John 13:1

Ver. 1. “ Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour was come, when he should leave this world to go to the Father, after having loved his own who were in the world, he perfectly testified to them all his love. ”

The words before the feast of the Passover are connected with the preceding determination of time: six days before the Passover (John 12:1), but with a difference of expression which cannot be accidental. There it was said: “Before the Passover,” a word which designates, as ordinarily, the Paschal supper on the evening which ended the 14th of Nisan (Exodus 12; Leviticus 23:5; Num 28:16). Here John says: “Before the feast of the Passover;” this wider term undoubtedly includes the entire day of the 14th of Nisan on which the leaven was removed from all the Israelite dwellings, and which was already counted for this reason among the days appertaining to the feast.

This appears from Numbers 33:3 (comp. also Jos 5:11), where the day of the 15th Nisan is designated as the morrow after the Passover (LXX.: τῇ ἐπαύριον τοῦ πάσχα). To prove that the 14th could not be included in the feast, Keil cites Leviticus 23:6; Numbers 28:17; but it must not be forgotten that in these last passages the complement of the word the feast is not of the Passover, but of unleavened bread (τῶν ἀζύμων); the eating of the unleavened bread began indeed only with the Paschal supper, on the evening of the 14th-15th, to continue seven days until the 21st. This was the week of unleavened bread.

If, then, we include the day of the 14th in the expression the feast of the Passover in John 13:1, the expression before the feast of the Passover places us, at the latest, on the evening of the 13th. But if, on the contrary, we identify, as some interpreters do (Hengstenberg, Lange, Hofmann, Luthardt, Keil, etc.), the beginning of the feast with the very moment of the Paschal supper, then this expression places us on the evening of the 14th, a few moments before the opening of this sacred supper. We shall see later the importance of this difference of explanation. This chronological determination refers naturally to the principal verb: ἠγάπησεν, he loved. As this verb expresses a feeling existing habitually in the heart of Jesus, and not an historical act, some interpreters have denied this reference. Some have made this determination of time: before the feast, refer to the verb ἐγείρεται, rises, John 13:4 (Bleek, de Wette); but what, in this case, can we do with the verb ἠγάπησεν, he loved?

There is not the least indication of a parenthesis. Others endeavor to make this determination of time refer to the participle εἰδώς, knowing, (Luthardt, 1st ed., Riggenbach), or to ἠγαπήσας, having loved, (Wieseler, Tholuck). But, placed as it is, at the beginning of this whole section, this chronological indication can refer only to the principal action, the indication of which governs it altogether: ἠγάπησε, he loved. And this relation, which is the most simple, is also that which offers the best sense. How could John say that Jesus had been conscious of His approaching departure (εἰδώς) or had loved (ἠγαπήσας) His own before the feast? The verb ἀγαπᾶν, to love, must designate here, as appears from the aorist, not the feeling only, but also its external manifestations (especially those the story of which is to follow). John means that it was on the evening before the first day of the feast, when He was going to leave His followers, that Jesus manifested all His love for them and in some sort surpassed Himself in the testimonies which He gave them of this feeling.

To this first determination of a chronological nature, a second of a moral nature is attached: “ Jesus, knowing that...” It was while having the perfectly distinct consciousness of His impending departure that Jesus acted and spoke as John is about to relate to us. This thought presided over these last manifestations of His love. Hengstenberg and others connect this participle with the principal verb through the idea of a contrast: “ Although He knew indeed..., nevertheless He loved and humbled Himself thus,” as if the prospect of His future exaltation could have been for Jesus a hindrance in the way of acting as He does! John had no need to deny a supposition so absurd. He means, on the contrary, that because He saw the hour of separation approaching, He redoubled His tenderness towards those whom He had until then so faithfully loved. Who does not know how the foreseeing of an imminent separation renders affection more demonstrative! Thus most, His own: those whom He had gained by His love. There is a deliberate antithesis between the terms: the Father, with whom all is rest, and the world, where all is conflict and peril. Then, a third determination, serving to connect the act of ἠγάπησε, he loved, with an entire past of the same character which this last evening was going to complete. The expression: His hour was come, forms a contrast with that which we have so often met: “ His hour was not yet come. ”

The phrase εἰς τέλος, for the end, does not have in classical Greek the sense until the end; at least, Passow does not cite a single example of it; to express this idea of duration, the classical writers said rather διὰ τέλους. In the New Testament we can scarcely fail to find the meaning until the end in the εἰς τέλος of Matthew 10:22 and the parallels (though the idea of duration is found rather in the verb shall persevere). But the phrases ordinarily employed in this sense are either ἕως τέλους, or μέχρι or ἄχρι τέλους; 1 Corinthians 1:8; 2 Corinthians 1:13 (ἕως); Hebrews 6:14 (μέχρι); and Revelation 2:26 (ἄχρι). But what prevents us from accepting this meaning here which is adopted by our versions, is that it would be useless. Was it then necessary to affirm that Jesus did not cease to love his own up to the moment when He died for them? The true meaning of εἰς τέλος in the New Testament, as in the classics, is for the end, that is to say, sometimes: at the end, at the last moment; sometimes, to the utmost, to make an end of it. The first of these two meanings is certainly that which must be adopted in Luke 18:5: “lest she come at the end even to wearying me”; the second is found in 1 Thessalonians 2:6: “the wrath is come upon them to the utmost,” that is to say, to make an end of it with them, in manifesting itself completely. Comp. the εἰς τέλος in the LXX., Joshua 10:20 (even to an entire destruction); 2 Chronicles 12:12; 2 Chronicles 30:1, and a multitude of other examples in the Psalms of Solomon and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Hilgenfeld, Einl., p. 243). In our passage, this meaning seems to me the only possible one. But the question is of love, and not of wrath. This phrase signifies therefore: the manifestation of His love even to its complete outpouring, in a way to exhaust it, in some sort. As an analogy to the sense of ἠγάπησε, he loved, including the feeling and its manifestations, Odyss. ψ, 214, may be cited, where Penelope says to Ulysses: “Pardon me that I did not immediately on first seeing you love you as much as (ὧδ᾿ ἠγάπησα) I now do when I press you in my arms.”

This first verse must be regarded as forming the preamble, not of this chapter only, but of this whole part of the Gospel, chaps. 13-17. We shall see, indeed, that it is in the discourses of chaps. 14-16, and in the prayer of chap. 17, much more than in chap. 13, that the thoughts of Jesus which are summed up by John in the knowing that of John 13:1 come to light; comp. John 14:12: “ I go to my ather,” John 15:18: “ If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before you,” John 16:28: “ I leave the world and go to my Father,” John 16:33: “ You shall have tribulation in the world,” John 17:11: “ I am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I come to thee. ” Comp. also John 13:34; John 15:9; John 15:11; John 15:14; John 17:23-24; John 17:26, etc. But and this it is which it seems to me has not been sufficiently marked with the second verse, there begins a second more particular preamble, relating only to the scene described in the following narrative (chap. 13). This second preamble, like the first, contains three determinations; one of time; a supper having taken place; the second, relating to the present condition of things: “the devil having already put into the heart...”; the third, of a moral nature: “Jesus, knowing that...” We easily discover the correspondence of these three determinations with the facts and conversations of the following narrative. They serve to place in a clear light the thought of Jesus during the scenes which are immediately to follow, those of the washing of the disciples' feet and of the dismissal of Judas.