Search the scriptures. — Better, Ye search the Scriptures. The question whether the mood is imperative or indicative, whether we have here a commandment to examine the writings of the Old Testament canon, or a reference to their habit of doing so, is one which has been discussed through the whole history of New Testament exposition, and one on which the opinion of those best qualified to judge has been, and is, almost equally divided. It is not a question of the form of the Greek word, for it may certainly be either. The English reader therefore is in a position to form his own opinion, and is in possession of almost all the evidence. He should observe that all the parallel verbs in the context are in the indicative — “Ye have neither heard”... “nor have seen” (John 5:37); “Ye have not His Word... ye believe not” (John 5:38); “Ye think that... ye have” (John 5:39); “Ye will not.. ye might have” (John 5:40). Why should there be a sudden change of construction in this instance only?
We find, then, this order of thought. (1) God has in the Old Testament witnessed of Me, but ye, with unreceptive hearts, have never heard a voice nor seen a shape of God (John 5:37). (2) Ye have not His word dwelling in you, or it would have witnessed of Me (John 5:38). (3) Instead of receiving the Scriptures as a living power within you, ye search and explain the letter of them from without (John 5:39). (4) Ye think they contain eternal life, and hence your reverence for them (John 5:39). (5) They really are witnesses of Me, and yet you; seeking in them eternal life, are not willing to come to Me that ye may have this life.
It is believed that this is the most natural interpretation of the words, and that it gives a fuller meaning than any other to the teaching of Christ.
The only objection to it of weight is that the Greek word for “search” (ἐρευνᾶτε) is one which would not have implied blame. It means to search after, track, inquire after (comp. John 7:52); but, surely, this is just the expression for the literal spirit in which the Rabbis treated their Scriptures. Moreover, it is not the searching which is matter for blame, but the fact of the searching and not finding, which is matter for wonder.
Here, too, as elsewhere, the argument from the meaning of a Greek word must be pressed only within strict limits when we remember that it represents in translation a late Hebrew original. The Hebrew language had a word which just at that time was frequent on every Rabbi’s lips, and which exactly corresponds to it. As early as the Book of Chronicles we find mention of the Midrashim, or Commentaries in the sense in which this word is used, e.g., in “Cæsar’s Commentaries.” The rest of the Acts of Abijah are “written in the Midrash of the prophet Iddo” (2 Chronicles 13:22). More than we now know of the history of Joash is “written in the Midrash of the Book of Kings” (2 Chronicles 24:27). In both cases our Authorised version renders the word by “story;” but this was at a time when its connection with “history” as involving “inquiry” was not forgotten. (Comp. The Translators to the Reader: — “This will be easily granted by as many as know story, or have any experience.”) These Midrashim sprang up after the Captivity, when the people had lost the older language of the Law and the Prophets; and paraphrases, expositions, and homilies, became at first indeed necessary, but grew into a vast and intricate system with “Secrets” and “Precepts,” and “Fences” and “Traditions of Elders” (Matthew 15:2; Mark 7:3), which gave abundant room for the learning and pride of men, but made the word of God of none effect (Matthew 15:6; Mark 7:13). Now, the period of the arrangement of the Midrashim of the Law commenced half a century before the ministry of Christ. Hillel the First succeeded to the presidency of the Sanhedrin, B.C. 30, and Akiba, his successor in the compilation of the Mishna, was a boy when these words were spoken. The influence of the former was all-powerful among those who now accused Jesus of breaking what the Law did not contain but the Midrash did. Those who now listened to Christ were disciples or assistants of the great Rabbi whose school of a thousand pupils left eighty names of note.
May it not be, then, that the true meaning of these words is to be found in their bearing upon these Rabbinic lives and works? — “Ye make your Midrashim on the Scriptures; ye explain, and comment, and seek for hidden mystic meaning; ye do all this because ye think they contain eternal life; their true meaning is not hidden; they tell of life, and ye who seek it do not hear them, and will not come unto Me that ye might have life.”