John 10:42

10:42 This is a note of irony. While Jesus found little faith among the religious leaders in the holy city of Jerusalem, in the desert he found many who . . . believed.

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Verse 42. Many believed on him there.] The people believed on him:

1. because of the testimony of John the Baptist whom they knew to be a good and a wise man, and a prophet of the Lord; and they knew he could neither deceive nor be deceived in this mater; and,

2. they believed because of the miracles which they saw Jesus work. These fully proved that all that John had said of him was true. The scribes and Pharisees with all their science could not draw a conclusion so just. Truth and common sense are often on the side of the common people, whom the insolently wise, the unsanctifiedly learned, and the tyrannically powerful sometimes disingenuously brand with the epithets of mob and swinish multitude.

1. THIS and the preceding chapter contain two remarkable discomfitures of the Jewish doctors. In the former they were confounded by the testimony of a plain uneducated man, simply appealing to the various circumstances of a matter of fact, at which they cavilled, and which they endeavoured to decry. In this chapter the wise are taken in their own craftiness: the Pharisees are confounded by that wisdom which is from above, speaking of and manifesting the deep things of God. Sometimes God himself stops the mouths of gainsayers; at other times he makes the simplest of his followers too mighty for the most learned among the doctors. Ancient and modern martyrologies of the people of God abound with proofs of both these facts. And the persecutions of the Protestants by the Papists in the reign of Queen Mary afford a very large proportion of proofs. In these the mighty power of God, and the prevalence of truth, were gloriously apparent. Both the word of God and the Protestant cause were nobly illustrated by those transactions. May that abomination that maketh desolate never more sit in the holy place!

2. It must be remarked, by every serious reader, that our Lord did frequently speak of himself to the Jews, as being not only sent of God as their Messiah, but as being one with him. And it is as evident that in this sense the priests and Pharisees understood him; and it was because they would not credit this that they accused him of blasphemy. Now, if our Lord was not the person they understood him to state himself to be, he had the fairest opportunity, from their strong remonstrances, to correct their misapprehension of his words, if they really had mistaken his meaning-but this he never attempts. He rather strengthens his assertions in his consequent discourses with them; which, had not his positions been true, he could not have done, even as an honest man. He not only asserted himself to be equal with God, but wished them to believe it to be true; and he amply confirmed this heavenly doctrine by the miracles he wrought.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(42) And many believed on him there.—The word “there” is, in the best texts, in a position of emphasis. “And there many believed on Him.” It marks the contrast between the rejection in Jerusalem and the reception at Bethania.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

42. many believed on him there] ‘There’ is emphatic. ‘There,’

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

42 And many believed on him there.

Ver. 42. And many believed on him there] Place is no prejudice to the powerful operation of the word, when by the Spirit it is made prolific and generative.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Some believed on him as such whom John Baptist had spoken him to be; others possibly believed on him in the sense mentioned Joh 2:23; not to the saving of their souls, but as one sent of God, a great Prophet, no ordinary man. The rage of men shall not hinder the progress of the gospel.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

42. πολλοὶ ἐπίστευσαν εἰς αὐτόν, a favourite phrase of Jn. See on 4:39.

For the constr. πιστεύειν εἴς τινα, see on 1:12.

ἐκεῖ comes before εἰς αὐτόν in the rec. text; but אABDLWΘ place it at the end of the sentence, as at v. 40. perhaps for emphasis. It often comes last in Jn., e.g. 2:1, 11:8, 15, 31, 12:2.

He says “my Father” here and vv. 25, 29, 37. His relation to God was unique; see on 2:16.

Moulton-Milligan Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, illustrated from the papyri, by J. H. Moulton and G.Milligan (1914-). This is being completed by Dr. Milligan; it is indispensable.

אԠSinaiticus (δ 2). Leningrad. iv.

A Alexandrinus (δ 4). British Museum. v. Cc. 6:50-8:52 are missing.

B Vaticanus (δ 1). Rome. Cent. iv.

D Bezæ (δ 5). Cambridge. v-vi. Græco-Latin. Cc. 18:14-20:13 are missing in the Greek text, and the gap has been filled by a ninth-century scribe (Dsupp).

L Regius (ε 56). Paris. viii. Cc. 15:2-20 21:15-25 are missing.

W Freer (ε 014). Washington. iv-vi. Discovered in Egypt in 1906. The Gospels are in the order Mt., Jn., Lk., Mk. Collation in The Washington MS. of the Four Gospels, by H. A. Sanders (1912).

Γ̠(ε 70) Oxford and Leningrad. ix-x. Contains Son 1:1-13 8:3-15:24 19:6 to end.

Δ̠Sangallensis (ε 76). St. Gall. ix-x. Græco-Latin.

Θ̠Koridethi (ε 050). Tiflis. vii-ix. Discovered at Koridethi, in Russian territory, and edited by Beermann & Gregory (Leipzig, 1913). The text is akin to that of fam. 13, fam. 1, and the cursives 28, 565, 700 See Lake and Blake in Harvard Theol. Review (July 1923) and Streeter, The Four Gospels. Cf. also J.T.S. Oct. 1915, April and July 1925.

1 C. T. Wilson, Peasant Life in the Holy Land, p. 165. The author’s observations illustrative of the relation of the shepherd to his sheep are very apposite in connexion with c. 10.

1 For a critical analysis of the parable of the Shepherd and the Sheep, see Holtzmann, Life of Jesus, Eng. Tr., p. 37 f.

2 So Valentinus applied them (Hippol. Ref. vi. 35). Jülicher thinks (Introd., p. 401) that the words have a Gnostic ring.

1 For an account of the nineteenth-century Persian reformer who called himself Bāb, or “the Gate,” see ERE ii. 299, s.v. “Bāb.”

1 καλός “denotes that kind of goodness which is at once seen to be good” (Hort, on 1Pe 2:12).

1 Cf. Abbott, Diat. 2125, 2126.

1 Clem. Alex. (Strom. vi. 14, p. 794 P) comments on the “other sheep, deemed worthy of another fold and mansion, according to their faith.”

1 Except Cod. Sangallensis (sæc. ix.), which has ouile vel pastorale for ποίμνη.

אSinaiticus (δ 2). Leningrad. iv.

B Vaticanus (δ 1). Rome. Cent. iv.

L Regius (ε 56). Paris. viii. Cc. 15:2-20 21:15-25 are missing.

W Freer (ε 014). Washington. iv-vi. Discovered in Egypt in 1906. The Gospels are in the order Mt., Jn., Lk., Mk. Collation in The Washington MS. of the Four Gospels, by H. A. Sanders (1912).

Θ̠Koridethi (ε 050). Tiflis. vii-ix. Discovered at Koridethi, in Russian territory, and edited by Beermann & Gregory (Leipzig, 1913). The text is akin to that of fam. 13, fam. 1, and the cursives 28, 565, 700 See Lake and Blake in Harvard Theol. Review (July 1923) and Streeter, The Four Gospels. Cf. also J.T.S. Oct. 1915, April and July 1925.

A Alexandrinus (δ 4). British Museum. v. Cc. 6:50-8:52 are missing.

D Bezæ (δ 5). Cambridge. v-vi. Græco-Latin. Cc. 18:14-20:13 are missing in the Greek text, and the gap has been filled by a ninth-century scribe (Dsupp).

Γ̠(ε 70) Oxford and Leningrad. ix-x. Contains Son 1:1-13 8:3-15:24 19:6 to end.

Δ̠Sangallensis (ε 76). St. Gall. ix-x. Græco-Latin.

1 See A. Pallis, Notes on St. Mark and St. Matthew (1903), p. v.

1 Aramaic Origin, etc., p. 102. Torrey agrees with this (Harvard Theol. Review, Oct. 1923, p. 328).

אԠSinaiticus (δ 2). Leningrad. iv.

B Vaticanus (δ 1). Rome. Cent. iv.

D Bezæ (δ 5). Cambridge. v-vi. Græco-Latin. Cc. 18:14-20:13 are missing in the Greek text, and the gap has been filled by a ninth-century scribe (Dsupp).

Θ̠Koridethi (ε 050). Tiflis. vii-ix. Discovered at Koridethi, in Russian territory, and edited by Beermann & Gregory (Leipzig, 1913). The text is akin to that of fam. 13, fam. 1, and the cursives 28, 565, 700 See Lake and Blake in Harvard Theol. Review (July 1923) and Streeter, The Four Gospels. Cf. also J.T.S. Oct. 1915, April and July 1925.

A Alexandrinus (δ 4). British Museum. v. Cc. 6:50-8:52 are missing.

L Regius (ε 56). Paris. viii. Cc. 15:2-20 21:15-25 are missing.

W Freer (ε 014). Washington. iv-vi. Discovered in Egypt in 1906. The Gospels are in the order Mt., Jn., Lk., Mk. Collation in The Washington MS. of the Four Gospels, by H. A. Sanders (1912).

Γ̠(ε 70) Oxford and Leningrad. ix-x. Contains Son 1:1-13 8:3-15:24 19:6 to end.

Δ̠Sangallensis (ε 76). St. Gall. ix-x. Græco-Latin.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.