Bible Commentaries
John 6

Verses 1-72

VI 1-72 The Bread of Life —The time interval between chh 5 and 6, according to the chronological system here adopted, is almost a full year [but only two months if Purim is the ’feast’ of ch 5.—Gen. Ed.], which may be filled up by a synoptic harmony based on Mark 2:23-; Mark 6:29. This episode—the longest Galilean piece in Jn—includes (1) the two miracles of the first multiplication of bread, 1-15, and of Christ walking on the water, 16-21, (2) the Eucharistic discourse at Capllarnaum, 26-59-60, with an introductory prologue giving a composition of circumstances, 22-25, and an epilogue showing ’the discernment of spirits’ on the theme of the Bread of Life, 60-61-71-72. The miracles that precede the Promise prepare the way for belief in it, for he who fed more than 5,000 miraculously can feed the world eucharistically, and he who walked on water as on solid ground can command and suspend other conditions of matter, in order to be sacramentally present to feed the souls of men.

1-13 First Multiplication of Bread —The miracle is the only one narrated by all four evangelists, the most vividly picturesque description being that of Mk, to which however Jn adds some precise details, such as the question addressed to Philip individually and the discovery made by Andrew.

1-4. Jn’s opening indication of time denotes only sequence, without any chronological precision. What direction the journey across the Lake took is not stated but, unless the context decided otherwise, it should be as obvious as trans Tiberim was to a Roman. The crossing was from the western shore, on the northern curve of which stood Capharnaum, the missionary city of Jesus, to the eastern side dominated on the north by Bethsaida Julias. The Sea of Galilee, also called the Lake of Genesareth, Luke 5:1, is named by Jn only (cf. 21:1) from the city built on its western shore by Herod Antipas, between a.d. 26 and 28, and named Tiberias after the reigning Emperor. This name of the Lake had established itself when Jn was written. The occasion of the journey is gathered from the Synoptists. Matthew 14:12 f. connects it with the Precursor’s murder, and thus it may be interpreted as a temporary withdrawal from the murderer’s territory to that of Herod Philip. Mk and Luke 9:10 date it after the return of the Apostles from a mission; and the former specifies that the Master wanted to give the Twelve a rest from the exhausting work that followed their return, Mark 6:31.2. Popular enthusiasm had been running very high; and while Herod imagined that the Miracle-worker of Galilee was John returned to life, others were ready to regard him as Elias or the Prophet, Deuteronomy 18:15. The miracles worked on the sick made the crowds (augmented by Paschal pilgrims) observe the departure of Jesus and also urged them to follow him. They flocked to the same destination on foot,Mark 6:33.3. The mountain on which Jesus sat with his disciples looked out on the Plain now called El Bateha. There is an indefinable solemnity in this simple session.

4. The proximity of the Passover is doubtless marked for a special reason. Twelve months hence the festival of the Jews will give place to ’the new Pasch of the new Law’.

5-9 5. Till the afternoon, Lk, and the approach of evening, Mt, Mk, Jesus taught the crowds, Mk, Lk, and healed their sick, Lk. Mk notes his pity for their abandonment and his care for their hunger, which latter Jn epitomizes in the gesture of Jesus surveying the crowd with his eyes and in his question to Philip on the possibility of buying bread to feed them. A dismissal of the crowd, who could scatter and find food in the surrounding villages had already been suggested by the Apostles.

6. The question addressed to Philip was a test put to one who seems to have been a business man. Jesus himself knew what he would do.

7. The contemporary local price of bread is unknown to us, but Philip estimated that the wages of a labourer working six days a week for eight months would not suffice to procure a little for each of the many gathered there. 8 f. Andrew, who like Philip was from Bethsaida, found a boy with five barley loaves (the food of the poor) and two little fishes salted perhaps at Taricheae, the ’Salt Fish City’, at the SW. corner of the Lake. As three of those small flat Palestinian loaves were required to give one man a fairly abundant meal, Luke 11:5, the supply discovered would have made a picnic for only two or three, or at most five persons. Hence Andrew’s question: What are these among so many?

10-13 10. Mt, Mk and Jn note the grassy verdure of the place where the ’Lord prepared a table in the wilderness’. The grass also marks the springtime. Five thousand men, as well as women and children (not estimated but presumably in inferior numbers) sat down or reclined in companies of 50 or 100, Mark 6:40. Mk’s description is exquisitely graphic. They looked like flower-beds on the green.

11. Jesus took the loaves. Jn does not note the gesture of looking to heaven, which owing to the analogy of the situations has passed from Mt, Mk, Lk to the Qui pridie narrative in the Latin Mass, but Jn does use e??a??st?sa? instead of the e?????sa? of the synoptists. This verb deliberately repeated in 23 should be regarded as a distinct allusion to the Eucharistic significance of the miracle. The distribution was made by the Apostles, Mt, Mk, Lk, the bread being multiplied either antecedently, or when passing from the hands of Jesus, or (most probably) in the hands of the Apostles. From the loaves and likewise from the fishes each received not the ’little bit’ envisaged by Philip but a full meal.

12. The gathering tip of the fragments was an act of reverential economy towards the gift of God.

13. The place of the Twelve is put in evidence by the 12 baskets—Jewish travelling baskets were almost proverbial ( Juvenal, Sat. III, 15; Martial, Epig. V, 17). Let us take St Augustine’s advice and not merely look at the outside of the miracle, like a man who admires calligraphy which he cannot read. Mental comprehension, not mere ocular or imaginative apprehension, should be our endeavour, when we read this miracle on Laetare , Sunday. The same Word, ’by whom are all things’, feeds the world from a few grains of corn, and the same also multiplies himself Incarnate on thousands of altars.

14-15 Effect of the Miracle—14. Though the scribes distinguished, the crowds often identified the Prophet of Deuteronomy 18:15 with the Messias. The recent death of the Baptist, the growing fame of Jesus, the national fervour of the time shortly before the Pasch worked together with the miracle to precipitate a popular conclusion. In identifying Jesus with the Prophet the crowds also echo the great festal Psalm: ’Blessed is he that cometh’, etc.

15. The rising ferment that would have seized Jesus and set him on the throne of David could have been known by our Lord in an ordinary human way, as Jn’s aorist participle suggests. He fled again into the mountain himself alone. No doubt his prayer was like that of the night before he chose the Apostles, Luke 6:12, for the great Eucharistic crisis was at hand.

16-21 Christ walks on the Water —16. The embarkation of the Apostles, as darkness was setting in, was not spontaneous. Jesus, wishing to prevent the contagion of popular Messianism from catching them compelled them to depart, Mk, Mt.

17. The journey to Capharnaum, was only some 4 miles almost due west, but Mk indicates, 6:45, that they first turned north-west towards Bethsaida (then much nearer the shore of the Lake than the modern Et-Tell which occupies its site). Some scholars hold without sufficient grounds that there were two Bethsaidas, an eastern and a western. Supposing only one, the Apostles would have expected Jesus to join them there. When he did not do so, they would have turned the boat towards Capharnaum.

18. The adverse wind which stirred the sea against them as they rowed was evidently a north-westerly, strong but not tempestuous.

19. As the stadion is nearly an English furlong, they had only proceeded between three and four miles at the fourth watch, i.e. about 3 a.m., Mt, Lk. Then Jesus appeared walking on the water, drawing near the boat, Jn, but moving as if to pass it by, Mark 6:48.

20. He revealed himself. ’It is I; be not afraid’ is given by Mt, Mk and Jn. Mt alone records the incident of St Peter and the growing perception of divine sonship. ’Truly thou art the Son of God’. Jn had no need of recording these, but certainly they prepared St Peter for the magnificent act of steadfast faith that was to come, John 6:69 f.

21. As the verb translated: ’they were willing’, is one of desire fulfilled, it means that the Apostles did actually take Jesus into the boat, Mt, Mk. The wind ceased, Mt, Mk, but we cannot say with certainty whether Jn indicates a further miracle (one of velocity) when he tells that ’immediately’ the boat reached land. The landing-point broadly indicated by Mt and Mk as being at Gennesaret may have been as far south as Dalmanutha (some place north of Magdala). This and the miracles demanded by local people would explain how Jesus reached Capharnaum only in the evening, when the Sabbath had begun.

22-25 Narrative Introduction to Eucharistic Discourse —22. Jn describes the situation on the east coast next day. The crowd that still remained, having bivouacked at El-Bateha, knew that the only boat had left the evening before, and Jesus had not gone in it.

23. In the course of the morning other boats from Tiberias came near where the miracle preceded by ’the Lord’s thanksgiving’ (eucharist) had taken place.

24. As Jesus had not appeared and was nowhere to be found, as many as could made the westward journey to Capharnaum on the available boats, seeking Jesus.

25. They found him. Jn does not say when or where, but clearly that same day, and probably in the evening, at the synagogue of Capharnaum, 59-60. In asking when Jesus had come they certainly also wanted to know how he had come.

26-60 The Eucharistic Discourse —The numbering of verses is according to Vg. It is sufficient to note here once for all that 51 of Gk text makes 51, 52 of Vg and DV, and so the latter’s 52-72 correspond to 51-71 in Gk test. The Eucharistic character of this discourse is supported by cogent arguments and can claim patristic favour dating most probably from Ignatius of Antioch. Justin and especially Irenaeus can also be cited. The Antiochene Chrysostom, St Gregory of Nyssa, the two Cyrils of Jerusalem and Alexandria not only stand for the Eucharistic interpretation but are pronounced ’realists’. Not merely on account of the allegorism of Origen but for other reasons also, the metaphorical interpretation (eating Christ by faith), which amounts to ’spiritual communion’, has had its vogue in the Church. Though St Augustine can be shown to have understood the discourse eucharistically, later theologians failed to understand sacramental realism owing to his strong emphasis of two points, namely, (a) that we must eschew anything like Capharnaite carnalism, and (b) that we must look for the fruits described in John 6:26-58 in the ecclesiastical unity of the mystic body of Christ; cf. de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 296.

The second emphasis was undoubtedly due to his anti-Donatist preoccupations. His treatment of the matter greatly influenced the Latin Middle Age; and, moreover, 14th and 15th cent. polemics against Greeks giving the Eucharist to infants and against Bohemian utraquists strengthened the ’spiritual’ interpretation. In 1551 (Oct. 11) the Council of Trent used 6:58 as a Eucharistic text, but, in view of a controversy that took place and continued during the Council, Session XXI ( 16 July 1562) expressly left the rival interpretations of Jn 6 untouched. Today, however, Catholic unanimity on the Eucharistic interpretation of 6:51-59 is almost absolute, and very few non-catholic interpreters now deny it. It is another case of a tradition being obscured and reasserting itself. If the discourse is not a Promise of the Eucharist, the silence of John the Beloved on the Sacrament of love would be a positive enigma; the bread of the future to be given not by the Father but by the Son of Man, 27, the clear impression made on the crowds and the disciples, the strongly emphatic comparison with manna, the insistence à outrance on Flesh and Blood as food and drink—very food and very drink—all these things in the non-eucharistic hypothesis would be unintelligible.

Some commentators have held that 26-58 are two or three discourses united together, and Westcott finds not only distinct themes but also distinct audiences at 26 (crowds), 41 (Jews) and 51 (where the words begin which scandalize disciples). A close examination will, however, show that our Lord from 27 and therefore from the beginning intends to promise the Eucharist. Subsequently his words have the unity of a discourse which is partly a dialogue. Having introduced the subject of a spiritual bread, 27, he identifies it with himself, the One come down from heaven, 35, who can satisfy hunger and thirst, but in believers only. Here unbelief asserts itself in whispered murmuring, and the unbelievers are called by the name ’Jews’, which Jn habitually uses for the hostile party. Having explained the necessity of faith, 44-47, Jesus resumes the ’manna’ comparison (32 parallel to 49), and by using the verb ’to eat’ for the first time shows that 48-59 have reference to a food really or physically eaten. There is gradation of parts, not splicing of pieces.

26-34 Material Bread and the Bread of Life —This piece of dialogue marks the great distinction between the bread of physical sustenance (whether it be that of El-Bateha or the manna of the wilderness) and the Bread that nourishes eternal life. 26. Jesus does not answer a merely curious question, but touches at once the great fundamental fault in the enthusiasm that surrounds him. In the bread of El-Bateha they only saw the temporal blessing of good food, not the spiritual meaning of the miracle.

27. With the same method as that used at the Samaritan Well, Jesus tells them to labour for, that is, to strive to acquire another food, not a perishable food but a food having usefulness for life everlasting. The Son of Man will give this food, empowered as he is to do so by the seal or mark of authentication and approval which the Father—namely God himself—has set upon him.

28. The crowd like true Mosaists interpret the verb ’labour’ or ’work’ of many works commanded by God.

29. Jesus tells them that the one basic work which God requires of them is belief in himself whom God has sent.

30 f. The Samaritan woman had said: ’Art thou greater than Jacob?’—here also the crowd understand that Jesus claims to be greater than Moses, and they demand a miracle greater than the manna that fed the children of Israel in the desert for forty years. They quote in free form Ps 77(78):24 characterizing the manna as bread from heaven.

32. Again Jesus follows the same line of thought as at the Well of Samaria. Bread from heaven! Yes, but not the bread from the very heaven of God. Moses did not give that bread but the Father (now) is giving the bread from heaven, that is truly such, or really worthy of the name.

33. The giving is the Incarnation which is for the life not of one people but of the whole world—the life being supernatural life.

34. The reaction of the crowds bearing of this Bread of God . . . coming down from heaven is just like that of the Samaritan woman: ’Sir, give us always this bread’.

35-40 Jesus the Bread of Life for those who believe —Here there is a difference, but the parallelism is not entirely broken. The first great ’I am’ came later in the conversation with the Samaritan. At this point Jesus pronounces at once his second great ’I am’: ’I am the bread of life’. In Samaria he touched a moral impediment in the life of the woman; here at Capharnaum, the hindrance is a lack of faith. The act of coming to Jesus which attains the satisfaction of hunger is the same as the faith which remedies thirst for ever.

36. Jesus states the tragic fact that the crowds have seen him and still see him (perfect) and yet do not believe.

37. The fault is theirs not his, but Jesus explains the situation in terms cf what we now call efficacious grace. They come who are given to him by the Father and Jesus cannot but welcome all that the Father gives. The use of a global neuter certainly insinuates that the faithful come to Christ in the social unity of a body.

38. It is towards this body that Jesus must carry out the salvific will of his father, which is the programme of his life.

39. That programme or will of his Father is described as Jesus’ task, namely, to lose nothing of the ’entrusted all’, but to save completely even to the resurrection on the last day.

40. Human liberty, which has not been expressly envisaged in this ’giving’ by the Father, is clearly indicated when the salvific will is declared to be this: ’That every one (individually) who seeth the Son and believeth in him may have life everlasting and I will raise him up in the last day’. Belief is a free act. Jesus’ work is to save and resurrect; faith leads to eternal life and final resurrection. The language of these verses is remarkable. The Father gives us socially—for we are saved socially—to his Christ, but we come individually. It belongs to Christ the Envoy to lose nothing of what the Sender gives him (cf. 17:12) but to save completely. On our part we have to believe individually in the Son, in order to have the life everlasting and glorious resurrection which the Father wills for us.

41-47 Necessity and Nature of Faith —41 f. Descent from heaven, so emphatically asserted, clearly meant divine origin. Hence the murmur of a hostile group called ’Jews’ when such a claim was made by one whom probably they usually called Jesus Bar Joseph (cf. 1:45) and who is elsewhere referred to as ’the carpenter, the son of Mary’, Mark 6:3.43 f. The murmur reveals unbelief and rejection of the gift of God. Faith is again spoken of as an act of ’coming’ and the cause of this salutary motion is the Father drawing. Faith works as a divine attraction but not a compulsion destroying human liberty. St Augustine’s famous comment, which may be read in Tr. 26 in Joannem or in the Breviary ( Feria IV infr. Oct. Pent.) is a most beautiful passage. Whosoever is thus efficaciously attracted, Jesus will raise him up on the last day. 44. Faith is due to the interior action of God mentioned by the Prophets, notably Isaiah 54:13 and Jeremiah 31:33 f. It is ’this interior hearing and learning from the Father that brings a soul to Jesus. Hearing is perception and learning reception, but neither implies immediate vision of the Father.

46. This belongs exclusively to him who is from God. He has seen the Father.

47. Solemnly concluding this part, Jesus says: ’Amen, amen, I say to you: He that believeth (in me) hath everlasting life’.

48-60 The Bread of Life Is the Flesh of Jesus —What has preceded has been on the mystery of the Incarnation, but now he promises the institution of the Blessed Sacrament. So far Jesus has not used the verb to eat, although he has spoken of hunger and thirst satisfied by the Bread of life. His hearers only have spoken of the manna eaten by the fathers in the wilderness,

31. This reference to the Mosaic miracle he now takes up and sets the promise of the Eucharist, in a form which is really the starkest realism, over against the manna.

48. He repeats: ’I am the bread of life’.

49 f. Those who ate the manna as a physical food died.

50-52. This bread from heaven is one that man may eat and not die. The spiritual life which the food confers is eternal, and will not cease because of any limited efficacy in the food. It can only cease through spiritual suicide. He who eats this bread of life has spiritually that posse non mori conferred by the fruit of the tree of life. This is said negatively, but in the next verse the bread of life is emphatically called living bread, and the effect of eating it is declared to be that the participant shall live for ever. To this is added the startling assertion: ’The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world’. This is the future giving by the Son of Man for which 27 has prepared us. It is not immediately the Father’s gift as the Son Incarnate is in 32. The Bread is given to be eaten, but it is identified with the flesh of Jesus —his human body—given for the life of the whole world of mankind. The sacrificial character of the phrase seems almost certain and has been admitted even by non-catholic scholars. For centuries the old textus receptus made this sacrificial sense unmistakable by inserting the phrase ’which I will give’ after flesh and defining not bread but flesh (cf.Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24).

53. Not merely a murmur but the articulate sound of controversy and dissent made itself heard amongst the Jews, but Jesus only becomes more emphatic, and, if we may say so, more shocking to Jewish feeling. The expressions only grow in solemnity and explicitness and realism.

54. To the eating of flesh, as a condition of life, is added the drinking of blood, which might have been conceived as positively horrible in view of the Noachic, Genesis 9:4, and Levitical blood-prohibitions, Leviticus 7:26; Leviticus 17:14.

55. The negative assertion of 54 is now emphasized by a positive pronouncement which sums up the whole strength of the discourse: ’He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up on the last day’—here eternal life and resurrection are both mentioned for the third time. No better comment could be sought than the words of Ignatius of Antioch who wrote some ten years after St John. He called the Eucharist: ’the medicine of immortality, an antidote that we should not die, but live for ever in Christ Jesus’, Eph 20.

56. The word for eating used in 55, namely t????, is even more surprisingly physical than before. Though it cannot be translated by the crude words ’munch’ or ’crunch’, it really has some of their realistic strength. Jesus therefore says: ’My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink’. True or very represent the best attested Gk reading preferable to truly or indeed.

57. The effect of eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood is mutual vital immanence by the mixing of vital give and take. It is the sacrament of fellowship in the divine nature and of actual charity. St Cyril of Alexandria’s illustration from two pieces of wax melted together is classical, and St Thérèse of Lisieux gave us a living commentary on this verse when she described her first communion not as a meeting with Jesus but a fusion.

58. It seems that it is the flow of life from Christ in the proportional analogy of the communication of life from Father to Son that is guaranteed in the words: ’he who eats me shall also live by me’, although the translation for me is possible and is modelled on Jesus’ fidelity as an ambassador of God.

59. The discourse ends in a repetition (figure called ’inclusion’) of the comparison with manna: ’This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as (your) fathers did eat manna and died. He that eateth (t????? for the fourth time—cf. Gk text 54, 56, 57 = Vg 55, 57, 58) this bread shall live for ever’.

A supplementary word must be said on the necessity of the Eucharist as enunciated in the nisi pronouncement addressed directly to the sceptical Jews in 54. That necessity is absolute, in the sense that without the ’thing’ or grace of the Eucharist there is no salvation, for the Eucharist signifies, effects, and perfects the unity of Christ’s mystic body, outside of which no one can be saved. Total deliberate refusal to eat the flesh of Christ would exclude from supernatural life and entail damnation. But the grace of union can be obtained by desire—personal desire, in the case of adults, and the maternal desire of the Church in the case of baptized infants. For infants the sacrament of faith, which is baptism, is necessary in every way, since the actual sacrament is for them, who cannot yet have desire, the only gate to salvation, but the Church incorporating them baptismally thereby desires the Eucharist for them, and, if we may use figurative language, the baptized infant immediately opens his little mouth for the Bread of life—in other words, the recipient of the sacrament of faith is already hungry for the sacrament of charity, which is the Eucharist. The Church has never regarded sacramental communion as necessary for infants; yet the Council of Trent (Sess. 21) did not condemn ’antiquity’ for giving the Eucharist to infants, the custom being local and justified by some circumstances of the times, under the approval of holy bishops. The same Session of Trent also declared that no argument to establish a general precept of communion in both kinds can be drawn from this chapter ’however it be understood according to the various interpretations of holy Fathers and Doctors’

60. ’These things (Jesus) said, teaching in the synagogue in Capharnaum’. Codex D as well as Aug and several codices of Vg add ’on a Sabbath’. Most probably the Eucharistic Promise was made in a Sabbath discourse, delivered on Friday evening or Saturday morning. If so, the multiplication of bread took place on Thursday—another link with the Eucharistic institution. The place was probably the synagogue built by the centurion, Luke 7:5, whose words of humility we use before Holy Communion. The ruins of a synagogue of later date, built possibly on the same site, now stand splendidly restored at Tell Hum A lintel of the edifice represents a pot of manna surrounded by vine-leaves and grapes. Surely a providential reminder from Jewish hands!

61-67 Effect on Disciples —The Jews, who had never believed, doubtless remained in their unbelief. The discourse proved a test for the faith of certain disciples. 61. Interpreting our Lord’s words like Capharnaites— a name coined by exegetes for those who misunderstand through materialistic or even a cannibalistic imagining—many of his disciples declared the promise hard, that is, offensive and unbearable.

62. Their comments were only whispered, but Jesus knew in himself what they were, and said: ’Is this a stumblingblock to you?’63. He knows the scandal caused by his words, but he neither revokes nor dilutes anything of what he has said. The elliptic question: ’If then you see the Son of Man ascending where he was before . . . ?’ is intended, not as Maldonatus thought, to increase the scandal, but to rectify what was simply a cannibalistic interpretation. The ascension will perhaps surprise the recalcitrants more, but it will eliminate their chief difficulty about eating the flesh of One who in celestial glory takes his place where he was from eternity.

64. The words which follow are variously understood. St Cyril of Alexandria, one of the greatest of all expositors of this chapter, has rallied many. He equates ’the spirit that quickeneth’ with the divinity of Christ, and ’the flesh that profiteth nothing’ with the mere human nature of Christ. It is, however, an interpretation which a rigorous application of the law of context would seem to exclude. Taken with what goes before and comes after, the words rather refer to the unspiritual, carnal-minded disciples. It is the spiritual view given by faith which gives life; carnal understanding is profitless. The words spoken by Jesus are the object of spiritual understanding, and in this way only are life-giving; cf. 8:15.

65. Hence Jesus shows his knowledge of their unbelieving minds, a thing he knew from the beginning as he also knew the one who was to betray him.

66. That, he explained, was the reason why he had insisted that no man can come to him unless it be given to him from the Father. In humility of Spirit we may recall the words of St Augustine: Nondum traheris?Ora ut traharis. Pray that the Father may draw you to his Son.

67. Here another tragic word of the Evangelist sounds over the first schism. The Eucharistic bond of unity divided many disciples from Jesus. ’They walked no more with him’. The fault was not in Jesus; it is not in the Bread of life. So it happened also in the 16th cent.

68-72. Attitude of the Twelve —God will not compel human freedom. Free choice must rule the life of man. In that day of defections the test question is put to the Twelve, 68, ’Will you also go away?’ 69. We must be perpetually devoted to Simon Peter for the magnificence of his answer: ’Go away, to whom?’ Jesus could do without them, but they cannot do without him who has the words of eternal life—words that lead to everlasting life and give it. 70. Peter’s profession of faith is certainly less full of heavenly inspiration than that made later near Caesarea Philippi, but scarcely less full of human emotion: ’We have believed (faith comes first) and we have known (intelligence follows belief) that thou art the Christ, the Holy One of God’. Copyists conformed the last phrase to the confession of Caesarea Philippi, but the better MSS are decisive. 71. Peter spoke for the Twelve, but Jesus announced that of the Twelve whom he had chosen one was a devil. It was a lesson of fear and humility for the whole company, who did not then know who the secret apostate was.

72. St John names him here, interpreting the word of Jesus in the light of events. He was the only Judaean in the apostolic college: Judas, the son of a certain Simon of Qerioth, a place which is, perhaps, to be identified with Carioth Hesron, Joshua 15:25, the modern Khirbet-el-Qureitein, 13 m. S. of Hebron.