Charles Ellicott Commentary John 9:34

"They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out." — John 9:34 (ASV)

Thou wast altogether born in sins.—Their reproach now takes the most malignant form, and does not shrink from reproaching him with the calamity of his birth as the mark of special sin. “You came into the world,” these words mean, “bearing the curse of God upon your face. You have said that God does not hear sinners. Your life in its first moments bore the marks of some fearful crime.”

And dost thou teach us?—That is, “Do you, marked more than is the common lot of man by sin, teach us, who are the authorized teachers and expositors of the truth?” For anyone to have doubted their authority would have seemed out of the question; but here was one who had been a beggar, one of the “people of the earth,” untrained in the Law, and therefore cursed (Compare to the note on John 7:49), and, more than this, altogether born in sin, who was actually teaching them!

And they cast him out.—These words are generally taken to mean excommunication, as in the margin, and it is certain that they may have this sense. (Compare to 3 John 1:10.) Having this meaning before them, the translators did not, however, think it the better one, and their view seems to be supported by the general impression that we get from the narrative.

The man with all his boldness has not technically fallen under the ban they had threatened, for he has not confessed that He was Christ (John 9:22). A decree of the Sanhedrin would have been necessary, and this must have been formally pronounced. Now, we feel that in a detailed narrative such as we have here, all this would hardly be told in a single short sentence. It seems to be rather that their anger has now passed all bounds. They cannot refute the truth which, in his honest, homely way, he has put before them. They can only heap reproaches upon him, and thrust him by force out of their presence.