John 2:20

“Then said the Jews, etc.] Unto him, as read the Syriac, Arabic, Persic, and Ethiopic versions: forty and six years was this temple in building; which cannot be understood of the temple as built by Solomon, for that was but seven years in building, (<110637>1 Kings 6:37,38). But rather of the temple, as built by Zorobabel, commonly called the second temple, and might be more properly said to be “this temple”; the calculations of this made by learned men, are various and endless to recite. Daniel’s seven weeks, or forty nine days, which are so many years, can have nothing to do with this account; since they regard not the building of the temple, but the city of Jerusalem; though from the…”

“Forty and six years--From the eighteenth year of Herod till then was just forty-six years [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 15.11.1].”

“Then said the Jews ... - The Jews, either from the ambiguity of his language, or more probably from a design to cavil, understood him as speaking of the temple at Jerusalem. What he said here is all the evidence that they could adduce on his trial Matthew 26:61; Mark 14:58, and they reproached him with it when on the cross, Matthew 27:40. The Jews frequently perverted our Saviour’s meaning. The language which he used was often that of parables or metaphor; and as they Sought to misunderstand him and pervert his language, so he often left them to their own delusions, as he himself says, “that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand,” Matthew 13:13. This was a case…”

“Forty and six years - Just so many years before the time of this conversation, Herod the Great had begun his most magnificent reparation of the temple, (one part after another,) which he continued all his life, and which was now going on, and was continued thirty - six years longer, till within six or seven years of the destruction of the state, city, and temple by the Romans. John 2:22”