John 7:27

Howbeit (alla). Clearly adversative here. This man (touton). Possibly contemptuous use of outo as may be true in Luke 25 26 . Whence he is (poqen estin). The Galilean Jews knew the family of Jesus ( Luke 6:42 ), but they knew Jesus only as from Nazareth, not as born in Bethlehem (verse Luke 42 ). When the Christ cometh (o Cristo otan erchtai). Prolepsis of o Cristo and indefinite temporal clause with otan and the present middle subjunctive erchtai rather than the more usual second aorist active elqh as in verse Luke 31 , a trifle more picturesque. This is a piece of popular theology. "Three things come wholly unexpected--Messiah, a godsend, and a scorpion" (Sanhedrin 97a). The rulers knew the birthplace to be Bethlehem ( Luke 7:42 ; Matthew 2:5 ), but some even expected the Messiah to drop suddenly from the skies as Satan proposed to Jesus to fall down from the pinnacle of the temple. The Jews generally expected a sudden emergence of the Messiah from concealment with an anointing by Elijah (Apoc. of Bar. XXIX. 3; 2Esdr. 7:28; 13:32; Justin Martyr, Tryph. 110).