The report of the guard: V. 45. Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees; and they said unto them, Why have ye not brought Him? V. 46. The officers answered, Never man spake like this man. V. 47. Then answered them the Pharisees, Are ye also deceived? V. 48. Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him? V. 49. But this people, who knoweth not the Law, are cursed.
The Temple-guards that had been commissioned with the arrest of the Lord had been willing enough to perform their task. They had kept a close watch upon Jesus these four days. But the very fact that they were in the neighborhood of Jesus and thus heard much of His teaching had a powerful effect upon them. They returned to their masters without having carried out their commission.
They were received with the reproachful question: Why did you not bring him? The guards gave no direct answer, but tried to evade the question with the excuse that no mere man had ever spoken like this man Jesus.
It was, in away, a confession of His divinity. They were not yet openly won for His cause, but they also could no longer take the part of His adversaries. The Word of God is mighty in the midst of its enemies. They had felt the force, the divine power of His words.
But their apology only rouses the wrath of the Jewish rulers. Was it possible, they ask, that even these trusted henchmen were deluded and deceived? What right have these subordinates to have a mind of their own? They should simply accept what their leaders tell them and not be influenced by the opinion of the masses. For that low crowd, in the opinion of the Pharisees, that did not know the Law and all the traditions as they themselves did, were a cursed lot, an execrable rabble.
Note: The arguments here advanced by the Jewish leaders sound exactly like those of the so-called fashionable Christians in our days that have thrown the Bible overboard as the inspired Word of God and have only pity for the poor deluded, unlearned Lutherans and their like that insist upon accepting Jesus as the Savior of the world, through the atonement made by His blood.