John 6:1

μετὰ ταῦτα, John's indefinite note of time. The interval between chap. 5 and chap. 6 depends on the feast alluded to, John 5:1. If it was Purim, only a month had elapsed; if it was Passover, a year. In any case Jesus had left Jerusalem, the reason being that the Jews sought to slay Him (John 7:1). ἀπῆλθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς, “Jesus departed,” but whence? Evidently from Capernaum and the neighbourhood; cf. Matthew 14:13; Mark 6:30; Luke 9:10. πέραν … Τιβεριάδος, “to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, of Tiberias”. In John 21:1 it is called simply τῆς Τιβεριάδος. The second title may here be a gloss, either by the evangelist himself or by a later hand, to distinguish the lake from Merom, or possibly because the latter name was more familiar to some of John's readers than the former. [Pausanias, John 6:7; John 6:3, calls it λίμνη Τιβερίς.] Grotius, followed by Meyer, says: “Proprius denotat lacus partem quae ab adsito oppido, ut fieri solet, nomen habet proprium”. Consequently he thinks of Jesus as crossing the Jordan below the lake. This is groundless. The town Tiberias was only built by Herod about the year 20 A.D. (Smith's Hist. Geog., 448). The exact locality where the following scene is laid seems to have been at the northeast corner of the lake, not far from Bethsaida Julias. καὶ ἠκολούθει … ἀσθενούντων. “A great crowd followed Him,” out of Galilee into Gaulanitis, the reason being ὅτι ἑώρων [plural although ἠκολούθει is singular], “because they had seen the miracles which He was doing [imperfect of continuous action] on the sick”. ἐπί with genitive denotes the object towards which action is directed, ἐπʼ οἴκου, homewards, etc. Meyer, Weiss (and Holtzmann) take it as meaning “among”. ἀνῆλθε δὲ εἰς τὸ ὄρος ὁ Ἰησοῦς, “and Jesus went up,” from the level of the Jordan and the lake, to the higher ground on the hill; καὶ ἐκεῖ … αὐτοῦ, “and there sat down with His disciples,” having apparently left the crowd behind, for the sitting down with the disciples indicated that rest and peace were expected.