John 12:34

The Perplexity of the Multitude

34. The people answered The multitude therefore answered.

out of the law In its widest sense, including the Psalms and the Prophets. Comp. Psalms 89:29; Psalms 89:36; Psalms 110:4; Isaiah 9:7; Ezekiel 37:25, &c. The people rightly understand -lifted up from the earth" to mean removal from the earth by death; and they argue -Scripture says that the Christ (see on John 1:20) will abide for ever. You claim to be the Christ, and yet yousay that you will be lifted up and therefore notabide."

who is this Son of man? -This" is contemptuous: -a strange Messiah this, with no power to abide!" (on -Son of Man" see John 1:51). "Here we have the secret, unexplained by the Synoptists, why even when the scale is seeming to turn for a moment in favour of belief, it is continually swayed down again by the discovery of some new particular in which the current ideas respecting the Messiah are disappointed and contradicted." S. p. 199. One moment the people are convinced by a miracle that Jesus is the Messiah, the next that it is impossible to reconcile His position with the received interpretations of Messianic prophecy. It did not occur to them to doubt the interpretations.