The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 314

neorcet friends o.nd neighbour! ho.d learned ple.ined by the simple suppoRition that nothing by their journey to the feoet; and Cana le.y in his way. In Cana of Galilee, tlmt the author of the Fourth Goepel must not Jndma, he had me.nffested forth his ho.vo been ignomnt of the kind of reception glory, and his disciples believed on him. so soon o.ccorded to our Lord o.t Nazareth. He came, then, to Galilee, to Cana, and for Brilckner o.nd Luthardt auppose by the 'Yd.P o. while te.rried there, long enough for the tho.t JeeuA either sought the struggle with fJatT,Jut<&s to have heard of his healing hie unbelioving compo.triote or the solitude power e.nd prophetic gifts. There have inducecl by the o.bsence of eympo.thy. There been numerous e.ttempts to idc:ntify this is not the foiutest trace of this in the narra-narrative of the nobleman's son with the tive. 'fhen, again, Cyril, Calvin, Bengel, healing of the centurion's servant as re- Olsho.ueen, Hengstenberg, suppose that by corded in Matt. viii. 5 a11d Luke vii. 2. ..-a:rp/r is meant his own city, Nazareth, Recently Weiss and Thoma have laid em- which is here contrasted with Galilee in phasis upon this identification. Strauss, general, including Ce.pemaum, which be- Baur, and e.11 the opponenta of John's Gos- came the missionary centre of his early pel, are eager to press this eubjecti rn hand- ministry. These commentators suppose the.t, ling of the synoptic tradition, But, as when we o.re told "he went to Galilee," it Edersheim has observed, they are here in means (as we see from ver. 46) he went to hopeless contradiction with their own Ce.na, "for he testified," etc. ; o.nd there- theory; for we find that the Hebrew Gospel fore tho.t in this forty-fourth verse comes here confers the loftiest encomium upon a the tragic scene described in Luke iv. 16- Gentile, and the llellenic Fourth Gospel 30. Lango has supplemented this theory makes the hero of this scene to be a Jew. by e.nother that removes part of the diffi- True, in both cases a man of higher re.nk culty, viz. tho.t by ..-a:rp/s we.s meant Lowerthan that of fishermen and taxgatherers Galilee, including Ne.zareth, and by the approaches our Lord with a request on behalf Galilee of ver. 44 was meant Upper Galilee of another. But it should be observed that in o.nd the neighbourhood of the lake, in- the one case we have a Roman centurion, a cluding Capernaum, to which we find the.t, heathen man, coming with great faith, one e.fter his cruel treatment at Nazareth, he who, though " not in Israel," recognizes the retired. So Geikie. Now, there are diffi- imperial claims of J esns; in the present culties in either of these views, which give narrative we have an Herodian officer, some great awkwardness to the expression, "So person of Jewish blood attendant on the he came to Cana again," in ver. 46. Tho- tetrarch's court, who displays a weak faith, luck, De Watte, Liicke, iu various ways, reproved though rewarded by the Master. urge that the 'Ydp of ver. 44 may mean The one asks for a dying slave afflicted with namely, that is to say, etc., pointing onwards paralysis; the other for a dying son suffer- to the kindly reception which the GalilreailS ing from deadly fever. Jesus meets the gave him being due to the signs which they centurion as he comes down from the beheld, and not to the words of life which mountain, after the delivery of the great he had spoken. Every view seems to us sermon; the Lord, when he receives the far-fetched and inconsistent, with the ex- request of the nobleman, was a resident in ception of the first interpretation. The only Cana. Both cnres are said to take pl,u:e at objection that is o.t all urgent, arises from Capernaum by the utterance of a wu1J, but the fact that, in the synoptic narrative, the centurion disclaims the right to i< visit, Nazoreth is spoken of as his country. and asks for a word only. The noblema.n But if this were so, we do but see in the entreats that the Lord would travel from reception accorded to him in Nazareth a Cana to Capemaum to heal his son. Thus further illustre.tion of the very same spirit the two narratives, with certain resem- which was shown to him in the metropolis. blances, are still strongly contrasted. The In both places " he came to hie own, and his fJa.<T,71.u,&s is one in the service of a 1.ing. own received him not." There is nothing The title of a king w11s given to Herod in improbable, if so, that in both ple.cee Jesus later times (Mark vi. 14), and characterized should have appealed to the homely pro- other references to him. And there was a verb. On the second ocoasion he added to oerte.in nobleman, whose son was siok at it, "his kindred and his home," as well as Capemaum. "his country." Ver. 47.-This man, when he heard that Ver. 46.-lle I oam.e therefore age.in unto ;Jesus was oome out of J'ndiea into Galilee, Cana of Ge.lilee, where he made the water went unto him. Thie statement implie~ wine, The oi5v of this verse is best ex- that Jesus had been in Capeme.um before, and left there the impression of his power 1 T.R., with numerous oursives, here reads to heal and save. The rumour of trans- 6 'l11<Tous, but the words aro omitted by all actions of this kind wrought ot Cupernawn ;modern editors. had been oarried from Capemaum to Naza- JOJl,N, lf 178 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN. [on. 1v. 1-54,