EXPOSITION
These chapters (9. and 10.) bring the conflict with the Jews to a climax before the commencement of the Peraean ministry. They are doubtless closely connected with what has preceded; but the note of time (John 10:22) implies an interval of some months of intense activity elsewhere—to have carried on the ministry of Christ from the Feast of Tabernacles to the winter. If John 10:22 points back, as Westcott argues by alteration of the Received Text and by special translation, to the preceding discourse, we are compelled to dissociate the cure of the blind man from the teaching of John 8:1-59., and to regard the opening verse of John 9:1-41. as entirely distinct from, and discontinuous with, the stormy scene in the temple. Dr. Eustace Conder, 'Outlines of the Life of Christ,' considers the connection so close between the eighth, ninth, and tenth chapters, as to bring the entire series of instructions into one group, and to intercalate a considerable portion of the later Galilaean ministry and also that in Persea between the seventh and eighth chapters. On that hypothesis, after the break-up of the Sanhedrin on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:52), an absence of some months intervened before Jesus (John 8:12) again spoke to them, and said, "I am the Light of the world," deriving his illustration from "the Feast of Lights," which accompanied the enkaiaia of John 10:22.
The removal of the closing words of John 8:59 from the text as a gloss, favors a pause between the attempt to stone Jesus and the miracle. Lange has the inconsistent remark that the παράγων is "the participle of the preceding though doubtful παρῆγεν." If it were a gloss, the παρῆγεν had been introduced by some copyist from the παράγων, and therefore the latter can derive no meaning from the former. Admitting the spuriousness of the gloss, the connection between the chapters is not close enough to allow the supposition that, on the passing out of the temple with his disciples, the conversation and miracle took place. Godet thinks that the most probable time was the evening of the memorable day when our Lord and his disciples had returned to the temple. True, in Acts 3:2 a congenital cripple sat at the gate of the temple, asking alms; but in this place there is no mention of the temple. Our Lord may have "seen" this beggar on any one of his peregrinations over the slopes of Olivet or on the road to Bethany, and now he seems to be in the company of the disciples, and with them alone. They are not apparently suffering from the recent excitement of the angry contest in the temple-court. They have had time to recover themselves, and to draw from Christ, not as the eternal I AM, but as their "Rabbi," a solution of a most pressing psychological and theological puzzle which has agitated all schools of thought. Yet the reply of Jesus, involving a fresh illustration of his being the "Light of the world," shows that the great utterances of the preceding discourse were still the theme uppermost in his own mind. We know that the discourse, etc., took place on a sabbath, and the result of the healing relates itself most closely to the discussion which followed the healing of the impotent man in John 5:1-47. and 7.