John 9:22

These words spake his parents because, &c.— As the man who had been born blind, knew who had opened his eyes; without doubt he had given his parents an account both of the name of his benefactor, and of the manner in which he had conferred the great blessing upon him. Besides, having repeated these particulars frequently to his neighbours and acquaintance, John 9:11 we can conceive no reason why he should conceal them from his parents. The truth is, they were ungrateful enough to the Lord Jesus, to conceal what they knew, through a pusillanimous fear of the Jews, because by an act of the court it was resolved, that whosoever acknowledged Jesus to be the Christ, should be excommunicated. The Jews had two sorts of excommunication; one was what they called Niddai, which separated the person under it four cubits from the society of others; so that it hindered him from conversing familiarly with them, but left him free at that distance, either to expound, or hear the law expounded in the synagogue. There was another kind of excommunication called Shematta, from shem, which signifies a namein general; but by way of eminence was appropriated to God, whose aweful name denotes all possible perfection. Shematta therefore answers to the Syriac Maranatta,—The Lord cometh, a form of execration used by the apostle, (1 Corinthians 16:22.) and supposed to be derived from Enoch, because St. Jude quotes a saying of his, which begins with the word Maranatta, John 9:14. Behold, the Lord cometh, with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, &c. This kind of excommunication is said to have excluded the person under it from the synagogue for ever. We have the form of it, Ezra 10:7; Ezra 10:44. Neb. John 13:25 being that which was inflicted on the Jews who refused to repudiate their strange wives. It seems to have been the censure also which the council threatened against those who should acknowledge Jesus to be the Messiah, and which they actually inflicted on the beggar; for the words εξελαλον αυτον, John 9:34 apply better to this kind than to the other. Probably also it was the shematta which our Lord speaks of, John 16:2 when he says to his disciples, αποσυναγωγους ποιησουσιν υμας ;—They shall put you out of the synagogues. According to Selden, the synagogue from which persons under this censure were excluded, was every assembly whatever, whether religious or civil; the excommunicated person not being allowed to converse familiarly with his brethren, although he was not excluded either from public prayers or sacrifices. But in this latter opinion, the learned writer has not many followers. The excommunications of the primitive Christians seem to have resembled those of the Jews in several particulars; for theyexcluded excommunicated persons from their religious assemblies, and from all communion in sacred things; and when they restored them to the privileges of the faithful, it was with much difficulty.