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JOHN 7:30 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
John 7:29John 7:31
“Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come.”
Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come — the authorities immediately attempt to arrest Jesus in response to his claim of God-knowledge. Yet no one succeeds ('no man laid hands on him'). John attributes this not to the crowd's protection or Jesus's evasion but to the fact that 'his hour was not yet come.' This is John's theology of divine providence: Jesus's life and death are determined by the Father's timing, not by human will. The arrest will come only when the hour comes, and that hour is the crucifixion.

Church Fathers on John 7:30

It was said above that our Lord went up to the feast secretly, not because He feared being taken, (for He had power to prevent it,) but to show figuratively, that even in the very feast which the Jews celebrated, He was hid, and that it was His mystery. Now however the power appears, which was thought timidity: He spoke publicly at the feast, in so much that the multitude marveled: They said some of them at Jerusalem, Is not this He, whom they seek to kill? but, lo, He speaks…

Augustine · 4th century

for there had been the greatest display of miracles, and there the people were in the worst state, seeing the strongest proofs of His divinity, and yet willing to give up all to the judgment of their corrupt rulers. Was it not a great miracle, that those who raged for His life, now that they had Him in their grasp, became on a sudden quiet?

Chrysostom · 4th century · The Evangelist adds, from Jerusalem

Every man, ever born in the flesh, is in a certain sense from God. How then could He say that they were ignorant who He was, and whence He was.? Because our Lord is here referring to His own peculiar birth from God, which they were ignorant of, because they did not know that He was the Son of God. His very saying then that they did not know whence He was, was telling them whence He was. If they, did not know whence He was, He could not be from nothing; for then there would be…

Hilary of Poitiers · 4th century
Read all 31 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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John 7:30 — Community Reflections | HolyStudy