Biblion Bible Commentary
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It Is I; Don't Be Afraid
John 6:16-21
16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea. · WEB
Six verses on a dark lake, and the sentence at the center is two words long.
When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea. They entered into the boat, and were going over the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not come to them John 6:16–17.
The account is the shortest of the three tellings and every clause in it is bleak. Evening, then dark, then a wind, and the last phrase of verse seventeen is the one that hurts: Jesus had not come to them. They are doing what they were told, going where they were sent, and he is not there.
The sea was tossed by a great wind blowing John 6:18. No detail is given about danger or bailing. This telling is not interested in the storm.
When therefore they had rowed about twenty-five or thirty stadia, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were afraid John 6:19.
The distance is given because the writer knows it — three or four miles out, near the middle of a lake seven miles across, which is as far from help as that water allows.
And the fear is caused by the rescue. They had been managing the wind; what frightens them is the figure.
But he said to them, "It is I. Don't be afraid" John 6:20.
In the Greek the first phrase is two words, I am — the bare form, with nothing after it. On the surface it means what anyone shouting across water in the dark would mean: it's me. In this book it is never only that.
The reader has met the phrase already at a Samaritan well John 4:26 and will meet it at its sharpest in chapter eight, where it is spoken without any predicate at all and men reach for stones John 8:58. Behind all of it is the name given at the bush — I AM has sent me to you Exodus 3:14.
And the setting supplies the rest. In the older Scriptures, walking on the sea is something God does and no one else: your way was through the sea, your paths through the great waters, yet your footsteps were not known Psalms 77:19, and it is God who alone treads on the waves of the sea Job 9:8.
So the two words are said by someone doing the one thing that identifies who says them.
Don't be afraid is the other half, and it is the reason the disclosure is made. He is not establishing a point; he is stopping their terror, and the shortest possible sentence does it.
They were willing therefore to receive him into the boat. Immediately the boat was at the land where they were going John 6:21.
The last verse is peculiar to this account and it is stated without explanation. They are willing to take him in — the word is about consent rather than effort — and the crossing is over.
What the paragraph does in the chapter is worth noting. Between a crowd trying to crown him by force and a discourse in which almost everyone walks away, six verses are spent in the dark with twelve men who get him into the boat. The book is showing what it looks like when the sign is not public and there is nothing to gain.
settled What this mark means