Retaining all the essential properties of the Word, He entered into anew mode of being, not a new being.
The word cap&, jlesh, describes this new mode of being. It signifies human nature in and according to its corporeal mani- Jestation. Here, as opposed to the purely divine, and to the purely immaterial nature of the Word. He did not first be- come a personality on becoming flesh. The prologue through- out conceives Him as a personality from the very beginning— from eternal ages. The phrase became flesh, means more than that He assumed a human body. He assumed human nature entire, identifying Himself with the race of man, having a human body, a human soul, and a human spirit. See xii. 27; xi. 33: xiii. 21; xix. 30. He did not assume, for a time merely, humanity as something foreign to Himself. The in- carnation was not a mere accident of His substantial being. “He became flesh, and did not clothe Himself in flesh.” Com- pare, on the whole passage, 1 John iv. 2; 2 John 7.
Dwelt (écxjvecev). Lit., tabernacled, fixed, or had His tab- ernacle: from oxnvn, a tent or tabernacle. The verb is used only by John: inthe Gospel only here, and in Apoe. vii. 15; xii.12; xiil. 6; xxi. 3. It occurs in classical writings, as in Xenophon, év TO Tei eoxnvov, he pitched his tent in the plain (“ Ana- basis,” vil. 4, 11). So Plato, arguing against the proposition that the unjust die by the inherent destructive power of evil, says that ‘injustice which murders others keeps the murderer alive—aye, and unsleeping too; ottTw troppw tov ws €ouxev éoxnvetat ToD Javdoipos eivas, i.e., literally, so far has her tent been spread from being a house of death” (‘‘ Republic,” 610). The figure here is from the Old Testament (Lev. xxvii. 11; 2 Sam. vii. 6; Ps. Ixxviii. 67 sqq.; Ezek. xxxvii. 27). The taber- nacle was the dwelling-place of Jehovah; the meeting-place of God and Israel. So the Word came to men in the person of Jesus. As Jehovah adopted for His habitation a dwelling like that of the people in the wilderness, so the Word assumed a community of nature with mankind, an embodiment like that of humanity at large, and became flesh. “That which was from the beginning, we heard, we saw, we beheld, we handled.