Jesus’ reply is not what we expect. We imagine he’s going to insist that he is the Messiah, and so to insist as well that they don’t know where he has come from. But, as so often in this gospel, Jesus goes deeper than we, or his hearers, expect. He agrees that they do indeed know where he comes from – in other words, that he has come to Jerusalem from Galilee (see verses 40–52). But, instead of saying, as we might have imagined, ‘But you don’t know where I really come from’, meaning from God, he turns the
