The antagonism and the faith come into sharper expression. As the spirit-like words stir up malignant passion, they also excite new and deepening confidence. The flash of lightning, which reveals to many the glory of a landscape, may strike others blind or dead.
While the authorities are harder, more unspiritual and blinder, than before, yet many of the multitude—i.e. off the general crowd, whether belonging to Jerusalem or not—believed on him, passed into the glorious illumination which falls on his own Person, and all things else.
We cannot say that the whole was cleared up to them, but it was an acceptance by them to some extent of his Messianic claims. He was more than a mere Prophet to them, or Leader, as is obvious from the tone of the speech which follows: And they said (were saying to one another), while others, perhaps, so soon as they had taken his side, began to urge his claims on those that doubted—When the Christ shall come, will he do more signs than those £ which this Man hath done?
£ The omission of τούτων makes the question refer to the entire group of signs which had been already performed, and not confine itself to the proceedings of Jesus in Jerusalem. They expected Messiah to give proof of his Divine commission (cf.
Matthew 11:4, Matthew 11:5, Matthew 11:20-25). Has not Jesus satisfied all reasonable claims? The question was like fire in touchwood. A conflagration might at any moment burst from the excitable throng which no decision of the Sanhedrin could repress.
Something must at once be done to allay the excitement. In the crowd which was pressing the claims of Jesus were many Pharisees, an immensely larger element in the population than the chief priests, and therefore more likely at once to bring such information to the central religious authority.