18:13-27 Simon Peter denied his Master. The particulars have been noticed in the remarks on the other Gospels. The beginning of sin is as the letting forth of water. The sin of lying is a fruitful sin; one lie needs another to support it, and that another. If a call to expose ourselves to danger be clear, we may hope God will enable us to honour him; if it be not, we may fear that God will leave us to shame ourselves. They said nothing concerning the miracles of Jesus, by which he had done so much good, and which proved his doctrine. Thus the enemies of Christ, whilst they quarrel with his truth, wilfully shut their eyes against it. He appeals to those who heard him. The doctrine of Christ may safely appeal to all that know it, and those who judge in truth bear witness to it. Our resentment of injuries must never be passionate. He reasoned with the man that did him the injury, and so may we.

Verse 24. - The οϋν is quite in John's style, and the verse should read, Annas therefore sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest; i.e. to the full court of the Sanhedrin, under the presidency of Caiaphas, now got together for the judicial sifting and verdict. If John had intended a pluperfect sense to be given to the verb, why not use that tense? The relative clauses, where the aorist is used for the pluperfect, are not relevant here (Meyer). In other cases the context clearly reveals the occasion of such a sense (see Matthew 16:5; Matthew 26:48). John is not unaware of the momentous consequences of this act of Annas, seeing that he refers to them, nor of the fact of the accusation made by the false witnesses, nor of the judicial condemnation which followed Christ's own claim to be the Son of God. The subsequent narrative implies such condemnation (Vers. 29, 30, 35; John 19:11). The author of this narrative does not ignore the fact of the appearance before Caiaphas, nor the issue; but in consequence of the wide diffusion of the synoptic Gospels, he merely called attention to the facts which they had omitted so far as they bore directly on the human character of the Lord. The theological bias with which the evangelist is credited by some would be strangely subserved both by the omission of the scene before Caiaphas, and by the faithful record of this purely human and beautiful trait in the personal character of Jesus. The fact that the fourth evangelist should have recorded facts of which he was eye-witness, and omitted others which would have forcibly sustained his main thesis, is an invincible evidence of historicity.

Now Annas had sent him bound,.... As he found him, when the captain, band, and officers brought him to him; who having pleased himself with so agreeable a sight, and had asked him some few questions, and perhaps insulted him, sent him away in this manner,

unto Caiaphas the high priest: his son-in-law, as the more proper person to be examined before; and especially as the grand council was sitting at his house. This was done before Peter's first denial of Christ; which, it is plain, was in the palace of the high priest, and not in Annas's house; though there seems no reason on this account to place these words at the end of the 13th verse, as they are by some, since they manifestly refer to time past, and do not at all obscure or hinder the true order of the history, as standing here.

24-27. Now Annas had sent him bound unto Caiaphas—Our translators so render the words, understanding that the foregoing interview took place before Caiaphas; Annas, declining to meddle with the case, having sent Him to Caiaphas at once. But the words here literally are, "Annas sent Him [not 'had sent Him'] to Caiaphas"—and the "now" being of doubtful authority. Thus read, the verse affords no evidence that He was sent to Caiaphas before the interview just recorded, but implies rather the contrary. We take this interview, then, with some of the ablest interpreters, to be a preliminary and non-official one with Annas, at an hour of the night when Caiaphas' Council could not convene; and one that ought not to be confounded with that solemn one recorded by the other Evangelists, when all were assembled and witnesses called. But the building in which both met with Jesus appears to have been the same, the room only being different, and the court, of course, in that case, one. (Also see on [1900]Mr 14:54.)

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