John 6:41

Ἐγόγγυζον … οὐρανοῦ. “The Jews,” not as we might expect, “the Galileans,” probably because John identifies this unbelieving crowd with the characteristically unbelieving Jews. ἐγόγγυζον in Exodus 16:7-9; 1 Corinthians 10:10, etc., has a note of malevolence, but in John 7:32 no such note. “Murmur” thus corresponds to it, as carrying both meanings. The ground of their murmuring was His asserting Ἐγώ εἰμι … οὐρανοῦ. Cf. John 6:33, ὁ καταβαίνων, and John 6:38, καταβέβηκα. Lücke says: “When John makes the descent from heaven the essential, inherent predicate of the bread, he uses the present: when the descent from heaven is regarded as a definite fact in the manifestation of Christ, the aorist”. They not merely could not understand how this could be true, but they considered that they had evidence to the contrary (John 6:42), καὶ ἔλεγον, Οὐχ … καταβέβηκα; the emphatic ἡμεῖς more clearly discloses their thought. We ourselves know where He comes from. The road from heaven, they argued, could not be through human birth. This was one of the real difficulties of the contemporaries of Jesus. The Messiah was to come “in the clouds,” suddenly to appear; but Jesus had quietly grown up among them. From this passage an argument against the miraculous birth of our Lord has been drawn. The murmurers represent the current belief that He had a father and mother, and in His reply Jesus does not repudiate His father. But He could not be expected to enter into explanations before a promiscuous crowd. As Euthymius says: He passes by His miraculous birth, “lest in removing one stumbling block He interpose another”. To explain is hopeless.