Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me. Yet a little while am I with you - As he knew that the Pharisees had designed to take and put him to death, and that in about six months from this time, as some conjecture, he should be crucified, he took the present opportunity of giving this information to the common people, who were best disposed towards him, that they might lay their hearts to his teaching, and profit by it, while they had the privilege of enjoying it.
The word αυτοις, to them, in the beginning of this verse, is wanting in BDEGHLMS, more than eighty others, both the Syriac, later Persic, Coptic, Sahidic, Armenian, Gothic, Slavonic, Saxon, most copies of the Vulgate and the Itala. It is omitted also by Euthymius, Theophylact, Augustin, and Bede. Our Lord did not speak these words to the officers who came to apprehend him, as αυτοις here implies, but to the common people, merely to show that he was not ignorant of the designs of the Pharisees, though they had not yet been able to put them into practice.