It was now two days before the Festival of the Passover and the Unleavened bread. The Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law were looking for an opportunity to arrest Jesus by stealth, and to put him to death;
The Chief Priests and the Pharisees had already issued orders that, if any one learned where Jesus was, he should give information, so that they might arrest him.
This made the Jews all the more eager to kill him, because not only was he doing away with the Sabbath, but he actually called God his own Father--putting himself on an equality with God.