Nor £ consider; or, nor do ye take account. Hengstenberg shows that where this verb ( λογίζεσθε) elsewhere occurs, it is used intransitively, and with this Godet agrees; then they take ὅτι, as "because" or for it is expedient for you (the text ὑμῖν is preferred by Meyer, Godet, Westcott and Herr, and the Revised. The chief difference in thought is that it makes the language somewhat more dogmatic, Caiaphas hardly classing himself for the moment with such irresolute companions) that one man should die for ("on behalf of" amounting to "instead of") the people—i.e. for the theocratic organization, whose were the promises, to whom was given the dominion—and not that the entire nation (the political aggregation) perish. Some have supposed (like Lange) Divine purpose lurking in the ἵνα; but it was rather the maxim of worldly expediency of half-paganized superstition allied in this form to the sacrifice of Codrus, or of Iphigenia, viz. that the extinction of guiltless and innocent victims may be demanded by political necessity, and must be determined upon at once, by the chief court of equity and criminal judicature in the nation. If, thought he, the multitudes accept this Sabbath-breaker, this Worker of miracles, this religious Enthusiast, this moral Reformer, for their Messiah, the Romans will crush the movement, will stamp out the entire religious order; "we" shall be annihilated as a power, the "nation" will be abolished as such. It is more expedient that this one man should suffer than that the whole of our position should be sacrificed.
The evangelist discerned the presence of a deeper meaning in his words not intended by himself. As Balaam and Nebuchadnezzar and even Pharaoh had uttered unconscious or unwilling prophecies, and as in all genuine prophecies there are meanings meant by God beyond what the utterer of them at all conceived possible. So here. This he spake not from himself: but being high priest that awful, critical year, he prophesied. The high priest was believed in ancient times to have the power of drawing from Urim and Thummim the Divine decisions as to future events: "He saved others; himself he cannot save!" (Mark 15:31); when the people said, "His blood be upon us" (Matthew 27:25); when Pilate, by unconscious prophecy, ironically declared him to be "King of the Jews" (Matthew 27:37). Wunsche quotes a curious case of unconscious prophecy, which the rabbinical writers attributed to Pharaoh's daughter, when she forecast the future legislator in the infant derelict. The substance of the prophetic word extracted from his saying was that Jesus should die for the nation. Hengstenberg wisely says, "Caiaphas could not have spoken other than of the λαός." When John wrote, the difference between the λαός and the ἔθνη had vanished away. Israel had become an ἔθνος, like the rest. And not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one ( λαόν) the children of God scattered abroad—constitute a new center, life-giving and sacred in the covenant of his blood (cf. 1 John 2:2, a very remarkable parallelism). Who are the τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ διεσκορπισμένα? According to some, the dispersed Israelites, but surely the passage corresponds with the "other sheep," of John 10:16, and refers to all who enter by living faith in him into the full realization of the Divine Fatherhood (see John 1:12 and Ephesians 2:14) and their own sonship. Christ is the true Union of Jew and Gentile.