Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
Jesus answered, I have not a devil—What calm dignity is here! Verily, "when reviled, He reviled not again" (I Peter 2:23). Compare Paul (Acts 26:25), "I am not mad," etc. He adds not, "Nor am I a Samaritan," that He might not even seem to partake of their contempt for a race that had already welcomed Him as the Christ, and began to be blessed by Him.
I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me—the language of wounded feeling. But the interior of His soul at such moments is only to be seen in such prophetic utterances as these, "For thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face; I am become a stranger unto my brethren, an alien unto my mother's children. For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me" (Psalms 69:7-9).
Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?—What intense and virulent scorn! (See Hebrews 12:3). The "say we not well" refers to John 7:20. "A Samaritan" means more than "no Israelite at all"; it means one who pretended, but had no manner of claim to the title—retorting perhaps, this denial of their true descent from Abraham.
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