Then Jesus turned—hearing their footfall, he welcomed their sincere approach, attentive as he ever was to the faintest indication of genuine faith and desire for his best gifts—and beheld them following, and he saith to them, What seek ye?
The first words of Jesus, as recorded in this Gospel, reveal the incarnate Logos, anointed of the Holy Spirit, beginning to search the heart and anticipate the unuttered questions of humanity. He assumes their desire for that which he alone can supply.
They, on seeing their Christ, the Son of God, all humanly before them, do not fall at his feet, but approach him as a human teacher, and give him the ordinary honorific title of a wise, competent instructor.
They said unto him, Rabbi (which is, being interpreted, Teacher). The parenthetic clause reveals the fact that the Gospel was written for Gentile readers. The title "Rabbi" was a modem one, only dating from the days of Hillel, about B.
C. 30, and therefore needing interpretation. Where abidest thou? Renan founds on this phrase "Rabbi" the supposition that, when John and Jesus meet, they are both surrounded by groups of followers. The narrative is written to convey a precisely opposite conception.
Christ did not refuse this "courtesy title" (Matthew 23:1-39. 8; John 13:13), and we can gather nothing else from the narrative. The question itself reveals the mind of the evangelist. In the opinion of all writers (favourable and hostile), the writer, according to a deliberate method adopted by him, wished to imply that he was one of the two disciples who first left the Baptist to attach themselves to Jesus.
The very form of the question adds to the probability. It is a characteristic longing of the disciple, whom Jesus loved so well, to be near and with his Master. He craved no laconic phrase, no solitary word, but some more prolonged fellowship, some undisturbed communion and instruction.
The varied emotions of that day, moreover, were conspicuously reproduced in the solemn title which the son of Zebedee most persistently applied to his glorified Lord in the Apocalypse. More than thirty times he refers to him as "the Lamb."