John 6:41 Commentary and Bible Study

Here we see the resistance of the Jews. That great crowd that followed him and when they knew he had crossed the sea, they realised he must have gone to Capernaum, which was the kind of headquarters that he had used, his base during his great Galilean ministry. They followed him there. They wanted to seize him by force, to make him king. But then we read, ‘the Jews’. When the apostle John uses the term ‘the Jews’, he almost always is referring to the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, and their representatives. So they are present in the crowds. They murmured at him, that is to say, in conspiratorial, low tones. We have already learned, and we will learn again, that they were plotting his murder. These leaders did not want him, and they would destroy him, and is this an opportunity for them to try him, to have him charged? They murmured not outwardly but among themselves, no doubt discussing the ground for his execution. ‘Because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.’ So they understood quite plainly his claims, his assertions that he was divine, that he had come from God, and that is what made them so angry.