The Grammar of English Grammars, page 727 by Gould Brown
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hich person, or _which thing_: as, "And he that was healed, wist not who it was."--John, v, 13. That is, "The man who was healed, knew not what person it was." "I care not which you take; they are so much alike, one cannot tell which is which."
OBS. 4.--A pronoun with which a question is asked, usually stands for some person or thing unknown to the speaker; the noun, therefore, cannot occur before it, but may be used after it or in place of it. Examples: "In the grave, who shall give thee thanks?"--_Ps._, vi, 5. Here the word who is equivalent to what person, taken interrogatively. "Which of you convinceth me of sin?"--John, viii, 46. That is, "Which man of you?" "Master, what shall we do?"--Luke, iii, 12. That is, "What act, or _thing_?" These solutions, however, convert which and what into _adjectives_: and, in fact, as they have no inflections for the numbers and cases, there is reason to think them at all times essentially such. We call them pronouns, to avoid the inconvenience of supposing and supplying an infinite multitude of ellipses. But who, though often equivalent (as above) to an adjective and a noun, is never itself used adjectively; it is always a pronoun.
OBS. 5.--In respect to who or whom, it sometimes makes little or no difference to the sense, whether we take it as a demonstrative pronoun equivalent to what person, or suppose it to relate to an antecedent understood before it: as, "Even so the Son quickeneth whom he will."--John, v, 21. That is--"what persons he will," or, "those persons whom he will;" for the Greek word for whom, is, in this instance, plural. The former is a shorter explanation of the meaning, but the latter I take to be the true account of the construction; for, by the other, we make whom a double relative, and the obje