Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary John 7:44

"And some of them would have taken him; but no man laid hands on him." — John 7:44 (ASV)

The ignorance of the crowd in Jerusalem concerning Jesus is revealed by their uncertainty about his origin. On the basis of Scripture, they decided that Jesus could not be the Messiah since Mic 5:2 said the Messiah would come from Bethlehem and Jesus came from Nazareth. The confusion was such that no decision was made concerning his person and no action was taken to arrest him. Perhaps this is another illustration of Johannine irony, for Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The very passage that convinced his critics that he could not be the Messiah was one of the strongest to prove that he was.