Charles Ellicott Commentary John 7:42

"Hath not the scripture said that the Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?" — John 7:42 (ASV)

Hath not the scripture said . . .—Compare the prophecies in Micah 5:1; Isaiah 11:1; Jeremiah 23:5.

Where David was.—Compare the history in 1 Samuel 16:0.

It has often been asked, sometimes in the spirit of objection, sometimes in the spirit of inquiry, how the Apostle, if he really knew the history of our Lord’s birth at Bethlehem, could record these questions without a correction.

But in these verses he is giving the feelings and opinions of the multitude, and it is a mark of the truthfulness of his narrative that he gives them just as they really occurred. He, remembering the events as they took place, can with perfect historic fitness record the passing thoughts and words, erroneous as they were.

A writer of the second century could not possibly have unintentionally made so great a mistake, with the earlier Gospels before him; nor could he have intentionally so thrown himself into the spirit of a Jewish multitude as to invent the question. (Compare John 7:52, and references in the Note there.)