John 10:39

Therefore they sought again to take him--true to their original understanding of His words, for they saw perfectly well that He meant to "make Himself God" throughout all this dialogue. he escaped out of their hand--(See on Luk 4:30; Joh 8:59).

We have here the issue of the conference with the Jews. One would have thought it would have convinced and melted them, but their hearts were hardened. Here we are told, I. How they attacked him by force. Therefore they sought again to take him, Joh 10:39. Therefore, 1. Because he had fully answered their charge of blasphemy, and wiped off that imputation, so that they could not for shame go on with their attempts to stone him, therefore they contrived to seize him, and prosecute him as an offender against the state. When they were constrained to drop their attempt by a popular tumult, they would try what they could do under colour of a legal process. See Rev 12:13. Or, 2. Because he persevered in the same testimony concerning himself, they persisted in their malice against him. What he had said before he did in effect say again, for the faithful witness never departs from what he has once said; and therefore, having the same provocation, they express the same resentment, and justify their attempt to stone him by another attempt to take him. Such is the temper of a persecuting spirit, and such its policy, mal facta mal factis tegere ne perpluant - to cover one set of bad deeds with another, lest the former should fall through. II. How he avoided them by flight; not an inglorious retreat, in which there was any thing of human infirmity, but a glorious retirement, in which there was much of a divine power. He escaped out of their hands, not by the interposal of any friend that helped him, but by his own wisdom he got clear of them; he drew a veil over himself, or cast a mist before their eyes, or tied the hands of those whose hearts he did not turn. Note, No weapon formed against our Lord Jesus shall prosper, Psa 2:4. He escaped, not because he was afraid to suffer, but b…