John 10:20,21

John 10:20-21. And many of them said, He hath a demon, and is mad; why hear ye him? Others said, These are not the sayings of one that is possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind? In the other instances quoted above the division of feeling had been between ‘some' and ‘others:' here, where ‘the Jews' are in question, many are driven by the words of Jesus to more bitter hostility, repeating and extending the charge of which we read in chap. John 7:20; John 8:48. But there are others whom the miracle related in chap. 9 had impressed, though at the time they did not stand up against the action of their party (chap. John 9:34). The effect produced on them by the miracle which Jesus wrought is now deepened by His teaching: as in the case of Nicodemus the ‘sign' prepared the way for the instruction of the ‘words.' In the question asked we have the same association of teaching and miracle. A man possessed by a spirit of evil could not say such things as these: a demon (though he might be supposed able to cast out another demon) could not restore to the blind their sight. It is interesting to observe in these last words the tendency of the Evangelist to close a section with words that recall its opening, thus binding all the parts of a narrative into one whole.