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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 58
CHAPTER IV. That oftentimes the departures of Christ from Jerusalem signify the transferring of His grace to the Gentiles: wherein is also the discourse of the five barley loaves and the two little fishes.
Chap. vi. And after these things Jesus departed across the sea of Tiberias.
First I think it needful to tell my hearers, that the Lord evidently did not make His departures from Jerusalem without some most necessary reason. There is an economy on almost every occasion, and on the nature of things, as on a tablet, He inscribes mysteries. Of what nature then is the intent of the departure, and what is signified thereby, we will make manifest in its proper time, the chapters before us having reached their termination. For having divided every thing into sections, and interpreted what is profitable out of the Scriptures, and so set them before our readers for their understanding, we will offer the final consideration of the whole, epitomising in a summary what has been said in many portions. But I think we ought to speak first on what is now before us.
After these things (saith he) Jesus departed across the sea of Tiberias. After what things, must be sought not negligently. Christ then was manifested in Jerusalem as a wondrous Physician. He had healed the man who had been thirty and eight years in his infirmity, not by giving him any medicine, not by devising any disease-repelling remedy, but rather by a word, as God, by Almighty Authority and God-befitting beck: for Arise (saith He) take up thy bed, and go unto thy house. But since it was the sabbath, the Jews are ignorantly angry, who were sick with the grossness of the letter, who more than he, were bound by the folly that was their foster brother, who were sick of the listless want of all good things alike, who were paralytic in mind and enfeebled in habit, to whom might with reason be said, Strengthen ye, ye weak hands and ye palsied knees. But they are angry, saying that the honour due to the sabbath ought to be paid even by the Law-giver Himself; they condemn Christ as a transgressor, not admitting into their mind what is written, Impious is he who says to a king, Thou transgressest? For these things they received sharp reproofs from the Saviour, and much and long discourse was prepared to shew that the rest of the sabbath had been typically ordained for them of old and that the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath. But they prepared to no good thing, but full ready for all waywardness, rise up against Him Who teacheth what they ought to learn, and desire to kill Him who would make them wise, rewarding Him, as it is written, evil for good.
After these deeds therefore and words, the Lord, as of necessity, departs from Jerusalem, and since the Jews' Passover [5] was nigh (as we shall find a little further on) He sailed across the sea of Tiberias, or the lake in the country of the Jews so called. But since what principally drove Him away, and induced Him to withdraw and to go to other places and those so far removed from Jerusalem, was (we have just said) that the Jews' Passover was nigh, I think it fitting to shew that exceeding well did Jesus eschew being found in Jerusalem at that time.
5. [a] The words, the Jews' Passover, here and just below have been retained in the text as there is no manuscript authority for omitting them. But the whole context indicates that the true reading is, ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν ἰουδαίων, the Jews' feast (though no known MS. of the Gospels is cited as so reading); for the whole scope of the passage that follows is upon the Feast of Tabernacles, not the Passover. S. Cyril appears to take this chapter as contemporaneous in time with chapter 7, in the commentary on which no notice is taken of verse 2, Now the Jews' feast of tabernacles was at hand, except as forming the heading of the chapter (Book iv chapter v). It was pointed out to me some years ago by the Rev. F. J. A. Hort, that an old Latin translation of this work by George of Trebizond omits the mention of the passover here. But George of Trebizond lived in the fifteenth Century and does not appear to have had access to any Ms. better or at all differing from that from which Cod. Vat. and Cod. S. Marci, Venice are co-transcripts, and moreover his translation is very free and often of the nature of an abstract rather than a translation. It becomes impossible therefore to lay any stress on Ms omission of the words.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/john-commentary-2.asp?pg=58
