Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to John · About this commentary
No Man Ever Spoke Like This
John 7:45-53
45 The officers therefore came to the chief priests and Pharisees; and they said to them, “Why didn’t you bring him?” · WEB
The arrest party comes back empty-handed with the best excuse in Scripture, and one councilor asks about due process.
The officers therefore came to the chief priests and Pharisees; and they said to them, "Why didn't you bring him?" John 7:45.
The temple police were a trained force with a straightforward assignment. They had been sent thirteen verses earlier John 7:32, they found him, and they came back without him.
The officers answered, "No man ever spoke like this man!" John 7:46.
It is one of the great sentences in the Gospels, and its power is in who says it. Not a disciple, not a scholar — working men sent to make an arrest, who have no theological stake and every professional reason to have done their job. They went to take a prisoner and stood there listening instead.
And the whole of their testimony is about the speech. They do not report a miracle or a crowd they could not get through. They heard him.
"You aren't also led astray, are you? Have any of the rulers or any of the Pharisees believed in him?" John 7:47–48.
The reply is not an argument and does not pretend to be. It is an appeal to the consensus of the important — have any of the rulers — which is the exact mechanism named two chapters earlier: how can you believe, who receive glory from one another? John 5:44.
It also happens to be false, and the book is about to say so twice. A ruler is standing in the room, and the writer will later record that many even of the rulers believed in him, but because of the Pharisees they didn't confess it John 12:42.
"But this multitude that doesn't know the law is cursed" John 7:49.
The contempt is unguarded and it is aimed at ordinary people — the crowd whose opinion was worthless because they had no training. It is the sentence that shows what the argument is really about, and it sits oddly beside the fact that the men who impressed the officers had also been in that crowd.
Nicodemus (he who came to him by night, being one of them) said to them John 7:50.
The writer will not let him be introduced without the night John 3:2, and mentions it every time John 19:39. He is one of them, a member of the council, and he speaks.
"Does our law judge a man unless it first hears from him personally and knows what he does?" John 7:51.
It is a modest intervention and it is the only voice for due process in the chapter. He does not defend him or claim anything about him. He asks whether the law they are all invoking permits a verdict without a hearing — which it does not Deuteronomy 1:16.
That is less than a confession and it is more than nothing. A frightened man asks a procedural question, in a hostile room, on behalf of someone he visited in the dark.
"Are you also from Galilee? Search and see that no prophet has arisen out of Galilee" John 7:52.
The answer is a sneer rather than a reply, which is what happens to procedural objections in rooms that have already decided. And the assertion is simply wrong — Jonah came from Gath Hepher, a few miles from Nazareth 2 Kings 14:25. Men who had just called a crowd ignorant of the law have made an error of fact about their own Scriptures while telling somebody to go and look it up.
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