NOTES for Joh 18:6-7
What a strange arrest! Armed people come, Jesus asks, whom they seek, they give His name, and Jesus says: "I am He ", - and they fall to the ground. Apparently, the problem is about Jesus’ words, more concretely about one word, because He said only a single word: "Yahweh".
Let us look in another way. We had the opportunity to hear many times people, trying to understand: "why you consider Jesus as God, if He indeed never called Himself like that?" Here we see that He didn't only called Himself, but even did it more concretely: He used this God's name, which was given at first to Moses (Exodus 3:14), and after tabooed in order to avoid blasphemy. It wasn't even allowed to hear this name - that is why the soldiers fell to the ground. So, the pronunciation of this pious and instructor name in the Jewish doctrine, whom Jesus undoubtedly was, couldn't be a fortuity - it was self-testimony.
And the third consideration. It sometimes seems to the readers of the Bible that there is no feat in the sufferings and in the death of Jesus; He undergoes violence, which is unable to bear easily. But this scene shows that even during the arrest he is master of the situation. His suffering and the cross aren't constrained, but are voluntary. What a love of God towards us, if the One whom only His name paralyzes the enemies, goes unto death without resisting, "like a lamb dumb ", for our salvation.