John 8:20

Ver. 20. “ Jesus spoke these words as he was teaching near the treasury, in the temple;and no one laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come. ”

The position which the words ταῦτα τὰ ῥήματα, these words, occupy at the beginning of the sentence, gives them, notwithstanding the denial of Weiss, an emphatic sense: words of such gravity. Even the recollection of the locality in which they had been uttered had remained deeply engraved in the memory of the evangelist. The term γαζοφυλάκιον, treasury, probably designates, by reason of the preposition ἐν, in, the whole place where were deposited the sums collected for the maintenance of the temple and for other pious uses. It appears from Mark 12:41, and Luke 21:1, that the trunks or chests of brass, thirteen in number, which were designed to receive the gifts of the faithful, were properly called by this name. They were in the court of the women, and bore, each of them, an inscription indicating the purpose to which the money which was deposited in it was consecrated. It was before the one which was designed for the poor that Jesus was sitting, when He saw the widow cast into it her mite. It is probable that the apartment called treasury was that in which were kept the sums coming from these trunks, and that it was near these trunks. This locality was almost contiguous to that in which was the famous hall called Gazith, where the Sanhedrim held its meetings, between the court of the women and the inner court (Keil, Handb. der bibl. Archaol . I., p. 146, note 13). This last circumstance explains the importance which the evangelist attaches to the indication of this locality (John 7:45-52). It was, in some sort under the eyes and in the hearing of the assembled Sanhedrim (John 7:45-52), that Jesus was teaching when He uttered such words. The expression in the temple serves to make prominent the sacred character of the locality indicated: in the treasury, in the midst of the temple at Jerusalem! The and which follows evidently takes, in this connection, the sense of: and yet. If there was a place where Jesus found Himself under the hands and at the mercy of His enemies, it was here; but their arm was still paralyzed by their conscience and by the public favor which gathered around Jesus.