John 1:25

Ver. 25. “ And they asked him and said unto him; why baptizest thou then, if thou art not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. ”

The strictest guardians of rites conceded, indeed, to the Messiah or to one of His forerunners the right of making innovations in the matter of observances; and if John had declared himself one of these personages, they would have contented themselves with asking for his credentials, and would have kept silence respecting his baptism, sufficiently legitimated by his mission. In fact, it seems to follow from this verse itself that, on the foundation of words such as those of Ezekiel 36:25-26, and Zechariah 13:1, a great national lustration was expected as an inauguration of the kingdom of the Messiah. But John the Baptist having expressly declined the honor of being one of the expected prophets, the deputation had the right to say to him: “Why then dost thou baptize?” According to the reading of the T. R. nor, nor, the thought is this: “The supposition that John is the Christ is set aside; there remains, therefore, no other way of explaining his baptism except that he is either the one or the other of the two expected forerunners; now he declares that he is neither the one nor the other; why then...etc. This delicate sense of the disjunctive negative was not understood; hence, in our view, the Alexandrian reading οὐδέ, οὐδέ, nor even, which puts the three cases on a common level. The partisans of the Alexandrian text (Weiss, Keil, Westcott, etc.), judge otherwise. The position of John the Baptist, in presence of this question and after his previous answer, became a difficult one. His interrogators, indeed, had counted on this result.