Quotes & Notes on:     John 20:22   

• John Wesley's Notes:
   He breathed on them-New life and vigour, and saith, as ye receive this breath out of my mouth, so receive ye the Spirit out of my fulness: the Holy Ghost influencing you in a peculiar manner, to fit you for your great embassy. This was an earnest of pentecost.
   

• Treasury of Scripture Knowledge:

  * he breathed. Ge 2:7; Job 33:4; Ps 33:6; Eze 37:9
  * Receive. Joh 14:16; 15:26; 16:7; Ac 2:4; 4:8; 8:15; 10:47; 19:2; Ga 3:2
   

• Adam Clarke's Commentary:

  He breathed on them] Intimating, by this, that they were to be made new men, in order to be properly qualified for the work to which he had called them; for in this breathing he evidently alluded to the first creation of man, when God breathed into him the breath of lives, and he became a living soul: the breath or Spirit of God ( ruach Elohim) being the grand principle and cause of his spiritual and Divine life.
  
  Receive ye the Holy Ghost] From this act of our Lord, the influences of the Holy Spirit on the souls of men have been termed his inspiration; from in, into, and spiro, I breathe. Every word of Christ which is received in the heart by faith comes accompanied by this Divine breathing; and, without this, there is neither light nor life. Just as Adam was before God breathed the quickening spirit into him, so is every human soul till it receives this inspiration. Nothing is seen, known, discerned, or felt of God, but through this. To every private Christian this is essentially requisite; and no man ever did or ever can preach the Gospel of God, so as to convince and convert sinners, without it. "There are many (says pious Quesnel) who extol the dignity of the apostolic mission, and compare that of bishops and pastors with that of Christ; but with what shame and fear ought they to be filled, if they do but compare the life and deportment of Christ with the lives and conversation of those who glory in being made partakers of his mission. They may depend on it that, if sent at all, they are only sent on the same conditions, and for the same end, namely-to preach the truth, and to establish the kingdom of God, by opposing the corruption of the world; and by acting and suffering to the end, for the advancement of the glory of God. That person is no other than a monster in the Church who, by his sacred office, should be a dispenser of the Spirit, and who, by the corruption of his own heart, and by a disorderly, worldly, voluptuous, and scandalous life, is, at the same time, a member and instrument of the devil."
   

• Family Bible Notes:

    Receive ye the Holy Ghost; this was to fit them for their work. Jesus Christ, by his Spirit, will furnish his ministers for the discharge of all the duties to which he calls them; and they may at all times with affectionate confidence look to him for all needed aid.
   

• 1599 Geneva Bible Notes:
   (No comment on this verse).
   

• People's New Testament Commentary:

   (No comment on this verse).
   

• Robertson's Word Pictures:
   He breathed on them (enephusêsen). First aorist active indicative of emphusaô, late verb, here only in N.T. though eleven times in the LXX and in the papyri. It was a symbolic art with the same word used in the LXX when God breathed the breath of life upon Adam (Ge 2:7). It occurs also in Eze 37:9. See Christ's promise in Joh 16:23. Jesus gives the disciples a foretaste of the great pentecost. Receive ye the Holy Ghost (labete pneuma hagion). Second aorist (ingressive) active imperative of lambanô. Note absence of article here (pneuma hagion) though to pneuma to hagion in Joh 14:26. No real distinction is to be observed, for Holy Spirit is treated as a proper name with or without the article.
   

• Albert Barnes' Commentary:

     He breathed on them. It was customary for the prophets to use some significant act to represent the nature of their message. See Jeremiah chapters 13 and 18, etc. In this case the act of breathing was used to represent the nature of the influence that would come upon them, and the source of that influence. When man was created, God breathed into him the breath of life, Ge 2:7. The word rendered spirit in the Scriptures denotes wind, air, breath, as well as Spirit. Hence the operations of the Holy Spirit are compared to the wind, Joh 3:8; Ac 2:2.
  
  Receive ye the Holy Ghost. His breathing on them was a certain sign or pledge that they would be endowed with the influences of the Holy Spirit. Comp. Ac 1:4, John chapter 2.
  
  {y} "Receive ye" Ac 2:4,33
   

• Jamieson-Faussett Brown:

  he breathed on them--a symbolical conveyance to them of the Spirit.
  
  and saith, Receive ye the Holy Ghost--an earnest and first-fruits of the more copious Pentecostal effusion.
   

• Spurgeon Devotional Commentary:

  (No comment on this verse).

   

• Spurgeon Commentary on Matthew:
  (No comment on this verse).
  
   

• William Burkitt's Notes:

  (No comment on this verse).
   

• Matthew Henry's  Commentary:

    (No comment on this verse).

   

• Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary:

   (No comment on this verse).
   

• The Fourfold Gospel:

        And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit. And as the New Testament is now sealed in his blood according to the commission under which he came, he, in turn, commissions the twelve to go forth and proclaim its provisions. Symbolic of the baptism which they were to receive at Pentecost, he breathes upon them.