<p>11:45 <i>Therefore, many of the Jews who had come to Mary- </i>I have tried to demonstrate in this exposition that &quot;the Jews&quot; referred to the Jewish leadership, and &quot;the crowd&quot; are mentioned separately to them in John's Gospel (the definition of &quot;the Jews&quot; begins in Jn. 1:19). The Lord had intended this miracle to specifically convert some from &quot;the crowd&quot; (see on :42). But it appears that His expectations were proven wrong, for actually it was some from &quot;the Jews&quot; who believed. He was after all of human nature. Likewise we noted on Jn. 4:44 that the Lord had expected no response from His own &quot;country&quot; but actually there was response. If even the Lord found that some responded whom He didn't expect to, we must surely approach our own witness in a spirit of mere sowing, not attempting to foresee the response.</p><p><i>And saw what he did, believed in him</i>- Faith of course is ideally believing without visual evidence (Heb. 11:1), and the Lord lamented that many wanted to 'see' before believing (Jn. 4:48). The example of Thomas, demanding to see before he believed, is surely recorded in a negative light (Jn. 20:25), leading the Lord to pronounce blessing on those who have not seen yet believe (Jn. 20:29). But all the same, such lower level 'belief' is still counted to folk, by the Lord of all grace who is so enthusiastic to notice human faith on whatever level. This serves as an encouragement to us, to view positively those with apparently weak faith; and also, to not think that our faith is so weak that our Lord doesn't notice it. So again we see evidence that some of &quot;the Jews&quot; believed in the Lord- but would not 'come out' for Him until after His resurrection. The thousands baptized a few weeks later on Pentecost were all devout Jews &quot;dwelling in Jerusalem&quot;, and we wonder whether these were those who at various times in John are described as having 'believed in Him' but had not openly confessed Him. Public baptism was an ideal way to do so. It would also explain why they were converted so quickly, and clearly were struggling with conscience issues.</p>