Fear of commitment?

Q: What is meant by this except from this weeks reading? “But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.”(John 2:24-25) This seems to make no sense. What would committing Himself to them have to do with the fact that “He knew all men”? Thanks for your thoughts.

A: The keys to understanding this passage rely in context and understanding the Greek.

The New King James Version translates John 2:24 this way. “But [Yeshua] did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men.” OK. So who is them? Them refers to the people who came to faith  when they saw the signs that He had performed. The word   is the word that is translated as commit. A better understanding of this word is an acknowledgement or a confidence in a certain fact. So a better understanding of this verse would be, “But [Yeshua] did not place any confidence in their statements of belief, because He knew all men.” This, of course, is also making reference to the believers who came to faith in verse 23.
It is because Yeshua knows all men that He perhaps knew that the folks of verse 23 were insincere. In that context, the rest of the passage makes sense. Because Yeshua is Messiah, and He knows all men, he knew what they were really thinking, and feeling in their hearts, and therefore wouldn’t acknowledge, or place any confidence, in their statements of faith.