John Chapter 7

vs 1

Jesus was not always dicing with death it seems - sometimes he just avoided those who wanted to kill him.

vs 2-3

His brothers, it seems, just want Jesus to get over this whole Messiah thing. Jesus doesn't want to go to Judea because he'll be killed. They think he is wasting his time in a backwater like Galilee, and instead he should go to the big smoke.

vs 4

They think he wants to be a big important public figure, like John the Baptist. In fact, they might have thought that he was pretending to be John the Baptist, that he'd gone a bit loony or something.

vs 5

But they had no idea. They didn't believe him, and that must have really hurt Jesus. But it was also a living example of his words that he had come to put brother against brother.

vs 6

Jesus would of course go to Judea. He would perform miracles. He would also be killed there. But now is not the right time. It is all about timing, and the brothers, unsurprisingly, can't see why it's wrong.

vs 7

He openly calls them accomplices with the world, and therefore evil. When your old est brother is saying things like that, you might get the idea that the animosity in the family could be coming from both sides just a little.

vs 8

Some manuscripts do not have "yet", and in fact the NASB doesn't have "yet" or any approximation of yet. Jesus tells his brothers to go to the feast, and that he isn't going to go. Either he isn't going yet, or isn't ready to go yet, or isn't going with them, or he's just plain lying because he is going to go in fact.

vs 9

Yes, stayed for the time being.

vs 10

Jesus went up secretly. And that's fair enough, because after all, people wanted to kill him. But did he lie to his brothers? Is that considered a lie, if he was lying to them so they thought that he wasn't going and hence couldn't tell people that he was there, and hence they wouldn't look to kill him?