(39) Therefore they sought again to take him.--He has removed all ground for the charge of blasphemy, and they have abandoned the attempt to stone Him, though He here repeats the very truth which led to that attempt before (John 10:30-31). The word "again" refers to previous attempts to take Him (John 7:30; John 7:32; John 7:44).
But he escaped out of their hand.--Nothing is said of the manner, and there is no reason to suppose anything more than, while they were plotting how they might take Him, He passed out of the Temple. (Comp. John 8:59.)
Verse 39. - (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, 32, 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 ver. 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 (cf. John 8:59; Luke 4:30; Mark 11:18).
10:39-42 No weapon formed against our Lord Jesus shall prosper. He escaped, not because he was afraid to suffer, but because his hour was not come. And He who knew how to deliver himself, knows how to deliver the godly our of their temptations, and to make a way for them to escape. Persecutors may drive Christ and his gospel our of their own city or country, but they cannot drive him or it out of the world. When we know Christ by faith in our hearts, we find all that the Scripture saith of him is true.
Therefore they sought again to take him,.... Not to take away his life by stoning him, as before, in the manner the furious zealots did, and was the part they were about to act just now; but to lay hold upon him and bring him before the sanhedrim, as they had done in John 5:18, he being so far from clearing himself from the charge of blasphemy, they had brought against him, that in their opinion he had greatly strengthened it; and they thought they had now sufficient proof and evidence to convict him as a blasphemer, in their high court of judicature; and therefore attempted to lay hands on him, and bring him thither:
but he escaped out of their hands; either by withdrawing from them in some private way; or by open force, exerting his power, and obliging them on every side to fall back, and give way to him; or by rendering himself invisible to them; and this he did, not through fear of death, but because his time was not yet come, and he had other work to do, before he suffered and died.
But he escaped out of their hand.--Nothing is said of the manner, and there is no reason to suppose anything more than, while they were plotting how they might take Him, He passed out of the Temple. (Comp. John 8:59.)
but he escaped out of their hands; either by withdrawing from them in some private way; or by open force, exerting his power, and obliging them on every side to fall back, and give way to him; or by rendering himself invisible to them; and this he did, not through fear of death, but because his time was not yet come, and he had other work to do, before he suffered and died.