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JOHN 13:4 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
John 13:3John 13:5
“He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.”
He got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around his waist — the physical actions are deliberate and shocking: Jesus, the teacher and Lord, descends from his place of honor at table to perform the servile work of a slave (footwashing was the task of servants or wives, not rabbis). The removal of his outer robe foreshadows the stripping at Golgotha; the towel anticipates the grave-clothes. Each gesture is a proclamation of humiliation and self-emptying, inverting all worldly hierarchy. This is Jesus' first "sign" of what love truly means—not instruction but embodied action, not authority wielded but authority relinquished.

Church Fathers on John 13:4

Our Lord being about to depart out of this life, shows His great care for His disciples: Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end.

Theophylact · 11th century

The Jews had many feasts, but the principal one was the passover; and therefore it is particularly said, Before the feast of the passover.

Bede · 8th century

though there is remarkable agreement of the two languages in it. The Greek word to suffer being pascha has been thought to mean passion, as being derived from the above word. But in Hebrew, pascha is a passing over; the feast deriving its name from the passing, of the people of God over the Red Sea into Egypt. All was now to take place in reality, of which that passover was the type. Christ was led as a lamb to the slaughter; whose blood sprinkled upon our doorposts, i.e.…

Augustine · 4th century · Pascha is not a Greek word, as some think, but Hebrew
Read all 16 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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John 13:4 — Community Reflections | HolyStudy