Nothing wrong here, Christ Jesus tabernacled
Dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν)
Literally, tabernacled, fixed, or had His tabernacle: from σκηνή, a tent or tabernacle. The verb is used only by John: in the Gospel only here, and in Rev_7:15; Rev_12:12; Rev_13:6; Rev_21:3.
It occurs in classical writings, as in Xenophon, ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ ἐσκήνου, he pitched his tent in the plain (“Anabasis,” vii., 4, 11). So Plato, arguing against the proposition that the unjust die by the inherent destructive power of evil, says that “injustice which murders others keeps the murderer alive - aye, and unsleeping too; οὕτω πόῤῥω του ὡς ἔοικεν ἐσκήνωται τοῦ θανάσιμος εἶναι, i.e., literally, so far has her tent been spread from being a house of death” (“Republic,” 610).
The figure here is from the Old Testament (Lev_27:11; 2Sa_7:6; Psa_78:67 sqq.; Eze_37:27). The tabernacle was the dwelling-place of Jehovah; the meeting-place of God and Israel.
So the Word came to men in the person of Jesus. As Jehovah adopted for His habitation a dwelling like that of the people in the wilderness, so the Word assumed a community of nature with mankind, an embodiment like that of humanity at large, and became flesh.
“That which was from the beginning, we heard, we saw, we beheld, we handled. Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1Jn_1:1-3. Compare Php_2:7, Php_2:8).
Some find in the word tabernacle, a temporary structure (see the contrast between σκῆνος, tabernacle, and οἰκοδομή, building, in 2Co_5:1), a suggestion of the transitoriness of our Lord's stay upon earth; which may well be, although the word does not necessarily imply this; for in Rev_21:3, it is said of the heavenly Jerusalem “the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will set up His tabernacle (σκηνώσει) with them.”
Dante alludes to the incarnation in the seventh canto of the “Paradiso:”
- “the human species down below
Lay sick for many centuries in great error,
Till to descend it pleased the Word of God
To where the nature, which from its own Maker
Estranged itself, He joined to Him in person
By the sole act of His eternal love.”
Among us (ἐν ἡμῖν)
In the midst of us. Compare Gen_24:3, Sept., “the Canaanites, with whom I dwell (μεθ' ὧν ἐγὼ οἰκῶ ἐν αὐτοῖς).”
The reference is to the eyewitnesses of our Lord's life. “According as the spectacle presents itself to the mind of the Evangelist, and in the words among us takes the character of the most personal recollection, it becomes in him the object of a delightful contemplation” (Godet).
The following words, as far as and including Father, are parenthetical. The unbroken sentence is: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
Vincent
J.