The Harmony Chronicle and Order of the New Testament, Part 1 · Section 61
SECTION LXI. JOHN Chap. IX, and Chap. X. all the Chapters. A blind man from his birth healed. Christ the good shepherd: The Feast of Dedication.
THat this healing of the blind man was at Ierusalem, appeareth by this, that Christ sends him to the pool of Siloam to wash, ver. 7. which lay upon the western part of the City. For Christ was now come up to the Feast of Dedication, Chap. 10.22. so that this cleers the order and time.
He cures blind eyes on the Sabbath, by putting clay upon them made of his spittle, a ready way one would have thought to have put seeing eyes out. Maym. in Shabb. per. 21. Fasting spittle is forbidden to be put so much as upon the eye on the Sabbath.
Maladies of children that were extraordinary, the Jews did very much ascribe to some sinne of the parents: and the traditionaries used this conceit as a means to awe men to the observance of their traditions. So they conceit of this man. Chap. 9.2, 34. Thou wast altogether born in sinnes. We alledged before, their fancie about Shibta an evil spirit that seized upon children by the neck and shrunk up their sinews: And whence, say they comes this? And they give this answer. If the mother come from the house of office and give the child suck presently, &c. A fetch meerly to awe women to wash after such occasions, and to put the more repute upon their traditions about washings.
The man upon whom the miracle is wrought taketh Jesus to be a Prophet upon it, but as yet doth not know him for Messias. ver. 17. And when he saith to the Jews, Will ye also be his Disciples? ver. 27. he speaketh it seriously and from a good heart, urging them to own him for a Prophet as he did: And when he was vehement with them in this pious asserting, they cast him out of the Synagogue. For they had agreed already, that if any man did confesse that he was the Messias, he should be cast out of the Synagogue, ver. 22. A passage very well worth observing, both towards some discovery of the nature of their excommunication, and for illustration of severall matters in this divine history.
Chap. X. CHRIST from Ezek. 34. and Zech. 11. asserteth himself the great Shepherd, and condemneth the evil shepheards that undid the flock: especially the three that his soul loathed, Zech. 11.8. The Pharisees, Sadduces and Esseans: He feeding his flock with two shepherds s…aves, called Beauty and Bands; at the last breaketh them: His staff Beauty, dissolving the Covenant of peculiarity, once made with Israel, by which they alone were his people, but that peculiarity now gone, and the Gentiles taken in. And his staff Bands, dissolving the brotherhood twixt Israel and Iudah, that now there is a difference betwixt a true Israel…te and a Jew; and Israelites owning Christ, and they that own him not are no more brethren.
It was at Ierusalem the feast of the Dedication, ver. 22. VnderUnder the second Temple when the Grecian Kings decreed decrees against Israel, and abolished their Law, and suffered them not to practise the Law and Commandments, and laid their hands upon their goods and upon their daughters, and went into the Temple and made breaches in it, and defiled the pure things, and Israel was in exceeding great straits because of them, and they afflicted them with great affliction, until the Lord God of their fathers had pitty on them, and delivered them out of their hand: and the Asmenian high Priests prevailed against them, and slew them, and delivered Israel out of their hands: and set up a King of the Priests, and the Kingdom returned to Israel more then two hundred years, even to the second destruction: And when Israel prevailed against their enemies and slew them, it was the five and twentieth day of the monethmonth Cisleu: and they went into the Temple, and found not of pure oyl in the Sanctuary but only one bottle, and there was not in it so much as to light above one day: yet they lighted the lamps with it for eight dayes, until they had beaten their Olives and got pure oyl. And because of this, the wise men that were in that generation, ordained that those eight dayes, beginning from the 25th of Cisleu, should be dayes of rejoycing and thankesgiving: and they light up candles on them in the evening at the doors of their houses, every night of the eight, for the declaring and setting forth of that miracle: and those dayes are called The Dedication, &c. Maym. in Chanuchah. per. 1. See 1 Maccab. 4.59. These eight dayes of Cisleu fell about the middle of our December. And so by this intimation Iohn hath kept the clock of time going, that we may tell how the story goes. Since Christs being at the Feast of Tabernacles hitherto, was about two months and somewhat more.
The three last verses of this tenth Chapter, which mention Christs going beyond Iordan, speak the same thing with Matth. 19.1. and Mark. 10.1. and might very properly be set collaterall with those texts, but since it was somewhat long after Christs departure from Ierusalem to his arrivall beyond Iordan, these may be taken in here, and understood, as spoken of his setting forth from Ierusalem, and shewing whither he intended to go.