John 18:6

18:1-12 Sin began in the garden of Eden, there the curse was pronounced, there the Redeemer was promised; and in a garden that promised Seed entered into conflict with the old serpent. Christ was buried also in a garden. Let us, when we walk in our gardens, take occasion from thence to mediate on Christ's sufferings in a garden. Our Lord Jesus, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth and asked, Whom seek ye? When the people would have forced him to a crown, he withdrew, ch.

John 18:6 . The immediate effect of His calm declaration was: ἀπῆλθον εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω καὶ ἔπεσον χαμαί , “they went backwards and fell to the ground”. Job 1:20 , πεσὼν χαμαί ; similarly used by Homer, etc., as = χαμᾶζε . This might have been considered a fulfilment of Psalm 27:2 , οἱ θλίβοντές με … ἔπεσαν . The recoil, which necessarily causes stumbling and falling in a crowd, was natural, especially if the servants here employed were the same as those who had been sent to take Him on a former occasion, John 7:46 . No one wished to be the first to lay hands on Him. Similar effects were produced by Mohammed (when Durthur stood over him with drawn sword), Mark Antony, Marius, Coligny. But the object in narrating the circumstance may have been to illustrate the voluntariness of Christ’s surrender.

6. As soon then as he said unto them, I am He, they went backward—recoiled. and fell to the ground—struck down by a power such as that which smote Saul of Tarsus and his companions to the earth (Ac 26:14). It was the glorious effulgence of the majesty of Christ which overpowered them. "This, occurring before His surrender, would show His power over His enemies, and so the freedom with which He gave Himself up" [Meyer].

For a further evidence to the world that Christ was the Son of the Everlasting Father, it pleased God in all the periods of his life to show forth by him some acts of the Divine power. What had Christ said or done here to prostrate his armed adversaries? He had only asked them whom they looked for; and hearing that it was for him, told them he was the man: they are struck with a terror, and instead of apprehending him, start from him, and fall down to the ground. If there were so much majesty in and such an effect of the voice of Christ in one of the lowest acts of his humiliation, what will the voice of a glorified Christ be to sinners, when he shall return as a Judge to condemn the world! And what will the effect of that be upon his enemies! How easily might our Saviour have escaped, now that his enemies were fallen to the ground! But he suffered them to rise up again, to take him, and to carry him away, to show that he had laid down his life freely.

6 . As soon then as he had said ] Better, when therefore (see on John 18:3 ) He said . The Evangelist intimates that what followed was the immediate consequence of Christ’s words. went backward, and fell ] Whether this was the natural effect of guilt meeting with absolute innocence, or a supernatural effect wrought by Christ’s will, is a question which we have not the means of determining. Moreover, the distinction may be an unreal one. Is it not His will that guilt should quail before innocence? The result in this case proved both to the disciples and to His foes that His surrender was entirely voluntary ( John 10:18 ). Once before, the majesty of His words had overwhelmed those who had come to arrest Him ( John 7:46 ); and it would have been so now, had not He willed to be taken. Comp. Matthew 26:53 , where the expression ‘ legions of angels’ may have reference to the fragment of a legion that had come to superintend His capture.

(6) They went backward, and fell to the ground. —There is nothing in the narrative to suggest that our Lord put forth miraculous power to cause this terror. The impression is rather that it was produced by the majesty of His person, and by the answer which to Jewish ears conveyed the unutterable name, “Jehovah” (I AM). (Comp. Note on John 8:24-25 .) Guilt trembled before the calmness of innocence. Man fell to the ground before the presence of God. To Judas the term must have been familiar, and have brought back a past which may well have made him tremble at the present. To the officers the voice came from Him of whom they had been convinced before that “Never man spake like this man” ( John 7:46 ). They have come to take Him by force, but conscience paralyses all their intentions, and they lay helpless before Him. He will surrender Himself because His hour is come ( John 17:1 ); but His life no one taketh from Him. For this sense of awe in the presence of Christ, comp. the account of the cleansing of the Temple in John 2:14 et seq.

They went backward ... - The cause of their retiring in this manner is not mentioned. Various things might have produced it. The frank, open, and fearless manner in which Jesus addressed them may have convinced them of his innocence, and deterred them from prosecuting their wicked attempt. His disclosure of himself was sudden and unexpected; and while they perhaps anticipated that he would make an effort to escape, they were amazed at his open and bold profession. Their consciences reproved them for their crimes, and probably the firm, decided, and yet mild manner in which Jesus addressed them, the expression of his unequalled power in knowing how to find the way to the consciences of men, made them feel that they were in the presence of more than mortal man. There is no proof that there was here any miraculous power, any mere physical force, and to suppose that there was greatly detracts from the moral sublimity of the scene.

John 18:6 . They gave way,—drew back (see on John 6:66 ), and fell to the earth ( χαμαί = χαμᾶζε , very frequently in the classics also); this was regarded, first by Oeder in his Miscell. sacr . p. 503 ff., and recently by most expositors (including Lücke, Tholuck, Olshausen, De Wette, B. Crusius, Ewald, Baeumlein), as a natural consequence of terror and of sudden awe, in support of which reference is made to the (weaker) analogies from the history of M. Antonius (Val. Max. viii. 9. 2), and of Marius (Velleius Paterc. ii. 19. 3), even of Coligny; whilst Brückner would conceive of the effect at least as “scarcely as purely human.” Lange, however, likewise deduces it from terror of conscience, and finds the miracle only in the fact that it was not unexpected by the Lord, and not undesigned by Him. But, presumptively, the falling to the ground of itself, and the circumstance that the text designates those who fell down generally and without an exception, so that even the Roman soldiers are to be understood along with the rest, justifies the view of the ancient commentators, also adopted by Strauss (who, however, as also Scholten, views the matter as unhistorical), Ebrard, Maier, Luthardt, Hengstenberg, Godet, that it was a miraculous result of the power of Christ (Nonnus: οἰστρηθέντες ἀτευχέϊ λαίλαπι φωνῆς ). Christ wished, before His surrender, to make known His might over His foes, and thus to show the voluntariness of His surrender.

John CHRIST AND HIS CAPTORSJohn 18:6 - John 18:9 . This remarkable incident is narrated by John only. It fits in with the purpose which he himself tells us governed his selection of the incidents which he records. ‘These things are written,’ says he, near the end of the Gospel, ‘that ye might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that, believing, ye might have life in His name.’ The whole of the peculiarities of the substance of John’s Gospel are to be explained on the two grounds that he was writing a supplement to, and not a substitute for, or a correction of, the Gospels already in existence; and that his special business was to narrate such facts and words as set forth the glory of Christ as ‘the Only Begotten of the Father.’ The incident before us is, as I think, one of these. The Evangelist would have us see in it, as I gather from his manner of narrating it, mainly three things. He emphasises that strange recoil of the would-be captors before Christ’s majestic, calm ‘I am He’; that was a manifestation of Christ’s glory. He emphasises our Lord’s patient standing there, in the midst of the awe-struck crowd, and even inciting them, as it would seem, to do the work for which they had come out; that was a manifestation of the voluntariness of Christ’s sufferings.