Charles Ellicott Commentary John 9:22

"These things said his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man should confess him [to be] Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue." — John 9:22 (ASV)

For the Jews had agreed already.—This does not imply a formal decree of the Sanhedrin, but an agreement on the part of the leaders which they had made known to the people, and which they would have had little difficulty in carrying into effect. The word rendered “agreed” occurs again in the New Testament only twice. It expresses the covenant made with Judas, in Luke 22:5, and the agreement of the Jews to kill Paul, in Acts 23:20.

He should be put out of the synagogue.—Compare to John 16:2, and Note on Luke 6:22. The Jews at a later date distinguished three kinds of excommunication:

1. The lightest continued for thirty days, and prescribed four cubits as a distance within which the person may not approach anyone, not even wife or children; with this limitation, it did not make exclusion from the synagogue necessary.
2. The severer included absolute banishment from all religious meetings, and absolute giving up of interaction with all people, and was formally pronounced with curses.
3. The severest was a perpetual banishment from all meetings, and a practical exclusion from the fellowship of God’s people.

It has been sometimes supposed that the words of Luke 6:22, (a) “separate you,” (b) “reproach you,” and (c) “cast out your name,” refer to these gradations, but it is probable that the only practice known in the time of our Lord was that which was later regarded as the intermediate form, which fell short of perpetual banishment but, while the ban lasted, meant exclusion from all the cherished privileges of an Israelite.