John 13:4

He riseth from supper, &c. Or, from the supper:the article perhaps marks the supper as no ordinary one. "This is the realism of history indeed.… The carefulness with which here, as in the account of the cleansing of the temple, the successive stages in the action are described, proclaim the eye-witness." S. p. 216. One is unwilling to surrender the view that this symbolical act was intended among other purposes to be a tacit rebuke to the disciples for the -strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest" (Luke 22:24); and certainly -I am among you as he that serveth" (John 13:27) seems to point directly to this act. This view seems all the more probable when we remember that a similar dispute was rebuked in a similar way, viz. by symbolical action (Luke 9:46-48). The dispute may have arisen about their places at the table. That S. Luke places the strife afterthe supper is not fatal to this view; he gives no note of time, and the strife is singularly out of place there, immediately after their Master's self-humiliation and in the midst of the last farewells. We may therefore believe, in spite of S. Luke's arrangement, that the strife preceded the supper. "One thing is clear, that S. John, if he had read S. Luke's Gospel at this point, has not copied or followed it. He proceeds with the same peculiar independence which we have noticed in him all through." S. p. 215.

his garments Or, His upper garments, which would impede His movements.