Jesus was not unaware that serious charges were brought against his interpretation of the sabbatic law; that the Jews sought to kill him for his identification of his own mind and working with the Father's mind and working.
On this account for a considerable time he had confined his ministry to Galilee. The old story of the sabbath healing was now rife once more, doubtless augmented with the rumors of the healing of the man with the withered hand, and other actions profoundly in harmony with the deep meaning of the sabbath rest.
To the mind of the fourth evangelist; the explanation given by Christ to the authorities in Jerusalem was of prime significance in the whole sabbatic controversy; and he has recorded the defence Jesus made of his doctrine which placed him at once on the platform of the men with whom he was now beginning a life-and-death conflict.
He used their methods, and, so far as the adequate grounds of connection were concerned, he was triumphant, Did £ not Moses give you the Law?—the whole revealed Law of God concerning moral conduct and daily ritual, a violation of the real spirit of which would be ἀδικία, and of which you accuse me—and (yet) none of you doeth the Law?
Does he here call attention to the universal disobedience of mankind? Is he forestalling the declaration that "all have sinned, and come short;" that "in many things all offend"? Certainly not. He is about to show at greater length that the charge of ἀδικία stands equally against the justifiable transposition of the letter of the lower law by the incidence of a higher law.
They must all know the innumerable occasions in which the letter of the law of the sabbath gave way to the law of mercy, to the law of hunger, to the exigencies of the temple services. "None of you doeth the Law," i.
e. in the sense in which you are (from other motives) expecting me to do it. He said enough to strike their consciences and charge home their cherished if secret purpose. Why do ye seek to kill me? With what right, since this is the case, do ye vent your malice against me?
Meyer and Godet hero differ as to the emphasis laid upon the "me." The position of the enclitic με before ζητεῖτε gives it a prominence not to be overlooked. The interpretation of many—that the intention or desire to kill Jesus is the inward proof that the conscience of the Jews would admit that they were not keeping the Law which said, "Thou shalt not kill"—is very far-fetched, and weak in its force, although, according to the entire old covenant, there was much killing which was not murder.
Such a reference would not correspond with the profoundly Hebrew response made by our Lord. Calvin here makes this reply of Christ a text on which to denounce, in his own day, the corruption of the papal court.