had arisen from Galilee. According to this view they made an ignorant assertion, and said what was not true.
I find it very difficult to receive this third opinion. To me it seems quite preposterous to suppose that men so thoroughly familiar with the letter of Scripture, as the Pharisees were, would venture on such a monstrous and ignorant assertion, as to say that "no prophet had ever arisen out of Galilee!" Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Jonah, and perhaps Nahum, are all thought by some to have been Galilean prophets. Moreover Isaiah distinctly prophesied that in Messiah's times, Zebulon and Nepthali and Galilee of the Gentiles should be a region where "light should spring up." (Matt. iv. 14 — 16.)
On the other hand, I must frankly admit that the Greek of the sentence must be much strained to make it mean "the true prophet is not to arise out of Galilee. I do not forget, more- over, that when men lose their tempers and fly into a passion, there is nothing too foolish and ignorant for them to say. Like a drunken man they may talk nonsense, and say things of which in calm moments they may be ashamed. It may have been so with the Pharisees here. They were no doubt violently enraged, and in this state of mind might say anything absurd.
The point, happily, is not one of first-rate importance, and men may afford to differ about it. Nevertheless if I must give an opinion, I prefer the second of the three views I have given. The improbability of the Pharisees asserting anything flatly contrary to the letter and facts of Scripture, is, to my mind, an insuperable objection to the other views.
63. — [And every man. ..his own house.'] These words seem to indi- cate that the assembly of Pharisees, before whom the officers had appeared, reporting their inability to take our Lord pris- oner, broke up at once without taking any further action. They saw they could do nothing. Their design to put our Lord to death at once could not be carried out, and must be deferred. They therefore separated and went to their own houses. We may well believe that they parted in a most bitter and angry frame of mind, boiling over with mortified pride and baulked malice. They had tried hard to stop our Lord's course, and had completely failed. The "Galilean" had proved for the time stronger than the Sanhedrim. Once more, as after the miracle of Bethesda, they had been ignominiously foiled. and publicly defeated.
Hutcheson remarks : " There is no council nor understanding against Christ, but when He pleaseth He can dissipate all of it. Here every man went unto his own house, without doing any- thing."
Maldonatus thinks the verse proves that though the Pharisees sneered at Nicodemus, and reviled him, they could not deny the fairness and justice of what he said. He thinks, therefore, that