(John 4:43-54)
Here is the above passage, in the NIV. It has two extraordinarily strange features; please tell me you can see them…
After the two days he left for Galilee. (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.
Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”
The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
“Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”
The man took Jesus at his word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”
Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.
This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.
Did you see them?
The first strange feature relates to verse 44, which in the NIV is the comment in parentheses. “For Jesus Himself bore witness that a prophet in his own country (homeland, or place of his fathers) does not have honour.” And verse 45 says “Therefore when He came into the Galilee, the Galileans welcomed Him…”
Ummm. Jesus of Nazareth; Nazareth in Galilee; a prophet not honoured in His own country, but hold on, the Galileans just welcomed you. What is going on here?
The other strange feature is a bit further on. To the father with a dying child, He says, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe.” Ouch! What is this, training the disciples on ‘how to exercise tough love’?
Well no. If “weary, thirsty and hungry by the well” couldn’t provoke Jesus into becoming grumpy, it is unlikely a father asking for help for a dying child could do it. This should be enough to warn us that we have got the wrong end of the stick, somewhere along the line.
There are a whole raft of assumptions going on in the way this passage has been read by translators. The first is that “the Galileans” are those merry country folk, who follow Jesus around and hang on His every word. But look at how John uses the term οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι (the Jews, or the Judaeans) elsewhere. He doesn’t mean all the Jews, and certainly not the thousands of Jews of Judaea who followed Jesus to hear Him speak at times, but rather the leaders of the Jews – temple leaders, religious teachers and the like. So when John speaks of οἱ Γαλιλαῖοι “the Galileans”, we should at least be asking exactly who these are. Yes, thousands of Galileans followed Jesus around, but οἱ Γαλιλαῖοι is not necessarily these ordinary folks. If I suggested that οἱ Γαλιλαῖοι are “the community leaders of Galilee”, then a moment’s reflection should help us realise these were invariably hostile to Jesus. Pharisees, scribes and their ilk.
If you shifted your thinking in the way I have just suggested and then looked at the sentence, ὅτε οὖν ἦλθεν εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν, ἐδέξαντο αὐτὸν οἱ Γαλιλαῖοι, πάντα ἑωρακότες ὅσα ἐποίησεν ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις ἐν τῇ ἑορτῇ, καὶ αὐτοὶ γὰρ ἦλθον εἰς τὴν ἑορτήν, how would you translate ἐδέξαντο? The NIV reads it as “welcomed”, but that is only one option, and by no means a plausible one.
ἐδέξαντο is in fact ambiguous: it is 3rd person plural aorist indicative middle for sure, but it could be one of two verbs, δέχομαι (take or accept) or δείκνυμι (bring to light or show forth). Both these verbs have a suitably hostile sense. (“Suitably” because we should have been primed to expect hostility by “a prophet in his own πατρίδι has no honour.”)
δέχομαι would give us “waited for him, as for an enemy”; and δείκνυμι would give us “informed against him”. Both of those fit; I incline to the latter because it explains more about what happened next, but feel free to choose.
And you should of course be seeing the phrase “they had seen everything He had done in Jerusalem at the feast, for they also have been at the feast” in a different light: this is not Jesus’ Galilean fan club, they are ‘very concerned citizens with an axe to grind’ – against Jesus.
The reason I favour “informed against Him”, is that Jesus goes back to Cana; and yet a royal officer or official from Capernaum hears that He is back in the Galilee and comes post haste to beg His help for his dying child. (And while we don’t know exactly where Cana was, from the end of the passage it is clear that it is at least a day’s journey between Cana and Capernaum, by whatever mode of travel the official was employing; therefore this was not a case where someone just saw Jesus down at the local market and mentioned it in passing to the official.)
The official had heard Jesus was back because the leaders of the Galilean Jews had informed against Jesus – “the troublemaker is back here after causing trouble at the feast”, but whereas they – the Galilean leaders – were trying to provoke the legal authorities to take action to stop Jesus, the official saw it as a lifeline for his child, and dashed off to Cana to see Jesus.
So why does Jesus say “Unless you see signs and wonders – σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα – you people won’t ever believe”?
“You people” is the NIV’s way of flagging that the verb is 2nd person plural, and I agree that it is the best way (short of actually writing “you (plural)”) to show the dynamic here. Jesus is not saying “you (the royal official)”. He is saying “you (the group you represent and are part of)”.
Why does Jesus do this? I think that Jesus knows exactly what has happened, namely that His return to the Galilee has been reported to the authorities, and that this official has heard via this channel. As far as I can see, He also only ever prods people in this way for their own benefit, and especially in order for them to clarify their position in their own heads. For example, with the Syro-Phoenician woman in Matthew and Mark, He brings up the subject of “dogs eating the children’s food” so that the woman can establish a position of actual faith from which to claim her daughter’s healing (which she does: “Lord, dogs get to eat what falls from the table!”)
So imagine for a moment that this official is a modern police inspector, who has an ailing child and who has heard Jesus’ whereabouts because someone has informed against Him. Is he here because He believes Jesus can heal the child, or will he cover His presence here to his colleagues by saying he “was observing the accused”?
And that is why He says what He does. In other words, “I know exactly how, and from whom, you heard I was here, and I am pushing back so that you can show me – and especially yourself – that you mean business, and are not hedging your bets.” (“Hedging your bets” is a process which utterly excludes the possibility of faith.) And the father does show himself and Jesus that he means business: first by not defending himself or challenging “you people”, but by simply repeating “Lord, come before my child dies”; and secondly by acting immediately in faith when Jesus says “Go, your child lives.”
The man believed the word Jesus spoke to him and left. When he meets his servants on the way – he came to see Jesus without them, so yes, he was indeed serious – they tell him the child is fine and that he got better at the exact time Jesus said “your child lives.” So he and his whole household believed.
And there is a beautiful narrative arc to this: the Galileans informed against Jesus, (trying to stir up trouble) which enabled the royal officer to hear Jesus was back and, as a result, save his son. And he and his whole household believed.
Probably not quite what οἱ Γαλιλαῖοι intended!
Seeing the Kingdom 