Biblion Bible Commentary
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You Will Seek Me
John 7:25-36
25 Therefore some of them of Jerusalem said, “Isn’t this he whom they seek to kill? · WEB
The city debates his origins on a theory about the Messiah, and he says where he is really from.
"Isn't this he whom they seek to kill? Behold, he speaks openly, and they say nothing to him. Can it be that the rulers indeed know that this is truly the Christ?" John 7:25–26.
The Jerusalemites know what the pilgrims do not, and their reasoning is sharp: a man under a death sentence is teaching in the temple unmolested, so perhaps the authorities have changed their minds.
And then they talk themselves out of it. "However, we know where this man comes from, but when the Christ comes, no one will know where he comes from" John 7:27.
The objection rests on a popular expectation that the Messiah would appear from nowhere, unheralded. This one has an address, a family and an accent, and that settles it for them.
What makes it worth pausing on is that the same crowd, fifteen verses later, will rule him out on the opposite ground — that his origins are known and wrong, since the Christ must come from Bethlehem John 7:42. He is disqualified for being too obscure and for being too traceable, in one chapter. That is what happens when a conclusion is fixed before the evidence.
And the reader knows both objections are answered. He was born in Bethlehem, and he came down from heaven.
"You both know me, and know where I am from. I have not come of myself, but he who sent me is true, whom you don't know" John 7:28.
The reply concedes their fact and moves the question. Yes, you know Nazareth; the origin that matters is a sender you have never met. And the sting is in the last clause: the men who are experts on God are told they do not know him.
"I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me" John 7:29. Three clauses, each stronger than the last, and it is spoken in the temple during a feast.
They sought therefore to take him; but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come John 7:30.
This Gospel says something like it four times John 7:44 John 8:20 John 10:39, and it is the writer's standing explanation for why the arrest kept failing. The restraint is not political caution or crowd management. Everything in this book runs on a clock, and the clock is not theirs.
The chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him John 7:32. The two parties, who agreed on almost nothing, are cooperating.
"I will be with you a little while longer, then I go to him who sent me. You will seek me and won't find me. You can't come where I am" John 7:33–34.
The answer to an arrest warrant is an announcement of a departure they cannot prevent or follow. It is also a warning with a date on it: the opportunity in front of them is limited.
"Will he go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?" John 7:35.
Their guess is offered as absurdity — the last place a serious teacher would go — and this Gospel has a habit of letting hostile characters say true things without knowing it John 11:50. Within a few chapters Greeks come asking to see him John 12:20–21, and the second volume of the New Testament is largely the account of the message going exactly where they suggested in derision.
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