John 7:1

Ver. 1. “ And after this, Jesus continued to sojourn in Galilee: for he would not sojourn in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to put Him to death. ”

The situation described in this first verse is the continuation of that of which the picture has been drawn in John 6:1-2. Hence the καί, and, placed at the beginning; comp. John 6:1. If he does not any further mention the numerous body of attendants of which he had spoken at the beginning of chap. 6, it is perhaps owing to the general desertion which had temporarily followed the scene related in the sixth chapter. But he brings out more forcibly the persistence with which, during so long a period, Jesus limited His journeyings to Galilee. The term περιπατεῖν, to go and come, characterizes by a single word that ministry of itinerant evangelization which the Synoptics describe in detail. The imperfect tenses make prominent the continuance of this state of things. The sense of the words: He sojourned in Galilee, is rather negative than positive: “He did not go out of Galilee.” The last words of the verse recall the state in which the preceding visit of Jesus had left the minds of men in Jerusalem (chap. 5), and thus prepare the way for the following narrative. In one sense, everything is fragmentary, in another, everything is intimately connected in the Johannean narration.

Let us here cast a glance at the contents of the Synoptic narrative up to the moment which we have reached in the narrative of John.

To our sixth chapter corresponds precisely the period contained in Matthew 14:13 to Matthew 16:28, and in Mark 6:30 to Mark 8:38, including the multiplication of the loaves, the conversation with the Pharisees on washings and the cleanness of meats, the journey to the northwest as far as Phoenicia, (the Canaanitish woman), the return through Decapolis with the second multiplication of loaves, the return on the western shore of the lake, a new excursion on the opposite shore, together with the arrival at Bethsaida; finally, an excursion to the north of Palestine, with the conversation at Caesarea Philippi. Thus we reach the moment parallel with the end of the sixth chapter and the beginning of the seventh chapter of John. It is October. Here are placed in the Synoptics the events which precede and accompany the return from Upper Galilee to Capernaum, the Transfiguration, the conversations on the approaching rejection of Jesus, the dispute among the disciples and the arrival at Capernaum (Matthew 17:1-18 end; Mark 9). Then Mark (Mark 10:1) and Matthew (Matthew 20:1) relate the final departure from Galilee to Judea. This cannot be the journey to the feast of Tabernacles in John 7, as we shall show. This journey (in John) is omitted, like all the others, by the Synoptics; the final departure from Galilee indicated by them is certainly a fact posterior to the brief journey to Jerusalem described by John in chap. 7. Luke, as we have seen, connects the conversation at Caesarea (Luke 9:17-18) directly with the first multiplication of loaves. Then he recounts nearly the same facts as the two other Synoptical writers, the Transfiguration, the healing of the lunatic child, the conversation respecting the approaching sufferings and the return to Capernaum (Luke 9:18-41); finally he passes, like the other two, from this point to the final departure for Jerusalem (Luke 9:51.)