Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to John · About this commentary
Come and See
John 1:35-42
35 Again, the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples, · WEB
Two men follow on a pointed finger, and the first question he ever asks in this book is what they want.
Again, the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" John 1:35–36.
He says it a second time, to two of his own men, and the result is that he loses them. The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus John 1:37.
That is what a witness is for, and it costs him. A teacher whose followers leave for someone else has either failed or succeeded completely, and the next chapter will have him say which John 3:30.
Jesus turned and saw them following, and said to them, "What are you looking for?" John 1:38.
The first words he speaks in this Gospel are a question, and it is a question about desire rather than about belief. It is worth setting beside the last words he speaks in it, which are also a question, also to a disciple, and also about what a man wants John 21:22.
"Rabbi, where are you staying?" The answer is a piece of clumsy deflection — they do not know what they want and ask about accommodation. And the verb they reach for is remain, the same one used of the Spirit four verses earlier.
He said to them, "Come and see" John 1:39.
Two words, and they are the method of the whole book. Not an argument and not a credential: an invitation to come close enough to form a judgment. Philip will use the same phrase on Nathanael in eight verses, and it is the only answer he gives to the only objection Nathanael raises.
They came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about the tenth hour.
The last sentence is one of the small proofs that somebody remembered this. Nobody records the hour of an afternoon unless it was the afternoon that changed everything. Late in the day, four in the afternoon by their reckoning, and the writer still knew it decades later.
One of the two who heard John and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother John 1:40. One is named and the other is not, and the unnamed one is very probably the man writing — the first appearance of a habit that runs to the last chapter.
He first found his own brother, Simon, and said to him, "We have found the Messiah!" John 1:41.
Andrew appears three times in this Gospel and every time he is bringing somebody — his brother here, a boy with loaves John 6:8–9, some Greeks who want an introduction John 12:22. It is the whole of what is recorded about him, and it is enough.
Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas" John 1:42.
The verb for looked is a hard, direct look, the same one used of Andrew's teacher pointing him out. He is named twice — what he is, and what he will be — and the new name means a rock, which is not what anyone watching Simon that year would have chosen.
The book will end with the same man, on a beach, being asked three times whether he loves him.
settled What this mark means