John 7:11-16

CHAPTER 2

JESUS AT THE FESTIVAL OF TABERNACLES

John 7:11-16. “Therefore the Jews continued to seek Him at the feast, and say, Where is He? And there was much murmuring concerning Him among the multitude; some said that He is good; others said, No, but He deceiveth the multitude.”

V. 13. “No one, indeed, spoke openly concerning Him, on account of the fear of the Jews. And the festival already being midway, Jesus came up into the temple, and was teaching. Then the Jews were astonished, saying, How does this One know letters, having never been taught? And Jesus responded to them, and said, My teaching is not Mine, but of Him that sent Me.” Jesus began His ministry, according to the prophecies, by coming into the temple and purifying it, casting out the buyers and sellers. Remaining but a few days after the Passover in Judea, He returned to Galilee, His native land, where He remained, preaching, healing the sick, and casting out demons, till the next Passover, which He also attended, returning to Galilee very soon after its adjournment. Remaining in Galilee the ensuing year, He did not go up to Jerusalem to the next Passover, which was the third in His ministry, evidently because the multitude, going from the cities around the Galilean Sea, were determined to crown Him King; consequently remaining in Galilee six months longer, with two little exceptions the one when he went into Syria to Caesarea-Philippi, and the other when He went into Phenicia, the land of Tyre and Sidon. Now the Feast of Tabernacles, coming off in September, has rolled round. Having declined to go in the crowd, with His brothers and friends, in time for the opening, He goes on later, accompanied by His apostles, preaching and working miracles in Samaria as He passed along, arriving in Jerusalem about Wednesday, the festival, commemorative of Israel's wilderness peregrinations, having opened on Sunday, and, as it says here, went immediately into the temple and began to teach. The critics even deny that He was ever in the temple proper, that being reserved for the priests alone; but this word “temple” was really applied to the Holy Campus, which is said to contain thirty-five acres, having very many elegant buildings on it at that time, and quite a number now, in several of which e. g., Solomon's Porch and the Treasury He taught the people; but as the vast multitudes during the festivals occupied the open air, it is more than likely that the most of His preaching in the temple was out on the pavement of that vast area, and over- canopied by naught save the blue, arching skies. During this eighteen months' absence from Jerusalem and Judea, constant reports were coming from His fields of labor in Galilee, thrilling the people with wonder, curiosity, and amazement, all revolving in their minds what kind of a man can He be. Meanwhile, the high priests and Pharisees are most cunningly maneuvering to break the force of these thrilling reports and prejudice the people against Him, frequently sending their sharpest critics all the way to Galilee to hound Him wherever He went, hanging with diabolical chicanery on His lips, watching and criticizing every word, twisting and perverting all His utterances, laboring night and day to catch up something which they can pervert and magnify into an accusation against Him, so, if possible, to have Him arrested and turned over to the Sanhedrin or the proconsul. They charge Him with deceiving the multitude. How? Why, impressing them that He is the Messiah, when they claim that He is not. By the statement that He had never been taught, is simply meant that He had never gone to school to a rabbi that they knew of, there being no common schools in that day. During this long interval of His absence from the South, the scribes and Pharisees have done their utmost to obliterate His influence in Jerusalem and Judea. Now, thirty months of His ministry having passed away, and not perhaps more than one month, all told, spent in the metropolis, but nearly all of His time having been appropriated in Galilee, an obscure country compared with Jerusalem and Judea, after the vociferous clamors of the clergy all this time, telling the people that He would never come back there, and if He did they would arrest Him, His sudden and bold appearing and preaching amid the vast multitudes on the Temple Campus produces a tremendous sensation, raising popular inquiry, and exciting curiosity to the very acme, and at the same time arousing all the clergy and official laity to unite against Him, determined if possible to so implicate Him as to secure His arrest, feeling chagrined before the multitude, who had so often heard them boasting that He would never come back, and certifying that if He did they would arrest Him and put Him to death, as they claimed that He richly deserved, as a false prophet.