John Chapter 4 verse 46 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 46. - He came therefore again unto Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. The οϋν of this verse is best explained by the simple supposition that Cana lay in his way. In Cana of Galilee, not Judaea, he had manifested forth his glory, and his disciples believed on him. He came, then, to Galilee, to Cana, and for a while tarried there, long enough for the βασιλικός to have heard of his healing power and prophetic gifts. There have been numerous attempts to identify this narrative of the nobleman's son with the healing of the centurion's servant as recorded in Matthew 8:5 and Luke 7:2. Recently Weiss and Thoma have laid emphasis upon this identification. Strauss, Baur, and all the opponents of John's Gospel, are eager to press this subjective handling of the synoptic tradition. But, as Edersheim has observed, they are here in hopeless contradiction with their own theory; for we find that the Hebrew Gospel here confers the loftiest encomium upon a Gentile, and the Hellenic Fourth Gospel makes the hero of this scene to be a Jew. True, in both cases a man of higher rank than that of fishermen and taxgatherers approaches our Lord with a request on behalf of another. But it should be observed that in the one case we have a Roman centurion, a heathen man, coming with great faith, one who, though "not in Israel," recognizes the imperial claims of Jesus; in the present narrative we have an Herodian officer, some person of Jewish blood attendant on the tetrarch's court, who displays a weak faith, reproved though rewarded by the Master. The one asks for a dying slave afflicted with paralysis; the other for a dying son suffering from deadly fever. Jesus meets the centurion as he crones down from the mountain, after the delivery of the great sermon; the Lord, when he receives the request of the nobleman, was a resident in. Cana. Both cures are said to take place at Capernaum by the utterance of a word, but the centurion disclaims the right to a visit, and asks for a word only. The nobleman entreats that the Lord would travel from Cana to Capernaum to heal his son. Thus the two narratives, with certain resemblances, are still strongly contrasted. The βασιλικός is one in the service of a king. The title of a king was given to Herod in later times (Mark 6:14), and characterized other references to him. And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(46) So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee.--He returns to the place where He had manifested His glory and knit to Himself in closer union the first band of disciples. This thought is present to the writer as the reason why He went there. It was the place "where He made the water wine."And there was a certain nobleman.--The margin shows the difference of opinion among-our translators as to what English word gives the true idea of the position of the person who is in the text called "nobleman." The Greek word is an adjective formed from the word for "king," and as a substantive occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It is frequent in Josephus, who uses it in our sense of courtier, or for a civil or military officer, but not for one of the royal family. The king, whose "king's man" is here spoken of, was almost certainly Herod Antipas, who was left the kingdom in his father's first will, and is called "king" by St. Matthew (Matthew 14:9) and by St. Mark (Mark 6:14). The person here named may therefore be a "royalist" or "Herodian" (comp. Matthew 22:16; Mark 3:6), but in a domestic incident like this the reference would be to his social position rather than to his political opinions. Perhaps "king's officer" represents the vagueness of the original better than any other English term. It is not improbable that the person was Chuza, and that his wife's presence in the band of women who followed Christ (Luke 8:3) is to be traced to the restoration of her child. For the position of Capernaum, see Note on Matthew 4:13. . . .