John 7:42-43 - Exposition

Hath not the Scripture said, That the Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was? Therefore a division arose in the multitude because of him. De Wette, Baur, Weisse, Keim, and others have tried to prove from this that the evangelist was ignorant of Christ's birth at Bethlehem. "Hilgenfeld candidly owns that this passage assumes the author's knowledge of this very fact" (Godet). It was unknown to the multitude, who were not at that moment aware how this argument would ultimately be pressed by the first preachers of the gospel. John leaves the objection unanswered, because he knew that all his readers, familiar with the synoptic narrative, would answer it for themselves. As respects the well known belief current in John's later years, and confirmed by the ecclesiastical tradition of Hegesippus (Eusebius, 'Hist. Eccl.,' Ecclesiastes 3:19 , Ecclesiastes 3:20 ), that the relatives of Jesus were summoned, as descendants of David, into the Emperor Domitian's presence, it is clear that Jesus was believed to be the humble heir of David's throne and family, so that his readers would see that he fulfilled not only the prophecy of Micah 5:2 , but those of Isaiah 11:1 and Jeremiah 23:5 , passages which anticipate the Messiah's descent from David. These were minor points in the great tableau of John's Gospel. He who believed with overwhelming conviction that Jesus was the Logos made flesh, the Son of God, and the risen and glorified Lord, bestowing the Spirit of his own wondrous Person upon his Church, would not trouble much about these mistakes of the people concerning the ancillary details of his earthly career which, when he wrote, had become universally known. It was, however, instructive, half a century later, to see how flimsy, unveracious, and worthless the objections were which passed from lip to lip at this crisis in the life of our Lord. A Greek of the time of Hadrian would be surely very unlikely to have represented this condition of the Jerusalem mind. Now, some of those who believed that he was a great Prophet, the predicted Prophet, yet refused to agree with others who hailed him as the Christ. The division or violent party split ( σχίσμα ) in the crowd on that "last great day of the feast" may have had persons friendly to him on both sides; but on one side at least there were those who were ready to side with Pharisees and "Jews" and lay hands upon him.