John 19:27 - Exposition

(b) Filial love—"Behold thy mother!" and the issue. Then he saith to the disciple, Behold thy mother! The very garments that covered him had been rudely divided among the soldiers. He is therefore as a dead man, and yet he made the most royal gifts and precious assignments of that which was nevertheless inalienable. He gave a mother to his dearest friend. He gave a son most precious to the bereaved and desolate and broken heart of his widowed mother. Inconceivable that Weisse should call this "the basest self-adulation." The animus manifested to this document by a certain school partakes of the animosity of political partisanship. From that hour , says the evangelist, the disciple took her ( εἰς τὰ ἴδια ) to his own home. This may have been some temporary lodging in Jerusalem, but it is more probable, as we have seen, that Salome and John had homes both in Jerusalem and Capernaum. The mere phrase is used in John 16:32 in a more general sense of all the apostles. It is not necessary to believe that John at once removed the sacred deposit and bequest of his dying Lord to that home, though it is just possible. Bengel and many others think so, but it is not necessary to limit the meaning of "hour" to moment. The departure could hardly have taken place till all was over. In this brief reference a key is given to what John became to the Church. We must think of Salerno and John ever by the holy mother of the Lord, whether at Jerusalem, Capernaum, or Ephesus. The few words speak volumes, and his reticence here, as elsewhere, gives an unutterable grandeur to his words.