The officers' answer was a testimony to Jesus, and the Pharisees would not hear it. Instead of asking what Jesus had said, they questioned the officers' judgment. "Also" means like the crowd that they despised (John 7:49). Barnes says they did not examine His claims but were "determined to believe that he was a deceiver." He adds that many still assume a new Christian has been deceived and "treat him with ridicule or scorn."

The officers' reply, if any, is not recorded. The Pharisees kept talking: "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed" (John 7:48-49). Then one of their own spoke up. Nicodemus, "being one of them," asked, "Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?" (John 7:50-51). They turned on him too: "Art thou also of Galilee?" (John 7:52).

"Deceived" is planaō, which Thayer defines as "to lead away from the truth, to lead into error, to deceive." In the Gospel of John it appears only here and in John 7:12, where some in the crowd said of Jesus, "he deceiveth the people." So the Pharisees were taking up the same charge: Jesus leads people astray, and now He had led their own officers astray.

The Greek question begins with mē, a form that expects the answer no. It reads like "Surely you have not been deceived too?"

This question shows how hardened unbelief answers evidence. The officers had heard Jesus for themselves. The Pharisees did not ask what He had said. Matthew Henry writes, "Christianity has, from its first rise, been represented to the world as a great cheat upon it, and they that embraced it as men deceived."

Yet God was already at work among the rulers. While the Pharisees asked, "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?" (John 7:48), Nicodemus, one of them, spoke up for a fair hearing (John 7:50-51). Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary says, "The Lord brings forward his weak and timid disciples, and sometimes uses them to defeat the designs of his enemies."