Nicodemus: A Ruler of the Jews Who Came by Night

A man of the Pharisees

Nicodemus belongs to the era of the New Testament, placed at around 4 BC to AD 33 (era placed on Ussher's chronology, 1650). He appears in one book only, and there in five verses. John introduces him with three facts and no more: "Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews" (John 3:1). A party, a name, an office. That is the whole of what we are told about who he was before he speaks.

It is worth saying at the outset what kind of material we are working with. There is no sustained narrative about Nicodemus anywhere in Scripture. He surfaces three times, each time in a single verse, and twice the verse is a question he asks. The dossier behind this study notes the point plainly: no extended scene is told about this man. What we have are moments, and they are enough to be interesting and not enough to be a biography.

Two questions in the dark

His first recorded words are a question, and it is a question that misses: "Nicodemus said to him, 'How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?'" (John 3:4). He hears something said and reaches immediately for the physical impossibility of it. A ruler of the Jews, a teacher's teacher by office, and his opening move is to measure a saying by whether a grown man can climb back into the womb.

His second recorded words are shorter and no clearer: "Nicodemus answered him, 'How can these things be?'" (John 3:9). Whatever has passed between the two questions, it has not resolved him. John gives us Nicodemus as a man who asks how, twice, and whose replies are not recorded again in that chapter. He is not sneering. He is also not understanding. Scripture lets both stand.

A word spoken among his own

The second appearance comes later in the same book, and John will not let his readers forget the first: "Nicodemus (he who came to him by night, being one of them) said to them," (John 7:50). The verse is almost entirely parenthesis. Two things are stapled to his name before he is allowed to open his mouth. He came by night. He is one of them. John does not explain either phrase here; he simply attaches them, and the reader is left to feel the weight. Whatever Nicodemus says next, he says it as a man on the inside of a group and as a man who once preferred the dark for his visiting.

Myrrh and aloes

The last appearance is the fullest, and again John reaches back to the night: "Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred Roman pounds" (John 19:39). No question this time. No speech at all. A weight of spices, and the man himself carrying it, or coming with it, in daylight enough for John to record it. About a hundred Roman pounds is an extravagant quantity, and John records the number rather than a motive.

What Scripture does not soften

The text does not accuse Nicodemus of a crime, and it would be dishonest to invent one. But it also declines to flatter him. It notes that he came by night, and then notes it a second time, and then a third. It records two questions that fail to grasp what is being said to him. It calls him "one of them" (John 7:50) with no further comment. A ruler of the Jews who arrives after dark is a portrait with shadow in it, and John paints the shadow on purpose.

What we are not told

Scripture does not name his parents. No children are named. No tribe or people is given. We are told nothing of his birth, his death, or what became of him after the spices. Anything further about his household or his end is not in the text, and the honest reader stops where John stops.

The line to Christ

The line runs through these five verses and no others. A ruler of the Jews came to Jesus (John 3:1). He came at night, and John repeats it twice more (John 7:50; John 19:39). He asked, "How can these things be?" (John 3:9), and the question was not answered by his own reasoning. And the man who first came in the dark came at the last carrying myrrh and aloes to the body of the one he had questioned (John 19:39). John sets the night visit and the hundred Roman pounds side by side in a single sentence, and leaves them there.