=32-34. The Pharisees and the chief priests sent officers to take him.= This was an official act on the part of the Sanhedrim or its officers, carrying out the design of certain of the people, as indicated in ver. 30; and it is the first official endeavor to arrest him, the beginning of a course of action consummated in his final arrest, trial, and crucifixion.--=Therefore said Jesus unto them.= A break evidently occurs between verses 31 and 32. The discourse up to ver. 31 is continuous, and took place about the middle of the feast, that is, the third or fourth day; the discourse in verses 37-39 was on the last day of the feast; between the two the orders for Christ’s arrest were given. Verses 33, 34 are founded on Christ’s knowledge of those orders, and it is a reasonable surmise that the presence of the officers suggested it to him and interpreted its meaning to some at least of his auditors.--=Yet a little while am I with you.= About six months after this address he was crucified.--=And I go unto him that sent me.= With this explicit statement of his meaning, interpreted as it was by the previous declaration that it was the true God who had sent him, it is difficult to understand how the Jews could have been perplexed respecting his meaning. De Wette’s explanation that they knew not the One who had sent him, and therefore that this saying was a dark one to them, is not wholly satisfactory, for surely they did know who was meant by the phrase, _he that sent me_, and as surely they could not fail to understand that going to God was equivalent to death. Meyer supposes that the words _him that sent me_ in this verse were not a part of Christ’s discourse, but added, perhaps by John himself; but they are not wanting in any of the manuscripts; and that is both a doubtful and a dangerous kind of criticism which removes a difficulty by the summary process of removing the difficult words, without any external authority for so doing. I believe therefore that Christ was explicit, that he was understood, and that the assumed perplexity of his hearers was a piece of hypocrisy. See on verses 35, 36.--=Ye shall seek and shall not find me; and where I am ye cannot come.= The key to the true interpretation of this passage, is afforded by Luke 17:22; John 8:21; 13:33. Christ does not refer to an inimical seeking; the _search_ here is the same as the _desire_ to see one of the days of the Son of man in Luke 17:22; _i. e._ the Jewish desire for a manifestation of the Messiah. He does not refer to a true spiritual seeking, for in ch. 8:21 he declares, to the same Jewish auditors, _Ye shall seek me and ye shall die in your sins_. Eusebius declares that many Jews in consequence of the judgments of God on Jerusalem became believers; such did indeed seek Christ, but they found him. The meaning then is that in the coming days of travail and sorrow, when many should go out after false Christs (Matt. 24:23, 24),