John 8:20 - Exposition

These words —an expression which emphasized the foregoing interview, and shut it off from the following context— spake he ( Jesus £ ) in the treasury, as he taught in the temple courts . The γαζοφυλακίον ( Mark 12:41 ; Luke 20:1 ) may be the chamber in which the thirteen chests, with trumpet like orifices for the reception of alms, were erected. If so, it was in the "court of the women," or the place of public assembly most abundantly frequented by the multitude, and beyond which the women could not penetrate into the "court of the priests." Edersheim disputes Westcott's suggestion, that the gazith, or session house of the Sanhedrin, was close by, and that the language of Jesus was within earshot of them. This chamber, gazith, was in the southeast corner of the "court of the priests," and therefore far away from the treasure chamber. Supposing that the word γαζοφυλακίον was the treasury itself. the ἐν τῷ may point to the neighbourhood of the sacred enclosure. The reference shows that the locality even of the discourse had made profound impression on one of the disciples, and implies great publicity and imminent peril from these bold avowals. The clause added by the evangelist, And no man seized him; because his hour was not yet come, is a phrase repeated frequently, and one which delays, by a strange refrain, the tragic consummation (see Introduction, § VII . 5 (4)). Here it shows that some further attempt was made to lay violent hands on him, which for the moment failed. Seeing that avowals of his Divine nature wrought to a frenzy the passions of soma of his hearers, and finally led to his condemnation for a capital offence, the evangelist again and again shows that the Lord—who made these claims on his trial, as given in the synoptists—had frequently reiterated them at peril of his life. The language of the high priest shows how bitterly the ecclesiastical authorities resented this assumption. The Fourth Gospel makes the synoptic account of this matter more intelligible by showing us that it was not an isolated occurrence.