John 7:8 - Exposition

Go ye up to the £ feast . "Join the pilgrim bands. Take part in the ceremonial of sacrifice and lustration. Be there in good time for the booth building. You have no testimony to deliver against the corruption of the holiest service, the hollowness of the ritual thanksgiving." I go not yet £ unto this feast. The text as it here stands frees the language of our Lord from the charge of Porphyry, or proves that it was founded on false premisses; though the fact that the apparent refusal was so soon followed by a compliance makes it probable that the real point of the sentence rests not so much on the οὔπω as on the ταύτην ἑορτήν . Not as a pilgrim, not in triumphal procession, would he go to the Feast of Tabernacles. He reserved that solemn sacrificial act for a later occasion, He would suffer as the Paschal Lamb, not go to Jerusalem to assert the completion of its acceptable year, and to foment the self-satisfaction of its religious guides. This is not satisfactory, because there is no feast the special features of which seemed to furnish our Lord with more obvious illustrations of his own work and Person. Moreover, he did make his appearance in the midst of the feast. So Godet and Meyer accepted the οὐκ , and urge therefrom the fact that Jesus deliberately altered his intention, so soon as a new motive sufficiently strong presented itself. With the assistance of οὔπω , or with such an emphasis upon the present tense ( ἀναβαίνω ) as to make it equivalent to the introduction of a νῦν , the passage means. "I am not going up now." Chrysostom, Lucke, De Wette, see in this suggestion the solution of the problem and a preparation for what follows. The word ἐγγύς , " nigh " ( John 7:2 ), may reasonably be interpreted with more latitude than is generally done. It might easily mean a date sufficiently near to be the topic of conversation in the family circle, even were it still a month before the celebration. The preparations may have been made, the pilgrims were beginning to assemble for their long journey, and the "not yet" and the emphasis on the present tense of ἀναβαίνω may easily have been conditioned by some of the special work which had still to be completed in Galilee on the way to Judaea and Persea. Because my season —my special opportunity— has not been yet fulfilled; or, fully come. Probably this clause points to the completion of the predestined hour of his consummation, of the baptism with which he should be baptized, the fire that he would kindle, the work which he would finish.