John 10:22 Commentary and Bible Study

The second half of this tenth chapter of the Gospel of John really brings before us a number of things, and we shall look at some seven or eight particular actions or words of the Lord. We see in them a great example to his servants in their manner of going about Gospel business throughout time. We read of his returning to Jerusalem, some two months after the first half of the chapter which records his presence at the feast of tabernacles. But where Christ was between the feast of tabernacles and the feast of dedication? This is probably AD 29, his last complete year. The following April he will be crucified, and suffer and die for sinners. Following his visit to Jerusalem for the feast of tabernacles there is a gap of two months, and he returns for a feast of dedication. Perhaps he was there, all the time, lying low as it were, the events being unrecorded in any Gospel. Perhaps he was back in Galilee. It is just not known what happened between these two visits.The feast of the dedication goes right back, just over two centuries before the coming of Christ, after the defilement of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes and other terrible events. About three years after that, the temple was rededicated, and the feast of dedication was inaugurated. So every year from that time, the feast of dedication takes place roughly in December. It is not one of three pilgrim feasts for which it was compulsory for all the men to go to Jerusalem, but nevertheless it was a feast where the crowds thronged Jerusalem for the commemoration of the rededication of the temple, which of course had been rebuilt again since that time. It was often thought of as the happy feast. It was a feast without a solemn element, where the people rejoiced and there were festivities in the street.