John 4:1-3

“ When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, 2, though Jesus did not himself baptize, but his disciples, 3, he left Judea, and departed again into Galilee. ”

John 4:1. explains the motive which leads Jesus to leave Judea: A report has reached the Pharisees respecting Him, according to which this new personage may become more formidable than John himself. Οὖν, therefore: because of this great concourse of people, mentioned in John 3:23-26. The title: the Lord (in the larger part of the MSS.), is but rarely applied to Jesus during His earthly life (John 6:23; John 11:2). It pre-supposes the habit of representing Jesus to the mind as raised to glory. It is frequent in the epistles. If it is authentic in this passage (see the various reading of three MSS., which read: Jesus), it is occasioned either by the feeling of the divine greatness of Jesus, which manifests itself in the preceding section, or, more simply, by the desire of avoiding the repetition of the name of Jesus, which occurs again a few words further on. The expression had heard excludes a supernatural knowledge. We see in what follows that the tenor of the report made at Jerusalem is textually reproduced; comp. the name of Jesus instead of the pronoun He, and the present tenses ποιεῖ and βαπτίζει, makes and baptizes. Jesus must have appeared more dangerous than John, first, because of the Messianic testimony which John had borne to Him, and, then, because of His course of action which was much more independent of legal and Pharisaic forms; finally, because of His miracles; with relation to John, comp. John 10:41. The reading of the five Mjj., which omit ἤ, than, could only have this meaning: “that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus is making more disciples, and that (on his side) John is baptizing.” This meaning is strange, and even absurd. The term disciples, which here denotes the baptized, will be found again in John 7:3 in this special sense.

The practical conclusion which Jesus draws from this report may lead us to suppose that John had been already arrested and that, as Hengstenberg thinks, the Pharisees had played a part in this imprisonment; comp. the term παρεδόθη, was delivered up, Matthew 4:12; it was, he says, by the hands of the Pharisees, that John had fallen under the power of Herod. But it will be asked why Jesus retires into Galilee, into the domain of Herod; was not this running in the face of danger? No; for this prince's hatred to John was a personal matter. As to His religious activity, Jesus had less hindrance to fear on the part of Herod than on that of the dominant party in Judea.

The remark of John 4:2 is designed to give precision to the indefinite expression used by the evangelist himself, John 3:22: that Jesus is baptizing. Nothing is indifferent in the Lord's mode of acting, and John does not wish to allow a false idea to be formed by his readers, respecting one of His acts. Why did Jesus baptize, and that without Himself baptizing? By baptizing, He attested the unity of His work with that of the forerunner. By not Himself baptizing, He made the superiority of His position above that of John the Baptist to be felt. He recalled to mind that which the latter had said: “I baptize you with water, there cometh another who will baptize you with the Spirit and with fire,” and reserved expressly for Himself that higher baptism. The first of these observations makes us understand why, at the end of a certain time, He discontinued the baptism of water, and the second, why He re-established it later as a type of the baptism of the Spirit which was to come. At all events, we must not compare this course of action with that of Paul (1 Corinthians 1:17) and of Peter (Acts 10:48), which had quite another aim. If He gave up this rite in the interval, this fact stands in relation to that other: that Jesus ceased taking a Messianic position in Galilee, to content Himself with the part of a prophet, up to the moment when He presented Himself again in Judea as the Son of David and the promised Messiah (chap. 12). At the same time, He gave up transforming into a Messianic community, by means of baptism, that Israel whose unbelief emphatically manifested itself towards Him. There are therefore three degrees in the institution of baptism: 1. The baptism of John: a preparation for the Messianic kingdom by repentance; 2. The baptism of Jesus, at the beginning of His ministry: a sign of attachment to the person of the Messiah, with the character of disciples; 3. The baptism re-instituted by Jesus after His resurrection: a consecration to the baptism of the Spirit. Those who had received the first of these three baptisms (e.g., the apostles) do not seem to have submitted afterwards to the second or third. Jesus made use of them to administer these two latter baptisms (John 4:2; Acts 2). It is not without reason that Beck has compared the baptism of infants in the Christian Church with the second of these three baptisms.

The departure from Judea is pointed out, John 4:3, as a distinct act of return to Galilee; and this because, according to John 4:1, the real object of Jesus was much less to go thither than to depart thence. The word πάλιν, again, which is read by six Mjj., alludes to a previous return to Galilee (John 1:44). John avails himself of each occasion to distinguish these two returns which had been identified by the Synoptic tradition (see on John 3:24). This adverb is, therefore, authentic, notwithstanding the numerous MSS. and critics that omit it or reject it.

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

1. The statement of John 4:1, as related to the narrative, is introduced simply as accounting for the occurrence of the incident about to be mentioned. In relation to the plan of the book, however, it seems to belong with other passages in which the writer is at pains to show how carefully Jesus avoided all things which might hasten the final catastrophe before the appointed hour. He moved in all His life, so the writer would have his readers understand, with reference to that hour.

2. The words of John 4:2, which are a correction of the report which came to the Pharisees, can hardly have been added merely for this purpose. There must have been an intention on the evangelist's part to give his readers a fact of some consequence in itself with regard to the work of Jesus. The significance of the fact may possibly be found in the relation of Jesus to John. The baptism of water was the peculiarity of John's office, that of the Spirit the peculiarity of His own. In introducing the new system, however, it was natural that there should not be an abrupt and entire breaking off of the old. John was the one who opened the way, and the union of what followed with what preceded was through him. This union, in connection with the great symbolic act of baptism, was most naturally manifested by the continuance of what John had done; but the passing away of the old and the entering in of the new, was suggested by the fact that Jesus did not Himself baptize with water, but only with the Spirit.