¹ sn Passover. According to John’s sequence of material, considerable time has elapsed since the feast of 5:1. If the feast in 5:1 was Pentecost of a.d. 31, then this feast would be the Passover of a.d. 32, just one year before Jesus’ crucifixion.

² sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.

³ tn Or “feast of the Tents” (the feast where people lived in tents or shelters, which was celebrated in the autumn after harvest). John’s use of σκηνοπηγία (skhnophgia) for the feast of Tabernacles constitutes the only use of this term in the New Testament.

⁴ sn Since the present verse places these incidents at the feast of Tabernacles (a.d. 29 or 32, depending on whether one dates the crucifixion in a.d. 30 or 33) there would have been a 6-month interval during which no events are recorded. The author is obviously selective in his approach; he is not recording an exhaustive history (as he will later tell the reader in John 21:25). After healing the paralytic on the Sabbath in Jerusalem (John 5:1-47), Jesus withdrew again to Galilee because of mounting opposition. In Galilee the feeding of the 5,000 took place, which marked the end of the Galilean ministry for all practical purposes. John 7:1-9 thus marks Jesus’ final departure from Galilee.

⁵ tn That is, Hanukkah or the ‘Festival of Lights.’ The Greek name for the feast, τὰ ἐγκαίνια (ta enkainia), literally means “renewal” and was used to translate Hanukkah which means “dedication.” The Greek noun, with its related verbs, was the standard term used in the LXX for the consecration of the altar of the Tabernacle (Num 7:10-11), the altar of the temple of Solomon (1 Kgs 8:63; 2 Chr 7:5), and the altar of the second temple (Ezra 6:16). The word is thus connected with the consecration of all the houses of God in the history of the nation of Israel.

sn The feast of the Dedication (also known as Hanukkah) was a feast celebrating annually the Maccabean victories of 165-164 b.c. – when Judas Maccabeus drove out the Syrians, rebuilt the altar, and rededicated the temple on 25 Kislev (1 Macc 4:41-61). From a historical standpoint, it was the last great deliverance the Jewish people had experienced, and it came at a time when least expected. Josephus ends his account of the institution of the festival with the following statement: “And from that time to the present we observe this festival, which we call the festival of Lights, giving this name to it, I think, from the fact that the right to worship appeared to us at a time when we hardly dared hope for it” (Ant. 12.7.6 [12.325]).

⁶ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

⁷ sn One always speaks of “going up” to Jerusalem in Jewish idiom, even though in western thought it is more common to speak of south as “down” (Jerusalem lies south of Galilee). The reason for the idiom is that Jerusalem was identified with Mount Zion in the OT, so that altitude was the issue.

⁸ tc Most mss (Ì^66,75 B L T W Θ Ψ 070 0105 0250 Ë^1,13 Ï sa), including most of the better witnesses, have “not yet” (οὔπω, oupw) here. Those with the reading οὐκ are not as impressive (א D K 1241 al lat), but οὐκ is the more difficult reading here, especially because it stands in tension with v. 10. On the one hand, it is possible that οὐκ arose because of homoioarcton: A copyist who saw oupw wrote ouk. However, it is more likely that οὔπω was introduced early on to harmonize with what is said two verses later. As for Jesus’ refusal to go up to the feast in v. 8, the statement does not preclude action of a different kind at a later point. Jesus may simply have been refusing to accompany his brothers with the rest of the group of pilgrims, preferring to travel separately and “in secret” (v. 10) with his disciples.

⁹ tn Although the word is καιρός (kairos) here, it parallels John’s use of ὥρα (Jwra) elsewhere as a reference to the time appointed for Jesus by the Father – the time of his return to the Father, characterized by his death, resurrection, and ascension (glorification). In the Johannine literature, synonyms are often interchanged for no apparent reason other than stylistic variation.

¹⁰ tn Or “my time has not yet come to an end” (a possible hint of Jesus’ death at Jerusalem); Grk “my time is not yet fulfilled.”