“Have you also been deceived?” replied the Pharisees.
47. And are you also seduced? While they reprove their officers, they endeavor, at the same time, to keep them in subjection. For by these words they mean, that it would be unreasonable and unbecoming that they should not remain steady, though the whole people should revolt. But we must see on what argument they rest, when they so haughtily insult Christ.
The chief priests and Pharisees are here in a close cabal, contriving how to suppress Christ; though this was the great day of the feast, they attended not the religious services of the day, but left them to the vulgar, to whom it was common for those great ecclesiastics to consign and turn over the business of devotion, while they thought themselves better employed in the affairs of church-policy.
Commenting on John 7:45-53
Nicodemus saith unto them,.... To the Jewish sanhedrim, who were running down Christ, and his followers, in great wrath and fury: he that came to Jesus by night; see Joh 3:1; being one of them; a member of the sanhedrim.