, keeping only the king and his mount.

The same after-the-fact remembering is noted in 2:22, when the disciples recalled Jesus’ words about the temple after the resurrection. Twice the Book of John admits that its own witnesses understood only in hindsight.

“Bare record” is imperfect: they kept telling it. Some early manuscripts read “that he called Lazarus”, making the verse the content of their testimony rather than a description of who was testifying.

The raising of Lazarus is called a “sign”, and it is the last of the seven usually counted in the book: the wine, the nobleman’s son, the pool, the loaves, the walking on the sea, the blind man, and Lazarus.

“Ye prevail nothing” is “you gain nothing”, the verb of 6:63, “the flesh profiteth nothing”. The Pharisees speak “among themselves”, a private admission of failure, the counterpart of the council’s “What do we?” in 11:47.

“Greeks” here are Gentiles, probably God-fearers who worshipped Israel’s God without becoming Jews. They could enter only the outer court; two stone notices have been found that warned foreigners, on pain of death, not to go further into the temple.

Philip bears a Greek name and came from Bethsaida, a town in a heavily Greek-speaking district, which may be why Greeks came to him first. “Sir” is kurie. “We would see” means we wish to meet, not merely catch sight of him.

Philip does not go straight to Jesus but consults Andrew, the other disciple with a Greek name. The two appear together at the call in 1:43–44 and at the loaves in 6:7–8, and here once more.

Until now the hour has always been “not yet” (2:4, 7:30, 8:20). From this sentence on it has come: “his hour was come” (13:1), and “Father, the hour is come” (17:1). The request of Gentiles is the moment the clock strikes.

“Corn” in 1611 meant any grain, and “a corn of wheat” is a single kernel. Paul uses the same image for the resurrection body: “that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die” (1 Corinthians 15:36). “Abideth” is meno, remains.

Two different Greek words lie behind “life”: psuche, the natural life one can love or hate, and zoe, the life eternal. “Hateth” is a Hebrew way of saying “loves less”, as Leah was “hated” (Genesis 29:31), meaning less loved than Rachel.

“Serve” is diakoneo, the verb used of Martha in verse 2, so the service Jesus describes has just been shown at the Bethany table. “Honour” from the Father answers verse 43, where rulers prefer the praise of men.

“Troubled” is the verb of 11:33, and the Greek of Psalm 6:3 and 42:6 uses it too: “my soul is troubled”. The Book of John has no scene of agony in the garden; this verse is where it lets that anguish be heard.

This is the only voice from heaven in the Book of John, which does not narrate the baptism or the transfiguration. Later rabbis spoke of the bat qol, “the daughter of a voice”, a heavenly voice heard after the age of prophecy had closed.

In the Old Testament God’s voice is often heard as thunder: “the God of glory thundereth” (Psalm 29:3), and at Sinai there were “thunders” and a voice (Exodus 19:16, 19). Hearers who say “it thundered” are closer than they know.

In 5:37 Jesus told his opponents, “Ye have neither heard his voice at any time.” Now the Father’s voice has sounded in their hearing, and some of them took it for thunder.

“The prince of this world” is a title found only in the Book of John (here, 14:30 and 16:11). “Cast out” is ekballo, the verb used of the man thrown out by the Pharisees in 9:34. The one who is expelled now is the ruler himself.

“From the earth” is literally “out of the earth”. Some early manuscripts, including the papyrus P66, read “I will draw all things unto me”, neuter, which widens the claim beyond people to all creation.

“Signifying” is semaino, to indicate by a sign, the root of the book’s word semeion. “What death” means what kind of death: raised off the ground on a cross. The same phrase is used of Peter in 21:19, “signifying by what death he should glorify God”.

“The law” here means Scripture: Psalm 89:36–37, “His seed shall endure for ever”, and Ezekiel 37:25, “my servant David shall be their prince for ever”. Jesus said “I” in verse 32; the crowd supplies “Son of man” from verse 23 and asks who he is. It is the last question the crowd puts to him.

“Come upon you” is katalambano, to overtake, the verb of 1:5, “the darkness comprehended it not”. The prologue said darkness did not overcome the light; now the warning is that it may overtake those who do not walk while the light is with them.

“Children of light” is a Hebrew way of speaking; the Dead Sea Scrolls include a text called The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness. With these words the public teaching ends, and he hides himself, as in 8:59.

Moses said much the same to Israel in the plains of Moab: “Ye have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes... Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive” (Deuteronomy 29:2–4). Many signs, and no belief, is an old pattern in Israel’s Scriptures.

The quotation is Isaiah 53:1 in the Greek version, which adds “Lord” at the beginning. Paul quotes the same verse about unbelief in Romans 10:16. “Report” is akoe, what was heard; “the arm of the Lord” is God’s power put forth (Isaiah 52:10).

Chrysostom read the logic carefully: Isaiah did not cause their unbelief by prophesying it; he prophesied it because it would be so (Homilies on John 68). Others take “could not” at full strength as a judicial hardening. The verse holds a “therefore” and a “because” in tension.

The wording of Isaiah 6:10 here matches neither the Hebrew nor the Greek. In the Hebrew the prophet is told to make the heart fat; in the Greek the people’s heart has grown fat; here “he” blinds. The same passage is quoted in Matthew 13:15, Mark 4:12 and Acts 28:27.

Isaiah 6:1–3 describes the prophet seeing the Lord on his throne and hearing “the whole earth is full of his glory”. The Aramaic Targum renders what Isaiah saw as “the glory of the Shekinah”. “When he saw” appears in some copies as “because he saw”.

The “chief rulers” are members of the council. Nicodemus is one, and Joseph of Arimathea is later called a disciple “secretly for fear of the Jews” (19:38). “Put out of the synagogue” repeats the threat of 9:22.

“Praise” in both halves is doxa, glory: they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God. The verse follows at once on Isaiah seeing “his glory” in verse 41, so the same word frames two opposite ways of looking.

The book said in verse 36 that Jesus hid himself, and gives no setting or audience for these last public words. They read as a summary of everything he has cried out in the temple since chapter 7. “Cried” is krazo, a loud proclamation.

“Seeth” is theoreo, to look at attentively. The saying anticipates his answer to Philip in 14:9: “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” The Greek puts the one sent and the sender almost side by side in a single short sentence.

“I am come... into the world” is his account of his own mission, and before Pilate he says “for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth” (18:37). “Abide” is meno, to remain: darkness is described as a place one might stay.

The best manuscripts read “and keep them not” where the King James has “and believe not”, so the contrast is between hearing and keeping. The verse restates 3:17: the Son was not sent to condemn the world.

“Rejecteth” is atheteo, to set aside or treat as void. Behind the verse stands Deuteronomy 18:19, about the prophet like Moses: “whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.” The spoken word itself becomes the witness at the last day.

Two verbs are set side by side, what to say and what to speak, covering both the content and the utterance. Deuteronomy 18:18 promised a prophet who “shall speak unto them all that I shall command him”, and Jesus claims exactly that.

Moses closed his last address by saying of the law, “it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life” (Deuteronomy 32:47). Jesus’ last public words say the same of the Father’s commandment, and then the public ministry is over.