Jesus steps out of public.

John 11.54-57.

After raising Lazarus from the dead, after the Judean senate and head priest decided maybe Jesus oughta die to keep the Romans pacified, Jesus decided maybe he ought not be where the Judeans could easily grab him.

John 11.54-57 KWL

54So Jesus is no longer walking boldly among the Judeans,

but is leaving from there to a region near the wilderness,

to a city called Efrém.

He’s staying there with the students.

55It’s getting near the Judean Passover,

and many are leaving their land

to Jerusalem for Passover

so they might purify themselves.

56So those who are seeking Jesus

are also saying to one another

as they stood in the temple,

“What do you² think?

Might he choose to not come to the feast?”

57The head priests and Pharisees gave a command,

that when anyone knows where Jesus is,

they should make it known,

so they might arrest him.

“Purify themselves” in verse 55 refers to the people who’d traveled to Jerusalem from far away, and because there was no way of traveling long distances without becoming ritually unclean, they gave themselves an extra week to get ritually clean. So, lots of washing and baptizing. As soon as all the local pools are full of dusty diaspora Jews, you know Passover’s coming.

When I taught on this passage previously, one of the kids in the study said, “What’re they arresting him for, raising Lazarus? Was raising the dead illegal?” I had to remind him ancient Judea didn’t have any Fourth Amendment; only a command against kidnapping, Ex 21.16 which supposedly they weren’t doing because they were immediately gonna try him, condemn him, then have the Romans kill him.

And they expected to have him in their clutches fairly soon, since Jesus had to come to Jerusalem for Passover, because the Law said every adult male had to come to temple for Passover. Dt 16.6 Add to that they “gave a command” that if anyone knew where Jesus was, they had to tell them.

Jesus’s temporary withdrawal.

There’s this one commentary I have where the author states here’s where Jesus’s public ministry ends: There are no more stories of him teaching in synagogue, teaching in temple, teaching crowds, curing random sick people.

He’d be wholly wrong. There are no more stories about this in John, but the synoptic gospels tell us of Palm Sunday and Jesus’s activities during Holy Week. Those were extremely public. The Judean senate hadn’t driven Jesus underground; kinda the opposite. But until the festival, Jesus laid low. He still had some things to teach his kids, and didn’t care to be arrested just yet.

Hence Jesus went to a city named Ἐφραὶμ/Efrém, Greek for אֶפְרָ֑יִם/Efrahím, Ephraim ben Joseph ben Israel, the ancestor of one of the two tribes of Joseph and 13 tribes of Israel. (Although it’s always possible the city was named for a different guy named Ephraim.) It’s a town in northern Judea’s hill country, and present-day Tayibe, Israel identifies itself as ancient Efrém.

No doubt the Judean senate’s command to give ’em Jesus’s location worked its way far and wide, and Judas Iscariot might have learned about it in Efrém. Or maybe not, and he only heard of it once he returned to Jerusalem. Either way he ultimately decided to obey it, and get paid for it.

And that’s where we leave Jesus till Passover.