But I told you—I said unto you—that you have both seen me, and believe me not; or "that you have seen me, and yet believe not." Some difficulty has arisen from our not being able to find, in the previous dialogue, the exact words here quoted.
Some have supposed it to refer to an unrecorded conversation (Alford, Westcott), or even to some written sentence which is now a lost fragment of the discourse. Meyer says (without answering the suggestions of Olshausen, Hengstenberg, Godet, and others), that there is no such statement in the context, and proposes to translate εἶπον (as he says it is not unfrequently found in Greek tragedians, as if it were equivalent to dictum velim) "I would have you told;" but there is no such usage in the New Testament, and John 11:42 does not seem a parallel ease.
It is not at all probable that Jesus was referring to the language of John 5:37, words which were addressed to a different audience—to "Jews" at Jerusalem, and uttered many months before (Lucke and De Wette).
But John 5:26 shows that Galilaeans had come to see him, and had come without belief in the great sign of his spiritual nature and claims which he had already granted. They had seen him and his great miracles, it is true; but they simply longed in consequence for "more bread" and "more healing," not for himself.
In John 5:30 he draws from them a confession that they had not seen enough to believe him. This thought recurs not infrequently. "Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?"
"Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed" (John 20:29). The setting forth of himself ought to have induced belief apart even from works. He is so intensely conscious of the Divine reality himself, that he marvels at the unbelief of his hearers.
Let them think as he does, and immediately the lifelong hunger and thirst of their souls would be satisfied. Seeing, however, is not believing in their ease; and he has already urged them to consider this lamentable spiritual blindness of theirs.
The exclamation of this verse recites the obvious inference of the verses we have referred to, condenses into a sentence the spirit of what he had said, εἶπε (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:8).