John 1:2

[See also the "General Considerations on the Prologue" in the comments of John 1:18.]

Vv. 2. “ This Word was in the beginning with God. ”

With this Logos which John has in a manner just discovered in eternity, he takes his place at that beginning of time (John 1:1) from which he went backward even to what was before time, and now he comes down the course of the ages, to the end of showing the Logos operating in the history of the world as the organ of God, before the moment when He is Himself to appear on the earth. The pronoun οὗτος, this Logos, reproduces more particularly the idea of the third proposition of John 1:1: this Word-God; but the apostle joins with it that of the first two, in such a way as to resume in this verse the substance of the three propositions of John 1:1, and thus to explain the part of Creator which he is about to ascribe to the Logos in John 1:3. There is, therefore, no contrast in the pronoun οὖτος to any other being whatever, as Meyer supposes, and as the translation of Rilliet would indicate: “ It is he who was...” The allusion to the account in Genesis in the words: with God, is no less evident here than in John 1:1; comp. Genesis 1:26 (let us make,...our image,... our likeness).