Biblion Bible Commentary
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His Brothers Didn't Believe
John 7:1-13
1 After these things, Jesus was walking in Galilee, for he wouldn’t walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him. · WEB
His own family advises him on publicity, and the account says flatly why the advice is worthless.
After these things, Jesus was walking in Galilee, for he wouldn't walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him John 7:1.
A period of months passes between chapters six and seven, and the reason given is danger. He is avoiding a region, which is worth registering in a book that keeps insisting nothing happens before its hour.
Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was at hand John 7:2.
Tabernacles was the most exuberant week in the calendar — a harvest festival kept in temporary shelters to remember the wilderness, with a daily procession carrying water from the pool of Siloam to the temple, and great lamps lit in the court at night. Both of those rituals turn up in the chapters that follow, and neither is explained by the writer. He expects a reader who knows the feast.
"Depart from here and go into Judea, that your disciples also may see your works which you do. For no one does anything in secret while he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, reveal yourself to the world" John 7:3–4.
His brothers' advice is shrewd, worldly and entirely reasonable. Tabernacles filled Jerusalem; a man with a following in the provinces should go where the crowds are. It is a public relations strategy, and the conditional in the last sentence is the sting — if you do these things.
For even his brothers didn't believe in him John 7:5.
The writer states it in one line and does not soften it. The men who grew up in the same house had watched everything and drawn no conclusion, which is the most domestic form of the prologue's complaint that his own did not receive him John 1:11.
It is worth noting where they end up. One of them writes a letter that opens by calling himself a servant of Jesus Christ James 1:1, and another does the same Jude 1:1. Whatever changed them is not recorded here; what is recorded is that at this stage they were pressing him toward publicity in the way an unbelieving relative does.
"My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready" John 7:6.
The distinction is between a life on a schedule and a life with none. Their moment is whenever they choose; his is fixed and not by him. It is the same not yet his mother heard at a wedding John 2:4.
"The world can't hate you, but it hates me, because I testify about it, that its works are evil" John 7:7.
The reason their advice fails is that it assumes the world is an audience to be won. He describes it as an accused party that has been told what it is — which is what the third chapter said about light and the love of darkness John 3:19–20.
And the sentence contains a cool assessment of his brothers: the world has no quarrel with them.
But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly, but as it were in secret John 7:10.
He goes, and goes on his own terms and his own timing — which is the point of the refusal. What he declined was not the journey but their reason for it.
There was much murmuring among the multitudes concerning him. Some said, "He is a good man." Others said, "Not so, but he leads the multitude astray" John 7:12.
The city is arguing about him in undertones, and the two verdicts are the only two available. Yet no one spoke openly of him for fear of the Jews John 7:13 — everybody has an opinion and nobody will say it aloud, which is the atmosphere the rest of the chapter is conducted in.
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