17, 18: διὰ τοῦτο ὁ πατὴρ με ἀγαπᾷ, ὅτι ἐγὼ τίθημι τὴν ψυχήν μου ἵνα πάλιν λάβω αὐτήν. Οὐδεὶς αἴρει αὐτὴν ἀπʼ ἐμοῦ, ἀλλʼ ἐγὼ τίθημι αὐτὴν ἀπʼ ἐμαυτοῦ· ἐξουσίαν ἔχω θεῖναι αὐτήν, καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἔχω πάλιν λαβεῖν αὐτήν. In John xv. 13: μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει ἵνα τὶς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ φίλων αὑτοῦ. The expression: "To put one's soul for some one," does not, independently and by itself, occur anywhere else in the New Testament; in John xiii. 37, 38, Peter takes the word out of the mouth of the Saviour, and in 1 John iii. 16, it is used in reference to those declarations of our Lord. The expression is nowhere met with in any profane writers, nor in the Hellenistic _usus loquendi_. The following reasons prove that it refers to the Old Testament, and especially to the passage under consideration. 1. Its Hebraizing character. _De Wette_ and _Lücke_ erroneously take θεῖναι in the sense of laying down; but that is too negative. It is evident that the Hebraism "to put," instead of "to give," has been [Pg 301] transferred into Greek, as is proved by the synonymous δοῦναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὑτοῦ in Mark x. 45; Matt. xx. 28.--2. The fact that the same uncommon expression occurs not fewer than five times in the same discourse of Christ, and that so intentionally and emphatically, is explicable only when it was thereby intended to point to an important fundamental passage of the Old Testament.--3. In the discourses of our Lord, the expression is, no less than in the passage before us, used of His sacrificial death.--If, then, it be established that those passages in which our Lord speaks of a _putting_ of His soul, refer to the passage under consideration, this must be acknowledged of those also in which He speaks of a _giving_ of His soul, as in Matt. xx. 28: δοῦναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὑτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν, where the λύτρον clearly points to the אשם here. In all those utterances, the Saviour simply has reduced the words to what they signify, just as, in quoting the passage Zech. xiii. 7, in Matt. xxvi. 31, He likewise drops the rhetorical figure, the address to the sword. He himself appears simply as He who offers up; the soul is that which is offered up.--אשם is, in Numb. v. 5, called that of which some one has unjustly robbed another, and which he is bound to _repay_ to him. An essential feature of sin is the _robbing of God_ which is thereby committed, the debt thereby incurred, which implies the necessity of _recompence_. All sin-offerings are, in the Mosaic economy, at the same time debt-offerings; and this feature is very intentionally and emphatically pointed out in them. If, besides the sin-offerings, there is still established a kind of trespass-offerings, the אשם, for sins in which the idea of incurring a debt comes out with special prominence, this is done only with the view, that this feature, thus brought forward by itself and independently, may be so much the more deeply impressed, in order that,