(Therefore £) they sought (again £) to seize him, and he escaped out of their hands. This appeal roused their animosity, and, though they dropped their stones, they were preparing to lay violent hands on him.
The πάλιν points back to John 7:30, John 7:32, John 7:44. His escape was facilitated by the strange moral power he could exert to render their assaults upon him vain. They stretched out hands which dropped harmlessly at their side—another confirmation of the solemn statement of John 7:18.
There is no need to suppose a miracle, still less to justify the preposterous notion that the body of Jesus was, in John's Gospel, docetic merely.