1. Those who assign 1:40–42 to a separate day (see, for example, Carson, 167–68; compare Bultmann, 98, n. 4; 114, n. 3) end up with a total of seven (but see the discussion above on πρῶτον in 1:41).
2. Moloney, 50–51. His point is that after the sequence of days, “The glory of God is revealed ‘on the third day,’ ” just as in John 2:11 (50); see Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (ed. J. Z. Lauterbach; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1976, 2.210).
3. Dodd, Interpretation, 300 (see 1 Cor 15:4; also Mt 16:21; 17:23; 27:64; Lk 9:22; 13:32; 18:33; 24:7, 21, 46). John’s Gospel, in the only place where it echoes this tradition, uses a different phrase, “in three days” (2:19–20; compare Mk 8:38, 9:31, 10:34, and 14:58).
4. Cana, unlike Bethsaida (1:44, but see 12:21), Nazareth (1:45–46), and Capernaum (2:12), is specifically designated “of Galilee” (compare v. 11; 4:46; 21:2; also Josephus, Life 86: “a village of Galilee which is called Cana”), not to distinguish it from other villages of the same name elsewhere (see, for example, Josh 19:28; Josephus, Antiquities 13.391 and 15.112), but to signal that Jesus’ plan “to set out for Galilee” (1:43) is still in effect.
5. The presence of Jesus’ mother at the wedding, as well as Nathanael’s comment about Nazareth (1:48), suggests that Cana was near Nazareth (Nathanael, according to 21:2, was from Cana). The reference to Capernaum in 2:13 and the story of Jesus and the royal official in 4:46–54 suggests that Cana was also within a day’s journey of Capernaum (the text consistently speaks of “going down” from Cana to Capernaum: 2:13; 4:47, 49, 51). On the basis of the oldest traditions and the continuity of the name, Cana should probably be identified with Khirbet Qana, in hill country above a broad plain eight miles north of Nazareth, rather than Kefr Kenna, just four miles northeast of Nazareth, which has been shown to pilgrims and tourists since the sixteenth century (for the classic argument, see E. Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine [London: John Murray, 1841], 3.204–8; G. Dalman, Sacred Sites and Ways [London: S.P.C.K., 1935], 101–6).
6. It is possible that Mary the mother of Jesus is named by the Gospel writer in Mark 15:40, 47 and 16:1, but if so, she is named precisely not as Jesus’ mother, but as the mother of his brothers James and/or Joses.
7. Hence the uncommon translation of καί: not “Jesus and his disciples,” but “Jesus with his disciples.”
8. Compare Bultmann, 115, n. 6.
9. Brown comments (1.98), “They have abandoned the ascetic ways of John the Baptist for the less abstemious practices of Jesus (Luke 7:33–34).”
10. Many commentators (for example, Bultmann, 115, n. 5; Barrett, 190) assume that “his disciples” are somehow already “the Twelve” (compare 6:67, 70), but the reader would have no way of knowing this.
11. The presence of his brothers in verse 12 may well imply their presence at the wedding as well, but unlike the disciples they did not believe (7:5), and they are therefore not essential to the story. The narrative, like those in the other Gospels, may well presuppose that his father Joseph is deceased.
12. Epistula Apostolorum 5 (E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963], 1.193). This work places the incident just between a brief account of Jesus being taught letters as a child (4), and his ministry proper: “And he made water into wine and awakened the dead and made the lame to walk; for him whose hand was withered, he stretched it out again, and the woman who suffered twelve years from a haemorrhage touched the edge of this garment and was immediately whole.” At this point the apostles (who claim to be writing the account) abruptly come into the picture: “and … we reflected and wondered concerning the miracle he performed” (5).
13. Compare Bultmann, 114, who doubts that the disciples were originally in the story at all.
14. Compare Lindars, 127–28.
15. It is noteworthy that R. T. Fortna, in his reconstruction of a so-called “Signs Gospel” underlying the Gospel of John, considers the disciples part of the original story in the source, not an addition by the Gospel writer (Gospel of Signs, 30). Fortna takes issue with Bultmann at this point (see n. 13), yet Bultmann argues that “the correction of ‘brothers’ by ‘disciples’ might well have occurred in the σημεῖα-source, if the miracles were linked together to form a continuous narrative” (114, n. 6).
16. In Greek, ὑστερήσαντος οἴνου, a genitive absolute. At least one scribe seems to have sensed too much economy of language. The first hand of א (in agreement with a number of old Latin witnesses) is more wordy: “They had no wine because the wine of the wedding had been used up. Then [א adds] the mother of Jesus said to him ‘There is no wine’ ” (instead of “They have no wine”—presumably to avoid echoing “They had no wine” in the preceding sentence).
17. Compare Mark 5:7 and Luke 8:28 (τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί); with Mark 1:24, Matthew 8:29, and Luke 4:34 (τὶ ἡμῖν καὶ σοί).
18. Yet it is not necessarily a Semitic idiom, or limited to texts based on Hebrew originals. See, for example, Epictetus, Dissertations, in relation to wind for sailing (1.1.16), to Zeus or the gods (1.22.15; 1.27.13), and to an annoying person (2.19.16); also Corpus Hermeticum 11.21, in relation to God (see Schnackenburg, 1.328).
19. Compare Richmond Lattimore, The New Testament (New York: North Point, 1996); Reynolds Price, Three Gospels (New York: Scribner’s, 1996), 184.
20. Brown (1.99) does, however, take account of 2 Samuel 16:10. Schnackenburg is more dismissive: “It never means, ‘What concern is that of yours or mine?’ The καί must be understood as marking a certain contrast” (1.328).
21. See C. H. Giblin, “Suggestion, Negative Response, and Positive Action in St John’s Gospel (John 2:1–11; 4:46–53; 7:2–14; 11:1–44),” NTS 26 (1979–80), 197–211. For a similar pattern in another Gospel, see Luke 13:31–33.
22. See also the woman taken in adultery (8:10, in material added later to the Gospel), and women in two of the synoptic healing narratives (Mt 15:28; Lk 13:12).
23. There is no evidence that the term is used with disrespect anywhere in the New Testament (compare Lk 22:57; 1 Cor 7:16), or (with rare exceptions) in ancient literature generally (see BDAG, 208–9). Hermas, in his opening vision, uses it interchangeably with “Lady” (κύρια): “Did I not always look at you as a goddess? Did I not always respect you as a sister? Why do you charge me falsely, O woman [γύναι], with these evil and unclean things?” (Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 1.1.7).
24. Jesus first called her “Woman” (20:15), but then abruptly, “Mary” (v. 16), bringing a moment of recognition and intimacy. There is no corresponding moment of intimacy in relation to his mother. The closest to it is 19:26, where in the presence of the disciple whom he loved, Jesus calls her “your mother,” not his own.
25. In Luke 2:49 the twelve-year-old Jesus responds to his mother’s question about his whereabouts by addressing her and his father jointly.
26. For the notion that “there is still time” (even though it grows shorter), see 9:4–5, “We must work the works of the One who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work; as long as I am in the world, I am the world’s light”; 11:9–10, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? If anyone walks in the daylight, he does not stumble, for he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks at night, he stumbles because the light is not with him”; 12:35–36, “For a little while the light is still with you. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness will not overtake you.… While you have the light, believe in the light, that you might become children of light.”
27. The definite article with “servants” suggests that their presence at the wedding should be self-evident to the reader, just as the presence of “the banquet master” (v. 8) and “the bridegroom” (v. 9), introduced similarly with definite articles, is self-evident. The parallel with Pharaoh’swords, “Go to Joseph and do what he tells you” (Gen. 41:55, NIV) is probably coincidental.
28. Compare Moloney, Belief in the Word, 86.
29. This is probably why they were of stone rather than of clay. Brown (1.100) suggests that stone jars, if contaminated, could be cleaned, while clay jars would have to be broken (compare Lev 11:33).
30. See Dodd, Interpretation, 299; Barrett, 192; Brown, 1.104–5; Carson, 173. Schnackenburg is (rightly) much more cautious (1.339): “It is not certain that the evangelist is really so hostile to Jewish purifications … since he also mentions Jewish ritual customs without disparagement (compare 7:22; 11:55; 18:28; 19:40).” Others (Bernard, Bultmann, Haenchen, Lindars) do not even raise the possibility of anti-Jewish polemic here.
31. Some commentators have seen six as one short of perfection, confirming the imperfection of “purification rituals of the Jews” (see Moloney, Belief in the Word, 85). Others mention this suggestion, but with caution (Barrett, 191; Morris, 160–61), or, better, with outright rejection (Schnackenburg, 1.332; Brown, 1.100; Lindars, 130).
32. This accent on abundance (ἐπερίσσευσαν, 6:13) is of course a conspicuous part of the synoptic accounts of the feeding of multitudes as well (compare Mk 6:43; 8:8, 19–21; Mt 14:20; 15:37; 16:9–10; Lk 9:17).
33. See, for example, 1 Enoch 10.19, 2 Baruch 29.5, and above all Papias in the mid-second century, who attributes to “John the Lord’s disciple” a messianic prophecy about “vines with 10,000 branches, and on every branch 10,000 shoots, and on every shoot 10,000 clusters, and in every cluster 10,000 grapes, and pressed from every grape 25 measures of wine” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.33.3; Harvey, 2.417–18).
34. The phrase “to the top” (ἕως ἄνω) is redundant, inviting symbolic interpretations. Those reading the Gospel a second time and searching for such meanings might recall that just before his last miracle Jesus lifted his eyes “up” (ἄνω) in prayer (11:41; compare 17:1), and that when he was crucified his robe was woven as one piece “from the top” (ἐκ τῶν ἄνωθεν, 19:23). Jesus himself is “from above” (ἐκ τῶν ἄνω, 8:23; ἄνωθεν, 3:31) and requires birth “from above” (ἄνωθεν, 3:5). Some might also think of the pool of Siloam, “sent” (like Jesus himself) to be the instrument of healing (9:7). None of this is apparent on first reading, however, and although the phrase may be evocative, it is doubtful that any such interpretation is intended.
35. Haenchen adds that the maximum weight of the water would have been “up to 700 kilograms or more than 1500 lbs.” We have no way of knowing how far the jars were from Cana’s water source, or the size of the buckets used to draw water from the well, or even whether the jars were totally or only partially empty. Haenchen is probably right that the story “appears to reckon with the maximum case. For only if the jars were entirely empty and then filled to the brim with water is it certain that a prodigious amount of water was actually changed into wine” (1.173).
36. “Banquet master” (ὁ ἀρχιτρίκλινος) is rare in Greek literature (see Heliodorus 7.27.7, in the sense of a slave serving as headwaiter or wine steward; more common are συμποσίαρχος and τρικλινιάρχης). Here it is probably not a slave but a family member or friend of the bridegroom (see 3:29) appointed to do the honors at a specific celebration (like the ἡγούμενον, “leader,” in Sirach 32:1–2). In our passage, “the servants” (vv. 5, 9), “the banquet master” (vv. 8–9), and “the bridegroom” (v. 9) all have the definite article, suggesting that their presence at the wedding is normal and expected, and their roles well defined.
37. B. F. Westcott (1.84). Westcott’s explanation that “That which remained water when kept for a ceremonial use became wine when borne in faith to minister to the needs, even the superfluous requirements, of life” places altogether too much emphasis on the passing reference to Jewish purification rituals.
38. Whether the disciples knew what had happened from the servants, their surrogates within the narrative, or simply from observation, is never made clear.
39. See 4:11, “From where [πόθεν] do you have the living water?” Again the text teases us toward a symbolic interpretation (compare n. 34). It is said of Jesus himself in this Gospel, no less than of the water he provides or the wine he creates, that no one knows “where he is from” (see 7:28; 8:14; 9:29; 19:9; compare 1:26, 31, 33). The same is true of “everyone born of the Spirit” (3:8).
40. Chrysostom also noticed this, but concluded that “what we needed to learn was, that Christ made the water wine, and that good wine; but what the bridegroom said to the governor he did not think it necessary to add” (Homily 22.3; NPNF, 1st ser., 14.78).
41. The pronouncement vaguely recalls the riddle of Jesus’ relationship to John in the previous chapter (1:15, 30), where Jesus is the latecomer who arrives on the scene “after” John (ὀπίσω μου) and perhaps as John’s disciple, yet who has surpassed John because he was actually “first” (πρῶτός μου) in time.
42. See, for example, Dodd, Historical Tradition, 227; Lindars, 131; Barrett, 193; Brown, 1.105; Schnackenburg, 1.338.
43. Compare Moloney, Belief in the Word, 87.
44. In this respect the Gospel writer’s style corresponds closely to that of Jesus himself, whose brief rhetorical summaries within his own discourses often begin similarly, with ταῦτα (for example, 14:25; 15:11, 17; 16:1, 4, 25, 33).
45. This is supported by the absence of the article with ἀρχήν (contrast 10:6). On the construction, see BDF, §292; also Bultmann, 118, n. 6, and the text cited there from Isocrates, Panegyricus 10.38.
46. Compare “his signs” (2:23), “these signs” (3:2), “the signs” (6:2), “more signs” (7:31), “such signs” (9:16), “many signs” (11:47; 20:30), “so many signs” (12:37), “other signs” (20:30). Many (following Bultmann) have concluded from this that the writer is drawing on a “Signs Source” consisting of a series of narratives of one sign after another (see R. T. Fortna, The Gospel of Signs and The Fourth Gospel and Its Predecessor; also W. Nicol, The Semeia in the Fourth Gospel), but whether this is true or not the commentator’s task is to give primary attention to the present narrator’s references to “signs” as markers in the present narrative.
47. The terminology of Jesus “doing” (ποιεῖν) signs is maintained quite consistently throughout the Gospel (see 2:23; 3:2; 4:54; 6:2, 14, 30; 7:31; 9:16; 10:41; 11:47; 12:18, 37; 20:30)
48. Chrysostom (Homily 23.1) addresses this fact and tries to deal with it: “How then did he ‘manifest forth his glory’? He manifested it at least for His own part, and if all present hear not of the miracle at the time, they would hear of it afterwards, for unto the present time it is celebrated, and has not been unnoticed” (NPNF, 1st ser., 14.80).
49. This is in keeping with the uses of φανεροῦν elsewhere in the Gospel. Jesus “reveals” God’s name to those “whom you gave me out of the world” (17:6), and after the resurrection “reveals” himself three times “to the disciples” (21:1, 14). Even when his brothers urge him to “reveal yourself to the world,” it is “so that your disciples may see the works you are doing” (7:3–4, my italics). Only in 3:21 and 9:3 is the scope of the “revelation” or “disclosure” left undefined. At one point, one disciple is impelled to ask, “Lord, how is it that you are going to reveal [ἐμφανίζειν] yourself to us and not to the world?” (14:19).
50. The notice that the disciples “believed in him” (καὶ ἐπίστευσαν εἰς αὐτόν) is the first use of the characteristic Johannine expression (πιστεύειν εἰς) for “believing in” Jesus. It can be regarded as an abbreviated form, and therefore an equivalent, of “believing in his name” (πιστεύειν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, see 1:12).
51. Μετὰ τοῦτο (“after this,” or see 11:7, 11; 19:28), like the more common μετὰ ταῦτα (see 3:22; 5:1, 14; 6:1; 7:1; 13:7; 19:38; 21:1), is a rather imprecise connective. Here the author may have chosen the singular τοῦτο with the preceding “sign” (σημεῖον) still in mind (compare 4:54, τοῦτο … δεύτερον σημεῖον).
52. Chrysostom takes the series of chronological notices between 1:29 and 2:12 quite seriously: “He received baptism then a few days before the passover” (Homilies 23.1; NPNF, 14.80).
53. Some manuscripts (including A) have the singular, “he remained” (ἔμεινεν), but the weight of evidence clearly supports the plural, “they remained” (ἔμειναν). The plural could imply that Jesus’ mother and brothers and sisters were also at Capernaum only temporarily, but there is obviously no suggestion that they accompanied him on his subsequent journeys, and there is a later hint that Capernaum may have been their home (below, n. 55).
54. It is difficult to say whether or not “brothers” (ἀδελφοί) is generic or specifically masculine. In the other Gospels, Jesus’ sisters are sometimes mentioned explicitly with the brothers (Mk 6:3, and in a textual variant in 3:32), and sometimes not (Mk 3:31, 33), in the latter instances leaving us with the same question as here. There is no reason from the text to think that Jesus’ “brothers” are anything but the natural children of “Joseph” (1:45) and “the mother of Jesus” (2:1).
55. Although Jesus is “from” Nazareth (1:45–46), the comment of “the Jews” at Capernaum (6:42; compare vv. 24, 59) suggests that this was where he lived as an adult and where his family was well known (see Mt 4:13, where, after leaving Nazareth, Jesus “settled down” [κατῴκησεν] in Capernaum, just as the family had earlier ‘settled down’ in Nazareth, 2:23).
1. See J. A. T. Robinson, The Priority of John, 127–31.
2. This is almost a consensus among modern scholars (see, for example, Barrett, 195; Beasley-Murray, 38–39). Lindars (135–36) argues that John originally placed it in chapter 12, but in a second edition moved it to make room for the story of the raising of Lazarus as the immediate cause of Jesus’ death. Brown (1.118) proposes that on his first journey to Jerusalem Jesus “uttered a prophetic warning about the destruction of the sanctuary,” but that “Jesus’ action of cleansing the temple precincts took place in the last days of his life.”
3. So Morris, 166–68; Carson, 177–78. Perhaps the best argument for such a harmonization is the possibility that Jesus may have cleansed the temple early in his ministry when he was still part of a movement centering around John the Baptist (compare Mt 21:32, where Jesus says to the temple authorities, “John came to you in the way of righteousness”), but there is no hint in this Gospel that Jesus was acting on anything but his own sovereign initiative. John has been prominent in the narrative both before (1:19–34) and after (3:22–30) the story of the cleansing, but he is completely out of the picture here.
4. Compare “the Passover of the Jews” (11:55); “the Passover, the festival of the Jews” (6:4); “the festival of the Jews [called] Tents” (7:2); “a festival of the Jews” (5:1). Only in 10:21 does the writer introduce a Jewish festival (“the Rededication in Jerusalem”) without mentioning “the Jews” explicitly.
6. While Jewish sources hint at such a custom (for example, Zech 14:21; M. Sheqalim 1.3), the New Testament accounts of the temple cleansing are themselves its best attestation (see J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, 48–49). Money changing was necessary somewhere in the city because Roman currency was not allowed in the temple. Jerusalem carried on lively trade with Tyre to the north, and only the Tyrian shekel was acceptable in paying the temple tax (M. Bekhorot 8.7), perhaps because the Tyrian coins were pure silver, like the “sanctuary shekel” of Num 18:16; compare Morris, 170).
7. Some important ancient manuscripts (including P66, P75, and the old Latin) add ὡς before φραγέλλιον, “whip,” suggesting improvisation: “a kind of whip,” which seems to be implied in any case. Φραγέλλιον is a loanword from Lat. flagellum.
8. Compare Brown, 1.115; Schnackenburg, 1.346. Haenchen, on the other hand, explains the masculine πάντας from the masculine τοὺς βόας, “the cattle,” concluding that Jesus used the whip only on the animals (1.183). While the notion that Jesus would use a whip on humans is troubling to some, the text makes no distinctions. If, however, the sellers saw their property disappearing, they would have been quick to follow, to retrieve their investment.
9. The word for “money changers” here (κολλυβιστής) is the same word found in the synoptic accounts of the temple cleansing (Mt 21:12; Mk 11:15; compare Lk 19:45 D), and different from the word used in verse 14 (κερματιστής). To this writer they are simply stylistic variations, interchangeable in meaning (compare τὸ κέρμα, “coins,” in the same clause). Logically, the overturning of the tables should precede the spilling of the coins, but the Greek reverses the order, possibly to link τῶν κολλυβιστῶν as closely as possible to τὸ κέρμα.
10. There are two minor textual variants here. Some manuscripts (including P75 and B) have the plural τὰ κέρματα for “coins” instead of the collective singular τὸ κέρμα (P66, א, A, and others), but the difference is of little consequence. For “overturn,” some manuscripts have ἀνέστρεψεν (P75, A, and the majority of later manuscripts) or κατέστρεψεν (א and others) instead of the less common ἀνέτρεψεν (P66, B, and others), but these seem to have been influenced by the κατέστρεψεν of Mt 21:12 and Mk 11:15. Again, the difference in meaning is negligible.
11. As Moloney concisely observes, “Cages, unlike oxen and sheep, cannot be sent scurrying away” (77).
12. The force of the present imperative μὴ ποιεῖτε is that the dovesellers must stop something they are already doing (the implication is, “How dare you”).
13. Doves were the offerings of the poor (Lev 5:7), but Westcott’s caution (1.91) is well taken: “There is no reason to think that those who sold the offerings of the poor were, as such, dealt with more gently than other traffickers.”
14. Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 go together naturally in the Gospel tradition, having in common the key phrase “my house” (ὁ οἶκός μου), with God understood as the speaker.
15. For Jewish polemic against buying and selling, see Sirach 26:29 (“A merchant can hardly keep from wrongdoing, and a tradesman will not be declared innocent of sin”) and 27:2 (“As a stake driven firmly into a fissure between stones, so sin is wedged in between selling and buying”). See also Gospel of Thomas 64, where Jesus says (without explicit reference to the temple), “Tradesmen and merchants will not enter the places of my Father.”
16. See the the last verse of Zechariah, “And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day” (Zech 14:21, RSV), where “trader” (compare 11:7, 11) is 
, translated in the LXX as Χαναναῖος, “Canaanite.” Many commentators (for example, Dodd, Interpretation, 300; Brown, 1.119) find an allusion here to the Zechariah passage, with the implication that Jesus’ purging of “trade” from the temple was a messianic act. It is doubtful, however, that any reader could have been expected to notice this. The Gospel writer ignores it, calling attention instead to a very different biblical text (v. 17; see Bultmann, 124).
17. Compare Luke 2:49, ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου (literally, “in my Father’s things”). Only here in John’s Gospel does Jesus speak of the Jerusalem temple in this way, but he uses a similar expression, “in my Father’s household” (ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τοῦ πατρός μου), to refer to heaven, or the heavenly temple (14:2).
18. He continues to do so throughout the Gospel; see 5:17, 43; 6:32, 40; 8:19 (twice), 49, 54; 10:18, 25, 29, 37; 14:2, 7, 20, 21, 23; 15:1, 8, 10, 15, 23, 24; 20:17. In even more instances Jesus speaks of “the Father,” with exactly the same meaning. As Moloney remarks, “A very Johannine feature has been added to the narrative” (Belief in the Word, 96–97).
19. Implicit in this claim is a proprietary interest in the Jerusalem temple as a legitimate place of worship (4:20, 22). The view of Bernard (1.87) that “the action of Jesus was a protest against the whole sacrificial system of the Temple,” because “The killing of beasts, which was a continual feature of Jewish worship, was a disgusting and useless practice” (1.87), is unwarranted and gratuitously anti-Jewish. Jesus’ acknowledgement of the temple as “my Father’s house” and his “zeal” on its behalf (v. 17) point to exactly the opposite conclusion (see Morris, 172).
20. The writer generally prefers the periphrastic expression γεγραμμένον ἐστίν, as here (compare 6:31, 45; 10:34; 12:14), to the shorter γέγραπται (8:17), although they are interchangeable in meaning (see 20:30, 31). Here the expression should be translated “is written” rather than “was written” (despite its dependence on the aorist ἐμνήσθησαν) because the accent is on the present testimony of Scripture to the readers of the Gospel (compare 5:39), not on the writing of Scripture in the far distant past.
21. See Dodd, Historical Tradition, 158; Schnackenburg, 1.347; Barrett, 198; Hoskyns, 194; Bernard, 1.91; Westcott, 92; Moloney, Belief in the Word, 97–98.
22. See Bultmann, 124, and especially Abbott, Johannine Grammar, 478–79.
23. Later copyists tried to make it less abrupt by adding δέ (“and” or “but”) after ἐμνήσθησαν, or καί (“and”) or even τότε (“then”) before it, suggesting (however subtly) that the disciples remembered the text from the Psalms right then and there. But our earliest manuscripts (including P66, P75, א, and B) have allowed the ambiguity to stand.
24. The words that immediately follow in the same verse of Psalm 69 (“the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me”) are cited in Romans 15:3, with the added comment that “Whatever was written before was written for our instruction” (15:4). Later in John’s Gospel (15:25), Jesus himself takes on the persona of the psalmist, citing the fulfillment in his own life of the words, “They hated me without cause” (Ps. 69:5). Here the quotation illustrates a point similar to the one Paul was making in Romans: “But now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father” (15:24).
25. “Will consume” is καταφάγεται; “has consumed” (LXX) is κατέφαγεν. There seems to have been some mutual cross-fertilization between the New Testament and LXX manuscript traditions, as some LXX manuscripts (for example, B) have the future καταφάγεταί, while some later New Testament manuscripts (including the Textus Receptus, some of the old Latin and Syriac, and the Vulgate) have the aorist, as in the LXX.
26. Compare Bultmann (124), Schnackenburg (1.347), Dodd (Historical Tradition, 158), and most others (Barrett, 199, is an exception, finding here a reference only to “consuming zeal”).
27. Compare Brown, 1.124. Brown, however, goes a step further to propose that what immediately precedes in the psalm (“I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother’s sons”) is implied here as well, in that after 2:12 “Jesus left his brothers to come to Jerusalem, and they would be separated from him through unbelief during his ministry.” Here he is on far shakier ground, for to this point nothing negative has been said about Jesus’ brothers, and there is nothing in Jesus’ actions in the temple to suggest any alienation from them.
28. The case is not airtight because the future tense could be explained simply by the fact that Jesus’ purification of the temple was future from the standpoint of the ancient psalmist. That is, the psalm can be read as an explicit prophecy. But Psalm 69 and others like it are not normally cited that way in the New Testament. Rather, their present and perfect tenses are usually retained (see, for example, Ps 69:5 in Jn 15:25; Ps 41:10 in Jn 13:18; Ps 22:19 in Jn 19:24). The shift to the future here is exceptional, suggesting that the “consuming” or “destroying” is future not only from the psalmist’s standpoint but from that of the Johannine narrator as well.
29. Chrysostom notices this: “See, He even calls Him ‘Father,’ and they are not wroth; but when He went on and spoke more plainly, so as to set before them the idea of His Equality, then they became angry” (the latter referring, apparently, to 5:17–18; Homilies 23.2; NPNF, 14.81).
30. According to Abbott, “the meaning of ὅτι seems to be ‘[We ask thee this question] because’ ” (Johannine Grammar, 157; compare BDF, §456[2]). Bultmann instead tries to read ὅτι as “that” (124), resulting in a far more cumbersome paraphrase: “What kind of sign can you show as a proof that you are doing this lawfully (or alternatively that you are allowed to do this)?” As is often the case, simpler is better.
31. See also 20:30–31; 21:25.
32. Compare the demands in the synoptic tradition by “the Pharisees” (Mk 8:11), or “the Scribes and Pharisees” (Mt 12:38), or “the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Mt 16:1), or simply “others” in the crowds (Lk 11:16), for “a sign” (Mt 12:38) or “a sign from heaven” (Mt 16:1; Mk 8:11; Lk 11:16). There Jesus regarded all such demands as characteristic of an evil generation, and either refused them out of hand (Mk 8:12) or promised just one sign, “the sign of Jonah” (Mt 12:39–40; 16:4; Lk 11:29–30), which referred (as here) to his own resurrection.
33. See LSJ, 1160 and BDAG, 533; compare Brown, 1.115. Most commentators, however, are hesitant to press the distinction (see Barrett, 199; Moloney, Belief in the Word, 99).
34. See Mk 14:58, and compare “this mountain” (Mk 11:25) and “this place” (Acts 6:14).
35. For ἐγείρειν in the sense of erecting or restoring a building, see BDAG, 214 (for example, of Jerusalem’s walls, Sirach 49:13; of the temple, 1 Esdras 5:44; Josephus, Antiquities 15.391; 20.228).
36. The same phrase occurs in Matthew 27:40//Mark 15:29 (compare “through three days,” Mt 26:61//Mk 14:58). As Delling points out (TDNT, 8.218), “three days” in biblical usage can be either a short or a long period depending on the context” (it is a long time, for example, in Mk 8:2, Lk 2:46, and Acts 9:9!), but here the contrast with “forty-six years” makes it unmistakably very short.
37. Normally the aorist οἰκοδομήθη (“was built”) would imply that the temple was finished, but according to Josephus it was not. He wrote that the temple was begun in the eighteenth year of Herod’s reign (about 20 B.C.; Antiquities 15.380; according to War 1.401 the fifteenth year, or 23 B.C.), and not completed until about A.D. 63, just seven years before its destruction (Antiquities 20.219). But if the temple was in regular use, people would have thought of it as finished, and would have spoken as “the Jews” do here (compare Ezra 5:16, LXX, where the aorist is used of an earlier temple which “from then until now has been under construction, and is not yet finished”). “Forty-six years” should be read as a piece of historical evidence placing the event around A.D. 26 or 27, not a symbolic number as Augustine thought (Tractates 10.11–12, NPNF, 1st ser., 7.73–74), nor a veiled reference to Jesus’ age (see 8:57; see Brown, 1.116; Schnackenburg, 1.351–52; Bultmann, 127). Not surprisingly, the date is more consistent with the beginning than with the end of Jesus’ ministry (see Lk 3:1), and thus with the Johannine placement of the temple cleansing.
38. See BDF, §387(2); Dodd, Interpretation, 302, n. 1. Bultmann disagrees (125), placing the emphasis rather on the imperative itself, which he sees as ironic, in the tradition of certain biblical prophecies (citing Amos 4:4, Isa 8:9–10, and Jer 7:21; compare Mt 23:32). This is not consistent with the reply of “the Jews” in verse 20.
39. In this respect the saying is different from the charge against Jesus at his trial in Matthew and Mark, where the accent is as much on destruction as on restoration, and where Jesus himself does the destroying: “I am able to destroy [δύναμαι καταλῦσαι] the temple of God and in three days build it” (Mt 26:61; compare 27:40); “I will destroy [ἐγὼ καταλύσω] this temple made with hands and in three days build another not made with hands” (Mk 14:58; compare 15:29). The accent on destruction is even stronger in Thomas 71 (“I will destroy [this] house, and no one will be able to rebuild it”) and in the charges against Stephen in Acts 6:14 (that Jesus “will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to us”).
40. See, for example, 4QFlorilegium 1.1–13, and for further references and discussion, R. H. Gundry, Mark, 899–900.
41. Notice that the issue is still unresolved as late as 10:24: “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”
42. Again John Chrysostom noticed, and wondered, “Why did He so keep silence? Because they would not have received His word; for if not even the disciples were able to understand the saying, much less were the multitudes” (Homily 23.3; NPNF, 1st ser., 14.82).
43. A line of interpretation as old as Origen (for example, Commentary on John 10.228–32, 263; FC, 80.305–6, 313) sees in the reference to Jesus’ body a reference to the church as well as to the physical body of Jesus. But the accent on “this” and the reference to “destroying” the body and raising it “in three days” do not lend themselves to such an interpretation. Even though, as Schnackenburg puts it, this writer’s “ecclesiology is based entirely on Christology” (1.352), the Pauline notion of the church as the “body” of Christ never appears in the Gospel of John.
44. The notion that Jesus pointed to himself when he first made the pronouncement (which some commentators mention but none will admit to holding!) is absurd because it would, as Schnackenburg remarks, “make the Jewish misunderstanding incredible” (1.349).
45. While ἐγείρειν is occasionally used of a building in Greek literature (n. 35), all but one of the 144 uses of the verb in the New Testament refer to living entities rather than buildings (the response of “the Jews” in v. 20 being the only exception). It is one of two verbs (along with ἀνίσταναι) used repeatedly in the New Testament for the resurrection of Jesus.
46. See Matthew 12:40: “No sign will be given … except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so the Son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” The Synoptics use various expressions in speaking of Jesus’ resurrection (τρεῖς ἡμέρας, Mt 12:40), “after three days” (μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας, Mk 8:31; 9:31; 10:34); “on the third day” (τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμερᾳ, Mt 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; 27:64; Lk 9:22; 18:33; 24:7, 21; Acts 10:40; 1 Cor 15:4). While the precise expression used here, “in [or within] three days” (ἐν τρισὶν ἡμέραις), does occurs only in sayings about destroying the temple (Mt 27:40; Mk 15:29), it is vague enough to be consistent with either form, “after three days” or “on the third day.”
47. The “wrong” solution surfaces again at the end of Jesus’ ministry in synoptic accounts of his trial, where certain “false witnesses” charge him with threatening to “destroy the temple of God and in three days build it” (Mt 26:61), yet even here a variant form of the charge (Mk 14:58) adds that the temple he would build was “not made with hands” (ἀχειροποίητον). The qualification could represent a move in the direction of the Johannine “right” solution, in which the temple Jesus will raise up is no literal temple, but his own body (compare 2 Cor 5:1), but it could also signal a claim that Jesus builds as God builds, in that ἀχειροποίητον “comes to mean ‘made by God’ ” (Gundry, Mark, 900, concludes that Jesus was charged with having “arrogated to himself another divine role”).
48. The notion of Jesus “raising up” himself or his own body (ἐγερῶ αὐτόν, v. 19) is not the usual way of referring to Jesus’ resurrection (see v. 22), yet is wholly consistent with the perspective of this Gospel (compare 10:17–18, “I lay down my life that I might take it again.… I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again”).
50. The difference is slight because the intransitive passive ἠγέρθη is middle or active in meaning, without particular reflection on God the Father as the One who “raised up” Jesus (see BDAG, 214–15; compare ἐγερθεῖς ἐκ νεκρῶν, 21:14; also 11:29, where Mary “rose quickly” and came to Jesus).
51. Τοῦτο ἔλεγεν (“this was what he meant,” v. 22) echoes ἔλεγεν περί (“he was speaking of,” v. 21). As Abbott comments, “in this prediction about the Temple, ‘remembered’ is probably a short way of saying ‘remembered and recognized’; and ἔλεγεν περί is but a longer form of ἔλεγεν” (Johannine Grammar, 341). For ἔλεγεν as “meant,” compare the parenthetical comment in 6:71: “But he meant [ἔλεγεν] Judas, son of Simon Iscariot.”
52. Compare 12:16, “These things his disciples did not understand at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered [τότε ἐμνήσθησαν] that these things were written about him and that they had done these things for him”; also 14:26, where remembrance with understanding is probably the point of Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit “will remind [ὑπομνήσει] you of all that I said to you.”
53. The former is πιστεύειν εἰς; the latter πιστεύειν with the dative. For extended discussions, see Abbott, Johannine Vocabulary, 32–80, and Dodd, Interpretation, 182–84.
54. Compare perhaps 20:8–9, where the beloved disciple “saw and believed” (ἐπίστευσεν) on looking into Jesus’ tomb, but where we are then told that he and Peter “did not yet know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” The parallel is far from perfect, however, because the contrast in chapter 20 is not between pre- and postresurrection faith, but between two stages of postresurrection faith, one immediate and the other the product of subsequent reflection.
55. Compare Lindars, 144; Moloney, Belief in the Word, 102; Sanders and Mastin, 120; compare Haenchen, John 1, 185.
56. The term ἡ γραφή is always used in John’s Gospel for specific texts, never for the Jewish Scriptures as a whole; see 7:38, 42; 10:35; 13:18; 17:12; 19:24, 28, 36, 37 (the only possible exception is 20:9, but even here it is likely that a specific text is in mind even though it remains unidentified). When the writer wants to refer to the Jewish Scriptures more generally, he uses the plural (5:39).
57. The failure to see that both death and resurrection are in view leads some commentators to ignore the Psalm 69 citation and look for other texts not even mentioned in this passage that specifically point to resurrection (above all, Ps 16:10, cited in Acts 2:31 and 13:35; for example, Westcott, 1.95; Morris, 179–80; Carson, 183).
1. The bracketed words are found in a number of Greek manuscripts, including A, Θ, Ψ, families 1 and 13, the majority of later manuscripts, virtually all Latin versions, and two Syriac versions. One Syriac and one old Latin version have the words, “who was in heaven,” while a few later Greek manuscripts and a Syriac version have “who is from heaven.” By far the weight of manuscript evidence (including P66, P75, א, B, and L) favors omission of this clause. Yet it is a difficult reading, because if Jesus is himself the Son of man, the question of how he could be on earth and in heaven at the same time is raised. If it was original, it is easy to see why it might have been dropped. Therefore I have placed it in brackets.
2. This does not exclude the possibility that at some stage of the tradition, before the account found its way into John’s Gospel, the “signs” at Jesus’ first Passover in Jerusalem may have consisted of specific miracles, possibly of healing. The healing of the sick man in chapter 5, for example, is placed at an unidentified “festival” (5:1), which in an earlier form of the story could have been this first Passover (see Michaels, John, 84–85). But while such a possibility cannot be excluded, it has no bearing on the interpretation of the text of the Gospel as it stands, in which the healing in chapter 5 is obviously later. In the present form of the text, what impressed not only these Passover believers (v. 23) but also Nicodemus (3:2) and the Galileans mentioned later who “saw all that he did in Jerusalem at the festival” (4:45), was the cleansing of the temple, and that alone.
3. Origen (Commentary on John 10.310; FC, 80.324–25) distinguished between “believing in Jesus” and “believing in his name” with the comment, “We must cling, therefore, to him rather than to his name, that, when we perform miracles in his name, we may not hear the words which were spoken of those who boasted in his name alone” (an allusion to Mt 7:22–23). Abbott (Johannine Vocabulary) tried to make a similar case by linking “belief in the name” to “a lower kind of trust, a profession of belief in baptism” (37), but the text offers no basis for any such distinction.
4. “Himself” is αὐτόν (literally “him,” but with a reflexive meaning). Some important manuscripts (including P66) have ἑαυτόν here (the more common pronoun for “himself”), but αὐτόν is the more difficult reading. It is easy to see why it would have been changed to ἑαυτόν, but not why the opposite change would have taken place. The entire verse in Greek sounds cumbersome and redundant, with four occurrences of the emphatic or reflexive pronoun αὐτός (αὐτός … αὐτόν αὐτοῖς … αὐτόν), leading to an elaborate repetition in verse 25 of the thought that Jesus “knew them all.” The first αὐτός serves to underscore the contrast between the two uses of πιστεύειν; thus the translation, “But as for Jesus, he.…” The effect is to place the emphasis strongly on Jesus “himself” (αὐτός) and on his knowledge.
5. For πιστεύειν as “entrust,” compare Luke 16:11, Romans 3:2, 1 Corinthians 9:17, Galatians 2:7, 1 Thessalonians 2:4, 1 Timothy 1:11, and Titus 1:3. While “entrusting oneself to someone” (πιστεύειν αὑτόν τινι) does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament, it is not uncommon in Greek literature (for example, Aristeas 270; Josephus, Antiquities 12.396; and a number of texts cited in BDAG, 817).
6. Greek (διὰ τὸ αὐτὸν γινώσκειν πάντας). Because both the subject and the object of the infinitive are in the accusative case, this clause could also be translated, “because they all knew him,” but this makes no sense in the context. The effort of one early translator (Gilbert Wakefield, Translation of the New Testament, 1820) to render it this way (evidently in light of Mk 1:34, where Jesus forbade the demons to speak “because they knew him”) is ingenious but unconvincing.
7. The expression, “no need for anyone to testify” (ἵνα τις μαρτυρήσῃ) is simply another way of saying that Jesus had complete knowledge (compare 16:30, “You have no need for anyone to ask you,” where the point is that Jesus not only knows everything, but reveals everything without being asked; see also 1 Jn 2:27 and 1 Thess 4:9, 13).
8. “Person” is a word traditionally translated as “man,” though not gender specific. “About the person” is περὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, and “in the person” is ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ. While not gender specific, ἄνθρωπος in this sense is generic, referring not to an individual but to any person (see BDAG, 82).
9. This is a very widely-held view (see, for example, Bultmann, 131; Schnackenburg, 1.358; Brown, 1.126–27; Morris, 181), based in part on Jesus’ rebuke to the nobleman at Cana (4:48), read in light of the preceding notice (4:45) that Galileans had been present at this festival.
10. See also 5:38, “And you do not have his word remaining in you” (ἐν ὑμῖν μένοντα).
11. Such texts are echoed in the pronouncements of the risen Jesus in the book of Revelation, who repeatedly mentions things that he says “I know” (οἶδα) about each of the seven congregations in Asia (Rev 2:2, 9, 13, 19; 3:1, 8, 15), and who claims that “I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds” (Rev 2:23, NIV).
12. Other examples: he knows the Samaritan woman’s past (4:17–18; compare vv. 29, 39), and that the nobleman’s son will live (4:50); he knows what he will do to feed a crowd of five thousand (6:6); he knows who will disbelieve and who will betray him (6:64), and why the blind man was born blind (9:3); he knows that Lazarus has died (11:11–14) and will rise again (11:4, 11, 40); he knows his own mission, and the events leading to its completion (13:1, 3; 18:4; 19:28), and he knows that Thomas has asked to verify his identity by touch (20:27).
13. Compare, for example, Jesus’ flight from the crowds again and again in Mark’s Gospel, and his use of parables to hide the truth from some while revealing it to others. In John, compare his flight from those who acknowledged him as “the Prophet who comes into the world” and tried to make him a king (6:14–15).
14. Like John (1:6), Nicodemus is identified both as a “man” or “person” (ἄνθρωπος), and by name, with the same expression used to name John (ὄνομα αὐτῳ, “his name,” literally “a name to him”). “Nicodemus” was a Greek name, adapted into Hebrew as Naqdimon. There is no sure way to identify our Nicodemus with anyone else of that name mentioned in Jewish literature. The wealthy Naqdimon ben Gorion at the time of the siege of Jerusalem in 70 (b. Taʿanit 19b–20a, b. Ketubbot 66b–67a, and b. Giṭṭin 56a) would probably have been too young to have been a “ruler” in the time of Jesus. Among five names of Jesus’ disciples given in the Talmud (b. Sanhedrin 43a) are a Naqai (sometimes thought to be the Aramaic form of Naqdimon) and a Buni (mentioned in b. Taʿanit 20a as Naqdimon’s other name), but there is no proven connection (compare Schnackenburg, 1.365).
15. Compare Luke 18:18, where a wealthy “ruler” (ἄρχων) addresses Jesus as “Good teacher” and asks what he must to “inherit eternal life.”
16. Even some English versions assume this (NIV, NEB, REB), but the New Testament evidence is inconclusive (see Delling, TDNT, 1.489; BDAG, 113–14). What is clear is that the Jewish ἄρχοντες, or “rulers,” are a group of leaders distinguished from the “elders” and the “scribes” (Acts 4:5, 8), from the “chief priests” (Lk 23:13; 24:20), and from “the Pharisees” (Jn 7:48; 12:42; this is the case even though Nicodemus belonged to both groups). It is interesting that Joseph of Arimathea, who is quite clearly identified as a council member (Mk 15:43; Lk 23:50), is never called a “ruler.”
17. Instead of repeating all the terminology of 3:1, the writer simply states that Nicodemus was “one of them” (7:50).
18. Later, Nicodemus is twice identified by this act of “coming” to Jesus (ὁ ἐλθὼν πρὸς αὐτόν, 7:50, 19:39).
19. Compare the disciples “behind locked doors for fear of the Jews” when they saw the risen Lord (20:19; compare v. 26).
20. See Barrett, 205; Morris, 187; Schnackenburg, 365–66; Moloney, 91. Yet those who hold this view seldom apply Jesus’ positive characterization of those who “come to the Light” (3:21) to Nicodemus without some qualification.
21. “We know” (οἴδαμεν) can refer simply to what is common knowledge (compare 9:31), and does not have to be a signal that Nicodemus is speaking for a larger group. Here, however, he does speak for such a group, and οἴδαμεν probably reflects this (compare 7:27 and 9:29, where it is used again in connection with the issue of where Jesus is from). As we will see, Jesus presupposes just such a wider audience in two of his responses to Nicodemus (vv. 7, 11–12).
22. The verb “to do” is again conspicuous here (ποιεῖν ἃ σὺ ποιεῖς; compare 2:11, 18, 23). See p. 103., n. 46.
23. Jesus twice makes the same claim for himself: “And the One who sent me is with me [μετʼ ἐμοῦ]; he has not left me alone” (8:29; compare 8:16); “And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (μετʼ ἐμοῦ, 16:32).
24. In Greek, Nicodemus says οὐδεὶς γὰρ δύναται … ἐὰν μή, and Jesus (turning the expression around) replies, ἐὰν μή … οὐ δύναται.
25. Thus, ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω σοι rather than ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, as in 1:51.
26. The closest synoptic parallel is Matthew 18:3, “Amen, I say to you, unless [ἐὰν μή] you turn and become as children [ὡς τὰ παιδία], you will by no means [οὐ μή] enter the kingdom of heaven.” While the form is similar, there is no spiritual rebirth here, but only the use of children as a metaphor for discipleship (compare Mk 9:33–37, 10:13–16).
27. The compound verb “born again” (ἀναγεννᾶσθαι) does not occur in John’s Gospel or 1 John, but in the New Testament only in 1 Peter (1:3, 23; see also Justin, Apology 1.61.4). For the noun “rebirth,” or “regeneration” (παλιγγενεσία), see Matthew 19:28 (with reference to a reborn world) and Titus 3:5 (with reference to baptism); also Tractate 13 in the Corpus Hermeticum, “On Rebirth.”
28. See verse 31, where “the One who comes from above” (ὁ ἄνωθεν ἐρχόμενος) is almost immediately interpreted as “the One who comes from heaven” (ὁ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἐρχόμενος), that is, from God (compare 19:11).
29. “Father,” because “born again” means “begotten again,” as by a male progenitor. The only mother “from above” in the New Testament is “the Jerusalem above” (ἡ δὲ ἄνω Ἰερουσαλήμ), which Paul refers to as “our mother” (Gal 4:26; also vv. 28–29).
30. Compare Wisdom 10:10, with reference to Jacob’s vision at Bethel: “When a righteous man fled from his brother’s wrath,” wisdom “showed him the kingdom of God [βασιλείαν θεοῦ] and gave him knowledge of angels.”
31. The notion of impossibility comes up in the synoptic Gospels as well, when Jesus sets high standards for “entering the kingdom of God,” and his disciples ask, “So who can [τίς δύναται] be saved?” He then replies, “With humans it is impossible [ἀδύνατον], but not with God, for all things are possible [δυνατά] with God” (Mk 10:23–27 par.).
32. For these two alternative meanings, see BDAG, 92. The common assumption that the word has a “double meaning” here (for example, Brown, 1.130; Morris, 188–89; Barrett, 205) is questionable. While ἄνωθεν can mean either “from above,” or “again,” there is no reason to think it means both at the same time, except in the sense that “from above” necessarily is “again.”
33. The only way this would not be the case is if the writer were assuming that the first, or physical, birth of the elect was itself somehow a birth “from above,” simply because they were God’s elect, predestined from birth to be the children of God. This is highly unlikely, however, given the sharp distinction in 1:13 between physical birth and being born “of God.”
34. See Schnackenburg, 1.369: “Nicodemus has only taken up and analyzed ‘being born’; he seems to have ignored completely the ἄνωθεν of Jesus.”
35. Compare the questions about rebirth in Corpus Hermeticum 13.1–2 (Περὶ Παλιγγενεσίας): “From what womb is a man born, and of what seed?”
36. Nicodemus goes so far as to characterize the person who enters the womb a second time as “old,” either because he himself (as “a ruler of the Jews”) is old, or merely to heighten the absurdity of it all. As Schnackenburg puts it, “the extreme case of the aged makes flagrantly clear what is true of every age, that there is only one birth” (1.368).
37. It is difficult to decide whether or not “spirit” should be capitalized. I have opted for capitalization in verse 5 because when Jesus repeats the word in verses 6 and 8 he does so with the definite article, “the Spirit,” suggesting that the Holy Spirit is meant.
38. In Greek, ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος.
39. This is the view of the majority of commentators (for example, Westcott, 108–9; Bernard, 1.104; Hoskyns, 213–14; Brown, 1.141–44; Beasley-Murray, 48; Schnackenburg, 1.369; Barrett, 209; Moloney, 92–93). There are a number of nuances to this view, depending on one’s theological convictions. The point could be either that “water” (that is, water baptism) is necessary, or that it is insufficient without the accompanying work of the Spirit (or even both at the same time!).
40. “Euphemism” is perhaps not the right word, because the terminology of “water” or a “drop” was used contemptuously (like dust or clay) to remind humans of their humble origin (e.g., m. ʾAbot 3.1, “a putrid drop”;3 Enoch 6.2, “a white drop”; 1QH 5.21, “an edifice of dust, kneaded with water”; 9.21, “a vessel of clay, and kneaded with water”; compare 11.24).
41. This is the view of Odeberg, The Fourth Gospel (48–71, and the texts cited there), who understands “water” as a term for the male seed, but spiritualized as “celestial σπέρμα … an efflux from above, from God,” so that “the spiritual man, or … member or citizen of the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ owes his existence as such to the procreative power of the efflux from God, the σπέρμα in the spirit” (63–64; compare Morris, 191–93).
42. Others get rid of water in more heavy-handed fashion by simply omitting ὕδατος καί as an interpolation (for example, Bultmann, 138, n. 3). But even if they are an interpolation (which is unlikely, and for which there is no manuscript evidence), why remove them from the text? It is widely acknowledged that the Gospel of John grew in stages in any case, and if someone in the Johannine community cared enough to add them to the tradition, why would this not make them more important for understanding the Gospel in its present form, not less? (compare Moloney, 99).
43. See Lindars, 152.
44. Odeberg, as we have seen, makes this point, and its validity is not dependent on the peculiarities of his own interpretation.
45. See b. Taʿanit 2a, where R. Jochanan said, “Three keys the Holy One, blessed be He, has retained in His own hands and not entrusted to the hand of any messenger, namely, the Key of Rain, the Key of Childbirth, and the Key of the Revival of the Dead” (Babylonian Talmud: Seder Moʾed [London: Soncino, 1938], 4.3). All three focus on life, and God’s power to give life.
46. Even in the synoptic tradition “life” and “kingdom of God” can be used interchangeably (specifically with the verb “enter”; see Mk 9:43, 45, 47; compare also Mt 7:14; 18:8, 9; 19:16, 17, 29).
47. This point is made at some length by Carson (191–96) with particular reference to Ezekiel 36:25–27.
48. “What is born” is τὸ γεγεννηένον in Greek; “infant” is τὸ βρέφος; “child” is τὸ τέκνον or τὸ παιδίον (all with the neuter definite article; see also Lk 1:35, τὸ γεννώμενον, “the child to be born”).
49. The distinction between “Spirit” and “spirit” in an English text is rather arbitrary (among the more difficult calls are 6:63b and 19:30). Normally I have capitalized “Spirit” where it appears to refer to the Spirit of God (as almost everywhere in John’s Gospel), and left it uncapitalized where it refers simply to redeemed humanity or the human spirit.
50. The verb “surprised” or “amazed” (θαυμάζειν) can mean either favorably or unfavorably impressed, depending on the context (see BDAG, 444), but in this instance Nicodemus’s potential “surprise” sounds fairly neutral, suggesting neither hostility on the one hand nor admiration on the other.
51. See 1 John 3:12–13, where the author first makes the point that Cain killed his brother because his works were evil and his brother’s were righteous, and then draws the conclusion, “So don’t be surprised [μὴ θαυμάζετε] if the world hates you.” The expression functions somewhat differently in John 5:28, where Jesus supports a conclusion already drawn (vv. 25–27) with the comment, “Don’t be surprised at this” (μὴ θαυμάζετε τοῦτο) and a summary of traditional Jewish beliefs pointing to this conclusion.
52. This is most often the meaning in the other Gospels as well, although δεῖ can also be used in the somewhat weaker sense of that which is morally appropriate or fitting (for example, Mt 18:33; 23:23; Mk 13:14; Lk 12:12; 13:14, 16; 15:32; 18:1; 19:5).
53. Alternatively, the plural “you” could be understood as referring to the Jewish people as a whole. The same options present themselves in vv. 11 and 12, but at this point it is more likely that the reader will think of the Passover believers of 2:23–24.
54. See 6:18, with ἄνεμος, “wind”; compare also Matthew 7:25, 27; Luke 12:55; Acts 27:40; Revelation 7:1 (for πνεῦμα as wind with the cogate verb πνεῖν, see Epistle of Jeremiah 60; Diodorus Siculus 24.1.2).
55. A consistent reading with “Spirit” would yield something like “The Spirit breathes where he will, and you hear his voice, but you don’t know where he comes from or where he goes” (compare Barrett, 211). For φωνή as the Spirit’s voice in tongues-speaking, see Acts 2:6; 1 Corinthians 14:7, 8, 10, 13, but this is an issue far removed from the world of John’s Gospel, particularly in these early chapters.
56. Schnackenburg, 1.373.
57. This is evident in the variant reading ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ τοῦ πνεύματος (א; compare the old Latin and Syriac), echoing verse 5.
58. Compare Ignatius, who makes the same claim for the Spirit: “the Spirit is not deceived, being from God; for he knows where he comes from and where he is going” (To the Philadelphians 7.1).
59. To be born “of the Spirit” (ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος, vv. 6, 8) is to be born “of God” (ἐκ θεοῦ as in 1:13, or ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ as in 1 John), and to be “born of God” is to be “of God” or “from God” (ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι; see 8:47; 1 Jn 4:4, 6; 5:19). They are also “from God” in the sense that God gave them to Jesus in the first place (6:37, 39, 44; 10:29; 17:2, 6, 24; 18:9).
60. This becomes evident in some of Jesus’ promises to his disciples and to the readers, especially in the farewell discourses (see 12:26; 13:36; 14:2–3, 6; 17:24).
61. At best, it is possible to infer (with Bultmann, 143, n. 1) from 12:35 that those who “walk in the light,” in contrast to those walking in darkness, “know where they are going” (compare 1 Jn 2:11). But this is a stretch. Bultmann’s citation of 14:4 as direct evidence of such knowledge is unconvincing in light of Thomas’s puzzled question that immediately follows (14:5).
62. Gnostic parallels come inevitably to mind. According to Bultmann, “It is a fundamental tenet of Gnosticism that the Redeemer is a ‘stranger’ to the world, which does not know his origin or his destination.… By virtue of their secret relationship with the Redeemer, the same is true of the redeemed, the spiritual men; indeed for them the decisive Gnosis is to know whence they themselves have come and whither they are going.” While Bultmann was committed to the notion that “John took over the Gnostic view of the Redeemer and applied it to the person of Jesus,” he admits that with regard to the believer “he has moved further away from the Gnostic view as a result of rejecting the idea of the pre-existence of souls and of the cosmic relationship between the Redeemer and the redeemed” (Bultmann, 143, n. 1).
63. Compare 1 John, where the similar phrase “everyone born of God (πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ) is used of those who have broken with the world to the extent that they do not or cannot sin (see 1 Jn 3:9; 5:18).
64. Even Nicodemus’s choice of the verb for “be” or “come to be” (γενέσθαι) sounds (especially when read aloud) like the verb “to be born” (γεννηθῆναι, repeated in various forms in vv. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8).
65. In a curious way, the form of Jesus’ pronouncement recalls Nathanael’s confession, “You, Rabbi, are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel” (1:49; compare also 6:69; 11:27).
66. Compare Bultmann, 144: “Jesus’ answer is not intended to imply that the scribe ought himself to have been able to give the answer, which would mean that one should look for the scriptural references which, in the Evangelist’s view, contain the doctrine of rebirth. Rather, Jesus’ answer makes it clear that the teachers of Israel can give no answer. They necessarily fail when they are faced with the decisive questions.”
67. See Abbott, Johannine Grammar, 200, who nevertheless still regards the pronouncement as an expression of surprise: “The teacher of Israel … and ignorant of this!”
68. See Abbott, Johannine Grammar, 312 (compare 8:16–18); also Chrysostom,Homily 26: “The expression ‘we know,’ He uses then either concerning Himself and His Father, or concerning Himself alone” (NPNF, 1st ser., 14.92). But the words, “we testify to what we have seen,” can hardly be true of Jesus and the Father in quite the same sense.
69. See Barrett, 211; Schackenburg, 1.375–76. Bernard finds here not “the actual words of Jesus so much as the profound conviction of the Apostolic age that the Church’s teaching rested on the testimony of eye-witnesses” (1.110, citing 1 Jn 1:1–2 and 4:14). Hoskyns (216) combines several of these interpretations into one with the comment that “Jesus did not confront Judaism alone,” citing 5:30–47, and appealing to John, Moses and the prophets, Jesus’ disciples, and (implicitly) the author and readers of the Gospel as examples of those included in the “we.”
70. According to Brown (1.132), “the use of ‘we’ is a parody of Nicodemus’s hint of arrogance.”
71. See, for example, 4:14: “Whoever drinks of the water which I will give” (ἐγὼ δώσω); 4:26, “I am he [ἐγὼ εἰμι], the One speaking to you”; 4:32, “I [ἐγὼ] have food to eat that you do not know”; 4:38, “I [ἐγώ] have sent you to harvest.” Such language continues to characterize Jesus’ speech throughout the rest of the Gospel.
72. See 1:20, 23, 26, 27, 30, 31 (twice), 33, 34; 3:28. The closest Jesus comes to such a pronouncement in chapters 1–3 is his promise that “I will raise” (ἐγερῶ) the temple in three days (2:19). While the “I” here is not the emphatic ἐγώ, Jesus’ opponents respond with an emphatic “you” (καὶ σύ, v. 20).
73. Bultmann’s comments are remarkably similar: “The Evangelist has retained the plural because in a peculiar manner he disguises the person of Jesus and conceals the fact that ultimately Jesus is the only one who speaks from knowledge and who bears witness to what he has seen. He wants the discourse to retain its air of mystery, and he does not yet wish to state clearly that Jesus is the Revealer” (146); compare also Staley, The Print’s First Kiss, 61: “Jesus never uses the first person pronoun egô in these three chapters—only John does; and in Jesus’ one extended monologue (3:11–21), he speaks of himself only in the third person or first person plural. This peculiarity also changes after chapter 4.”
74. The translation “you people” rests on the plural verb (οὐ λαμβάνετε), in keeping with the plurals in vv. 2 and 7.
75. “If I have told you” is a first class or real condition with εἰ (εἰ … εἶπον ὑμῖν); the second is a future condition with ἐάν (ἐάν εἴπω ὑμῖν); BDF, §372 (1) and §373 (3). For another Johannine example of two different conditional clauses in the same sentence, compare 13:17, “Now that (εἰ) you know these things, blessed are you if (ἐάν) you do them.”
76. Compare Wisdom 9:16, “We can hardly guess at what is on earth, and what is at hand we find with labor; but who has traced out what is in the heavens?” (RSV); 4 Ezra 4:21, “so also those who dwell upon earth can understand only what is on earth, and he who is above the heavens can understand what is above the height of the heavens” (OTP, 1.530); also b. Sanhedrin 39a, where Rabban Gamaliel says to the Emperor, “You do not know what is on earth, and yet [claim to] know what is in heaven.” When the Emperor claims to know the number of the stars, Gamaliel tells him to count his teeth, adding “You know not what is in your mouth, and yet wouldst know what is in Heaven!” (Babylonian Talmud. Seder Nezikin III: Sanhedrin [London: Soncino, 1935], 248).
77. See Barrett, 212, who adds, “Jesus has spoken parables which should have evoked in Nicodemus faith (in Jesus himself); they failed in their purpose, and it will therefore be useless to speak directly, without parable, of τὰ ἐπουράνια; compare Mark 4:11f.”
79. Consequently, while Sasse’s reference to John 16:25 (see n. 78) is appropriate, Barrett’s reference to Mark 4:11f. (n. 77) is not, because in Mark the purpose of “parables” is not to make Jesus’ proclamation easier to understand, but harder. Mark’s “parables” (παραβολαί), unlike John’s παροιμίαι in chapter 16 (or τὰ επίγεια here), are actually “riddles” designed to hide the truth.
80. Rhetorical denials of this kind were common enough in Jewish literature (compare Deut 30:12; Prov 30:4; Bar 3:29), yet they existed alongside traditions about those who had ascended (for example, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah). For examples, see Odeberg, 72–98, who concludes that no rejection of these traditions is implied (97–98). The point is rather that “the saints and prophets could do nothing without the Son of Man; if they ascended to heaven it was in the Son of Man, in union and communion with him.” Odeberg’s examples, however, do not distinguish between visions of heaven and actual ascent into heaven. Possibly Jesus’ pronouncement is intended to rule out only the latter (even 1:18 and 6:46, which exclude visions of God, do not necessarily exclude the sort of heavenly visions described in, say, Ezekiel, or the book of Revelation). John’s Gospel even has a couple of its own (8:56; 12:41).
81. “Gone up” is ἀναβέβηκεν, perfect tense.
82. See Moloney, Johannine Son of Man, 55; Westcott, 115–16; Bernard, 1.111; Carson, 200. Their point is that the revelation of heavenly things takes place not by virtue of anyone’s ascent into heaven but by virtue of the Son of man’s descent from heaven (compare Schnackenburg’s more precise paraphrase, “No one has ascended to heaven [and brought tidings]; only one [has brought tidings]: he who descended from heaven, the Son of man,” 1.393).
83. See, for example, Barrett (213), Haenchen (John 1, 204), and Beasley-Murray (44–45).
84. Greek ὁ ὤν ἐν τῷ οὐράνῳ. While the variant reading (see above, n. 1) could have arisen from a scribe’s marginal note alluding to the risen Jesus, it scarcely matters whether the variant is accepted as original or not. If the perfect ἀναβέβηκεν, “has gone up,” is read with “the Son of man” as its subject, it implies in any case that as a result of having ascended he is now in heaven.
85. Precritical commentators, reading a text that included the words “who is in heaven,” are generally more helpful on this point than modern interpreters. Chrysostom wrote, “For not in heaven only is He, but everywhere, and He fills all things” (Homilies on John 27.1; NPNF, 1st ser. 14.94), and Augustine commented, “Behold, He was here, and was also in heaven; was here in His flesh, in heaven by His divinity; yea, everywhere by His divinity. Born of a mother, not quitting the Father” (Tractates on the Gospel of John 12.8; NPNF, 1st ser., 7.84).
86. Compare Ephesians 4:9–10, where Christ is identified as the One who both descended and ascended “far above all the heavens [ὑπεράνω πάντων τῶν οὐρανῶν], that he might fill all things.”
87. Brown (1.132) notices in John’s Gospel a “strange timelessness or indifference to normal time sequence,” citing 4:38, where Jesus speaks as if he has already sent out his disciples. In other instances, the perspectives of either the Son’s preexistence (5:19–20) or postresurrection existence (17:11–12) are drawn into the present tense of Jesus’ discourse. We may also compare the new Jerusalem in the book of Revelation, where the accompanying participle, “coming down from heaven,” does not refer to a point in time but simply describes the nature of the Holy City (Rev 3:12; 21:2, 10).
88. Compare John Calvin: “For to ascend to heaven means here ‘to have a pure knowledge of the mysteries of God, and the light of spiritual understanding’ ” (Calvin’s Commentaries 7: The Gospels [Grand Rapids: Associated Publishers, n.d.], 640). While Moloney’s attempt to eliminate altogether the theme of ascent and descent from John’s Gospel is unconvincing, still his assertion that “the Johannine Son of Man is not concerned with vertical movement” (Johannine Son of Man, 226) is true in the sense that Jesus’ ascent is not literally up nor his descent literally down.
89. The wording is almost identical: ὑψωθῆναι δεῖ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου in 3:14; δεῖ ὑψωθῆναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου in 12:34. Jesus had said nothing in the context of 12:34 about “the Son of man,” only that “I, if I be lifted up [ἐὰν ὑψωθῶ] from the earth, will draw them all to myself” (v. 32).
90. Early Judaism remembered that the bronze snake was eventually destroyed as a graven image (2 Kgs 18:4), and emphasized that it did not in itself bring salvation (Wis 16:5–7, 10–11; m. Rosh ha-Shanah 3.8; Philo, Allegory of the Laws 2.79–81; Agricultura 95–96). Early Christianity viewed it as a type of Christ on the cross, but not in any obvious dependence on the Gospel of John (see Barnabas 12.5–7; Justin, 1 Apology 60; Dialogue 91, 94, 112; Tertullian, Against Marcion 3.18.7). None of these midrashic reflections on the Numbers passage use any form of the verb ὑψοῦν, “to lift up.”
91. See Mark 8:31: “And he began to teach them that the Son of man must [δεῖ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου] suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and rise after three days” (compare Lk 9:22; 17:24–25; 24:7).
92. Is it possible that Jesus’ pronouncement here is simply a further answer to the Jewish authorities’ demand for a “sign” (σημεῖον) back in 2:18? In the biblical account, Moses was said to have placed the bronze snake “on a sign” (ἐπὶ σημείου, 21:8–9, LXX), and in Luke 11:30 Jesus responds to a request for a sign with an analogy (much like the one here) between “the Son of man” and a well-known biblical figure: “As [καθώς] Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so [οὕτως] too will the Son of man be to this generation” (Mt 12:40 is more explicit: “For as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”).
93. For “exalted” or “lifted up,” see 8:28 as well as 12:32–34, and for “glorified” see 12:23; 13:31–32 (compare 7:39; 8:54; 11:4; 12:16; 17:1, 5).
94. As we have seen (compare v. 7), δεῖ often refers to a divine necessity, while the use of a passive verb to refer indirectly to acts of God is a common grammatical device in the New Testament (compare Whitacre, 91; on this “theological passive,” see also M. Zerwick, Biblical Greek, 76). Yet Jesus can also say to his enemies in the heat of debate, “When you lift up [ὑψώσητε] the Son of man, then you will know that I am” (8:28).
95. Compare 6:32, “Amen, amen, I say to you, not that Moses gave you the bread from heaven, but that my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.”
96. Not surprisingly, “believing” is mentioned in several early Christian expositions of Numbers 21 (for example, Barnabas 12.7; Justin, 1 Apology 60; also Justin, Dialogue 91, though with due warning against believing in the serpent, who was “cursed by God from the beginning”). John’s Gospel, for its part, speaks occasionally of “seeing” or “looking at” Jesus in connection with believing in him (for example, 6:40; 12:45; 19:35).
97. John’s Gospel is also familiar with the verb “live” as simply an expression for healing (4:50, 53), but with the implication that physical “life” (at least in the context of healing) always points toward “eternal life.” The same is true of the verb “to be saved” (11:12).
98. Compare 1 John 5:11, “And this is the testimony, that God has given us eternal life [ζωὴν αἰώνιον], and this life [αὕτη ἡ ζωή] is in [ἐν] his Son.”
99. For the expression, “believe in the Son of man,” see 9:35. Most English versions (RSV, NRSV, NIV, NAB, and many others) have “everyone who [or whoever] believes in him.” It is difficult to tell whether this is because they followed a different reading, εἰς αὐτόν (as in v. 16), with א, Θ, Ψ, and the majority of later manuscripts, or whether they simply construed the preferred reading ἐν αὐτῷ (P75 and B) with the verb “believe” rather than with “having eternal life.” Still other variants are ἐπʼ αὐτῷ (P66 and L) and ἐπʼ αὐτόν (A). The reading εἰς αὐτόν is highly suspect because a number of witnesses that have it have also imported the whole phrase, “might not be lost, but,” from verse 16.
100. Compare ERV, NASB, NEB, REB, and JB. Whether or not this construction is used because of the analogy with Moses and the snake (with the natural desire to avoid any implication of “believing in” a graven image such as the bronze snake) is difficult to say (compare n. 96).
101. See, for example, 4:44; 6:64; 7:5; 13:11; 20:9.
102. Notably the RSV and NAB (also Twentieth Century New Testament, New Testament in Basic English, E. J. Goodspeed, Ferrar Fenton, and Weymouth).
103. These include the NASB, NIV, NRSV, NEB, REB, JB, NLT, and CEV (as well as the New World Translation, Phillips, C. B. Williams, and Helen Barrett Montgomery).
104. This is of course all the more the case if the “Amen, amen” of verse 11 is assumed to be still in effect. As Brown comments (1.149), “Of course the evangelist has been at work in this discourse, but his work is not of the type that begins at a particular verse. All Jesus’ words come to us through the channels of the evangelist’s understanding and rethinking, but the Gospel presents Jesus as speaking and not the evangelist.”
105. In Greek, καθὼς … οὕτως in verse 14; οὕτως … ὥστε here.
106. The majority of later manuscripts and some earlier ones (P63, A, L, Θ, Ψ, Latin and Syriac versions) add αὐτοῦ, “his,” to “One and Only Son,” but stronger manuscript evidence (P66, P75, B, and the first hand of א) favors simply the definite article. The possessive pronoun is implied in any case, but the shorter reading gives the phrase the quality of a title.
107. This is surely implied by the fact that love is a command in John’s Gospel (13:34; 15:12, 17) and in the New Testament generally. It is not a product of one’s feelings, but is something that a person can simply decide to do.
108. Compare E. Stauffer, in TDNT, 1.36: “Particularly characteristic are the instances in which ἀγαπᾶν takes on the meaning of ‘to prefer,’ ‘to set one good or aim above another,’ ‘to esteem one person more highly than another’ ” (in John’s Gospel, compare 3:19; 12:43).
109. Compare Levenson, Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: “The verb takes us back to … the gruesome command of Exod 22:28b: ‘you shall give Me the first born among your sons,’ ” adding that “the father’s gift that the Fourth Gospel has in mind is one that necessarily entails a bloody slaying of Jesus, very much … along the lines of the slaughtering of the paschal lamb that Jesus becomes and also supersedes” (223).
110. For “sent,” with forms of ἀποστέλλειν, see 3:17, 34; 5:36, 38; 6:29, 57; 7:29; 8:42; 10:36; 11:42; 17:3, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25; 20:21; a different verb is used when the “sending” of Jesus is expressed with a participle, as in “the One who sent me” (ὁ πεμψάς με, 4:34; 5:24, 30; 6:38, 39; 7:16, 18, 28, 33; 8:26, 29; 9:4; 12:44, 45; 13:20; 15:21; 16:5; compare 1:22, 33; 13:16), or “the Father who sent me” (ὁ πατὴρ ὁ πεμψάς με, 5:23, 37; 6:44; 8:16, 18; 12:49; 14:24).
111. Other New Testament writers tend to use the compound παραδιδόναι in this way (for example, Rom 4:25, 8:32), but in John’s Gospel this verb ordinarily refers to Jesus being “delivered up” either by Judas (6:64, 71; 12:4; 13:2, 11, 21; 18:2, 5; 21:20) or by religious or political authorities (18:30, 35, 36; 19:11, 16). The closest parallels to John 3:16 are passages in which Jesus either “gives” or “delivers” himself to death for those he loves (see Gal 1:4, 2:20; Eph 5:2, 25).
112. While “one and only” (
in Hebrew) is rendered as ἀγαπητός in the LXX (Gen 22:2, 12, 16), the author of Hebrews refers to Isaac as Abraham’s μονογενής (Heb 11:17). Both terms are used in the LXX to translate 
.
113. See 1:29 and 8:56.
114. That is, πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτόν (rather than ἐν αὐτῷ, as in v. 15). The effect of the rephrasing is to focus on “the One and Only Son” as the sole legitimate object of Christian faith (compare v. 18b).
115. When not contrasted with eternal life or salvation, however, the verb “lost” has a wider range of meaning; it can refer to bread that is spoiled or wasted (6:12, 27), or to physical death (10:10), or to the downfall of a nation (11:50). In 17:12 and 18:9 the verb allows for the possibility of either physical or spiritual ruin, or both.
116. Κρίνειν in John’s Gospel can mean either “to judge” or, more specifically, “to condemn.” Because the more unambiguous κατακρίνειν, “to condemn,” never occurs in John’s Gospel (except in 8:10–11 in a section added by later scribes), κρίνειν has to do double duty for both. Here the contrast suggests that here it means to condemn (the opposite of “save”). As Schnackenburg puts it, “ ‘Judgment’ is here used in the purely negative sense of reprobation, condemnation to punishment or death” (1.402).
117. Even the style of the solemn threefold repetition of “the world” (“into the world not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved”) recalls the style of the Gospel’s introductory section: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and the world did not know him” (1:10).
118. The closest parallel, perhaps, to this judgment based solely on faith is a verse within the longer ending of Mark: “The one who has believed and is baptized will be saved, but the one who has disbelieved will be condemned” (Mk 16:16).
119. Notice that although there is a “realized eschatology” of condemnation here (ἤδη κέκριται), there is no corresponding “realized eschatology” of salvation (as, for example, in 5:24). The idea that a person “might have [ἵνα … ἔχῃ] eternal life” (vv. 15–16) or “be saved” (ἵνα σωθῇ, v. 17) is at this point a divine intention for the future, not a reality in the present.
120. For σκοτία, compare John 1:5; 8:12; 12:35, 46; 1 John 1:5; 2:8, 9, 11 (σκότος, while common enough in the synoptic Gospels, occurs only here in John). “Light” and “darkness” are not quite symmetrical opposites because “darkness” is never personified and therefore not to be capitalized.
121. “Exposed” is ἐλέγχειν, while “revealed” is φανεροῦν. The similarity of the two verbs is easily seen in Ephesians 5:13: “But all things exposed [ἐλεγχόμενα] by the light are revealed [φανεροῦται], for light is that which reveals” (τὸ φανερούμενον).
122. Protestant commentators naturally have difficulty with this. Ernst Haenchen, for example, agrees that it is what the text says, but insists that it cannot be what the text means. “As it is put in these verses,” he comments, “it appears that the light reveals only what is already good or evil: whoever is good is not afraid of God and therefore comes to Jesus: whoever is bad is afraid and stays away. Yet this moralizing statement, in which everything depends solely on the quality of man already present, cannot be the meaning of the Evangelist.” He concludes that a person’s true character “is determined only in the encounter with Jesus: whoever opens himself to Jesus in spite of, or with, his sins, is good” (John 1, 205). Bultmann takes the text more seriously, but backs away from its full implications: “in man’s decision it becomes apparent what he really is. He does indeed reach his decision on the basis of the past, but in such a way that this decision at the same time gives the past its real meaning, that in unbelief man sets the seal on the worldliness and sinfulness of his character, or that in faith he destroys its worldliness and sinfulness” (159).
123. For a fuller discussion, see my article, “Baptism and Conversion in John: A Particular Baptist Reading,” in Baptism, the New Testament and the Church: Historical and Contemporary Studies in Honour of R. E. O. White (JSNTSup 171; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 145–48.
124. The Hebrew for “doing truth” (
) comes into Greek as ποιεῖν ἀλήθειαν (or τὴν ἀλήθειαν).
125. This is the case also in Genesis 32:10 and 47:29, and in two LXX passages where there is no obvious Hebrew equivalent: Isaiah 26:10, where not “doing truth” (ἀλήθειαν οὐ μὴ ποιήσῃ) is linked closely to not learning “righteousness” (δικαιοσύνη), and Tobit 4:6, where “doing truth” (οἱ ποιοῦντες ἀλήθειαν) or “doing the truth” (ποιοῦντος … τὴν ἀλήθειαν) is linked to “doing righteousness” (4:7). In Tobit 13:6 “doing truth before [God]” (ποιῆσαι ἐνώπιον αὐτοῦ ἀλήθειαν) stands alone, but with much the same meaning as at Qumran.
126. That is, 
, “mercy and truth,” in 1:14 and 17; and 
“to do truth” (in the sense in which it was understood in the Hebrew tradition) here.
127. See, for example, “If we say we have communion with him and walk in the dark we lie, and do not do the truth” (οὐ ποιοῦμεν τὴν ἀλήθειαν, 1 Jn 1:6; compare also the reference to “doing falsehood” [ποιῶν ψεῦδος] in Rev 22:15).
128. Gr. τὰ τῆς ἀληθείας δεῖ ποιεῖν, literally “do the things of truth.”
129. Letter to Flora, in Epiphanius, Panarion 33.6.5. The translation is from B. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 313; the text is from Quellen zur Geschichte der christlichen Gnosis (ed. W. Völker; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1932), 91.
130. For a closer parallel to Ptolemy’s terminology of truth as something “present” (παρούση), see 2 Peter 1:12.
131. Compare Dodd, Interpretation, 170–78. Dodd argues that “while the mould of the expression is determined by Hebrew usage, the actual sense of the words must be determined by Greek usage. It is ‘truth’, i.e. knowledge of reality, that comes through Jesus Christ” (176). Later he concludes, “To put the matter even more strongly, He is not only the revealer of ἀλήθεια, He is Himself ἡ ἀλήθεια” (178).
132. Some ancient manuscripts (including P75 and A) changed the order of τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ (v. 20) to agree with the order in verse 21; others (including P66) added the phrase “that they are evil” (ὅτι πονηρά ἐστιν), prompted either by the concluding clause in verse 19 (“because their works were evil”; compare also 7:7), or by a desire to end the sentence like verse 21, with a ὅτι-clause.
133. In Greek, τὰ ἔργα … εἰργασμένα.
134. The construction has a faintly Hebraic sound to it, but is at home in either Hebrew or Greek (A. T. Robertson, Grammar, 477–78). More often in John’s Gospel, it is a matter of “doing” (ποιεῖν, 5:36; 7:3, 21; 8:39, 41; 10:25, 38; 14:10, 12; 15:24; 17:4) or “completing” (τελειοῦν, 4:34; 5:36; 17:4) one’s works (in most instances the works for which Jesus came into the world).
135. See, for example, John 14:20; 15:1–4; 17:21, and 1 John 2:24; 3:24; 4:13, 15. More specifically, ἐν θεῷ here is not equivalent to the ἐν τῷ θεῷ of 1 John 4:15.
1. Some manuscripts (including P75, the first hand of א, and D) omit the words, “is above all” (ἐπάνω πάντων ἐστιν), yielding the translation, “He who comes from heaven testifies to what he has seen and heard, and no one receives his testimony.” But the witness of P66, B, and the majority of later manuscripts and versions suggests that the longer reading is original.
2. See 1:15–18, where the same question—where John’s words ended and the words of the Gospel writer began—came up. There the ὅτι of verse 16 suggested that what immediately followed was attributed to John as indirect discourse, while verses 17 and 18 could have represented either a continuation of this speech or a postscript by the Gospel writer.
3. Most English versions settle the issue of 3:16–21 and 3:31–36 the same way, but there are exceptions: the NEB, REB, NRSV, the New World Translation, and Charles B. Williams continue Jesus’ speech through verse 21, yet end John’s at verse 30, attributing verses 31–36 to the Gospel writer. None known to me does the exact opposite (though Weymouth and Ferrar Fenton do so partially). Still, many versions have no hesitancy in extending the quotation to the end in both instances (for example, NIV, NASB, CEV, Jerusalem Bible, New Living Translation, J. B. Phillips, Helen B. Montgomery).
4. This common connecting phrase, μετὰ ταῦτα, occurs here for the first time in John’s Gospel (though compare μετὰ τοῦτο, “after this,” in 2:12).
5. See Barrett, 219–20, who proposes several possible rearrangements, but concludes that “the passage makes sense as a whole and [sic] its present position.”
6. Compare χώρα in 11:55. Bultmann (170) cites Aeschylus, Eumenides 993, “both country and city” (καὶ γῆν καὶ πόλιν); see also Schnackenburg, 1.410 (“γῆ = χώρα, 11:54”), and 2.364, on 11:55 (“χώρα here … means the rest of the country as opposed to the capital, probably with particular reference to Judaea”).
7. Obviously if baptism in the Spirit were implied, there would be no need for the disclaimer in 4:2.
8. Compare Moloney, 105: “There is no hint in these introductory remarks that there was any qualitative difference between the two baptisms. The focus is on the baptizers, not the respective merits of their baptismal rites.”
9. “Many springs” are literally “many waters” (ὕδατα πολλά), a phrase used several times metaphorically in the book of Revelation (1:15; 17:1, 15; 19:6). The only significance of such parallels is perhaps an impression of great abundance (compare Jn 7:38, “streams of living water”).
10. It is doubtful that the Gospel writer found significance in the name, for if he had he would likely have pointed it out (compare 9:7).
11. On these identifications, see G. Dalman, Sacred Sites and Ways (London: SPCK, 1935), 89–90, 233–35, and especially C. Kopp, Holy Places of the Gospels (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963), 129–37.
12. This was also the testimony of the pilgrim Egeria in the fourth century (compare J. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land [Jerusalem: Ariel, 1981], 108–110). Another theory places Aenon and Salim well within Samaria, where the names survive to this day (“Salem” or “Salim,” three and a half miles to the east of Nablus, and “Ainun,” seven miles north). But this puts the two villages too far apart, and Ainun has no spring (see Kopp, Holy Places, 136–37).
13. Stylistically the periphrastic construction ἦν βεβλημένος (“was put”) echoes the periphrastic ἦν … βαπτίζων of verse 23 (“was baptizing”; compare 1:28).
14. In the synoptic Gospels too we learn of John’s imprisonment either prematurely (Lk 3:19–20), or only very briefly (Mk 1:14; Mt 4:17; compare Mt 11:2), or in retrospect while recounting his death as well (Mk 6:17–29; Mt 14:3–12).
15. Chrysostom suggested that the point of verse 24 is to show that John continued to baptize right up to the time of his imprisonment. Even though his real work was done when he baptized Jesus, he continued to baptize so as not to arouse his disciples’ jealousy by making them think he was immediately yielding center stage to Jesus (Homilies 29.1; NPNF, 1st ser., 14.100).
16. This word (ζήτησις) probably retains something of its basic meaning of a search or investigation. Nothing in the context suggests an atmosphere of intense controversy with the anonymous “Jew” (if anything, the controversy implied by their question is with Jesus and his followers). The phrase ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν is probably not partitive (as in 1:35), as if to involve only “some” of John’s disciples. Rather, ἐκ suggests simply that John’s disciples initiated the inquiry.
17. Some important witnesses (including P66, א*, Θ, all Latin and some Syriac and Coptic versions) support the plural Ἰουδαίων over the singular Ἰουδαίον (P75, B, א2, A, and many others), but in view of the plural in 2:6, plus the frequent controversies in this Gospel between Jesus and “the Jews,” it is more likely that the singular (only here, aside from 4:9 and 18:35) was changed to the plural than the other way around (compare Metzger, Textual Commentary, 205).
18. Gr. περὶ καθαρισμοῦ.
19. The play on the expression to “come to” someone (ἔρχεσθαι πρός) as a disciple is noteworthy. John’s disciples “come to him” (as his disciples) only to point out that people are “all coming to him” (that is, to Jesus) as disciples.
20. In view of the accent on purification, the remark of John’s disciples is noteworthy for what it does not say. As Chrysostom noticed, “they do not say, ‘He whom thou didst baptize’ baptizeth” (Homilies 29.2; NPNF, 1st ser., 14.101). The omission is consistent with this Gospel’s practice of never mentioning that John baptized Jesus.
21. Gr. πάντες ἔρχονται πρὸς αὐτόν. Compare the fear of the Jerusalem authorities concerning Jesus that “they will all [πάντες] believe in him” (11:48), and the lament of the Pharisees that “the world [ὁ κόσμος] has gone off to follow him” (12:19).
22. “With you” (μετὰ σοῦ) probably implies discipleship (as in Mk 3:14; 5:18, 40), but John’s disciples do not explicitly identify Jesus as having been one of their own number.
23. In this Gospel the verb μαρτυρεῖν, “testify,” is normally used with the preposition περί, “about,” or “concerning.” Aside from the phrase, “to testify to the truth” (5:33; 18:37), it takes the dative only here and in verse 28.
24. Jesus is anonymous throughout the exchange. In the disciples’ remark he is οὗτος (“this one,” v. 26, probably with a touch of disdain; compare 7:27; 9:16, 29); in John’s reply he is ἐκείνου (“that one,” v. 28; compare v. 30).
25. Augustine made the implied question explicit: “What sayest thou? Ought they not to be hindered, that they may rather come to thee?” Consequently, Augustine relates John’s answer to himself rather than Jesus: “Of whom, think you, had John said this? Of himself. ‘As a man, I received,’ saith he, ‘from heaven’ ” (Tractates on the Gospel of John, 13.9; NPNF, 1st ser., 7.90).
26. “For me” (μοι) is omitted in some manuscripts (including P75 and א), possibly because the cluster of three emphatic pronouns in a row (αὐτοὶ ὑμεῖς μοι) seemed redundant to some scribes.
27. Ἄνθρωπος is probably used here in a very generalized sense as “anyone” (equivalent to the indefinite pronoun τις; see BDAG, 81[4]; BDF, §301[2]). Thus “a person cannot” (οὐ δύναται ἄνθρωπος) is simply another way of saying “no one can” (οὐδεὶς δύναται; compare 6:44, 65). If we think of the saying as applicable to John himself, we are reminded of Jesus’ question in Mark, “The baptism of John—was it from heaven [ἐξ οὐρανοῦ], or from humans?” (Mk 11:30). If we think of it as applicable to the believer, Paul’s words come to mind, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor 4:7).
28. That is, “A person cannot [οὐ δύναται] receive anything unless [ἐὰν μή] it is given him from heaven” recalls the οὐ δύναται, “cannot,” and the ἐὰν μή, “unless,” of 3:3 and 5.
29. Both 6:44 and 6:65 exhibit the same combination of οὐ (or οὐδείς) δύναται and ἐὰν μή.
30. Compare Brown, who shows how chapter 6 expands on 3:27 in two distinct though related ways: first, “No one can come to Jesus unless God directs him. Faith or coming to Jesus is God’s gift to the believer. This resembles 6:65”; second, “No one can come to Jesus unless God gives him to Jesus. The believer is God’s gift to Jesus. This resembles 6:37” (1.155). Yet Jesus’ terminology is different in that he consistently speaks of God as “the Father.” John not only avoids “Father,” but uses the passive “it is given” and the circumlocution “from heaven” to avoid speaking of God’s action directly. Jesus prefers the active voice (6:44; also vv. 37, 39), and even when he repeats word for word John’s passive “unless it is given him” (ἐὰν μὴ ᾖ δεδόμενον αὐτῷ, 6:65) clearly identifies “the Father” as the Giver.
31. In Greek, ἀπεσταλμένος εἰμὶ ἔμπροσθεν ἐκείνου.
32. Compare 1:15 and 30, where Jesus gets “ahead of” (ἔμπροσθεν) John in status because (as 1:1–5 had already shown) he preceded him in time.
33. The “friend of the bridegroom” in Jewish wedding custom was a 
(shoshebin, “groomsman,” or “best man”; see m. Sanhedrin 3.5). Yet there was not necessarily just one such person. In some traditions there were two, one representing each family; in 1 Maccabees 9:39 “the bridegroom [ὁ νυμφίος] came out with his friends [οἱ φίλοι αὐτοῦ] and brothers.” For Jewish texts on the shoshebin, see Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar, 1.45–46, 500–504, and, in particular, t. Ketubbot 1.4.
34. No bride is mentioned in Mark 2:19–20 and parallels, nor in Matthew 22:1–14, where a king gives a wedding banquet for “his son,” nor in Matthew 25:1–13, where ten virgins await the bridegroom, but not the bride (except in a few manuscripts of 25:1, including D, Θ, and the Latin and Syriac versions), nor at the wedding in Cana in John 2:1–11.
35. John himself was only a “voice” (φωνή), in contrast to “the Word” (1:23), but here we learn that “the Word” too has a “voice,” the decisive voice in this Gospel.
36. Bultmann, 173.
37. There is a possible analogy in the Matthean parable of the ten virgins (Mt 25:1–13). There the virgins are functionally equivalent to the absent bride, and yet they cannot be the bride because they are plural and must be plural in order to make a distinction between those who were wise and those who were foolish.
38. Some, by contrast, would press the metaphor to the limit, placing John in the role of the shoshebin who “stands by” outside the bridal chamber until he “hears” from within the bridegroom’s voice announcing the joyful news that the marriage has been consummated, and that the bride was a virgin! (compare J. Jeremias, TDNT, 4.1101; Schlatter, 108; Whitacre, 97). See, however, M. and R. Zimmerman, “Der Freund des Braütigams (Joh 3, 29): Deflorations- oder Christuszeuge,” ZNW 90 (1999), 123–30.
39. “Grow” is αὐξάνειν in Greek, and “diminish” is ἐλαττοῦσθαι.
40. Tractates on the Gospel of John 14.4: “As regards the flesh, John and Jesus were of the same age, there being six months between them: they had grown up together; and if our Lord Jesus Christ had willed to be here longer before His death, and that John should be here with Him, then as they had grown up together, so they would have grown old together” (NPNF, 1st ser., 7.95).
41. Efforts to interpret the verbs “grow” and “diminish” astrologically, as part of a metaphor of a rising and falling star (Bultmann, 175: “the old star is sinking; the new star rises”) are not quite “absurd” (Barrett, 223), but not quite convincing either. Nor is Matthew Black’s theory of a wordplay in a supposed Aramaic original helpful in dealing with the text as it stands (An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts [3d ed., 1967], 147; see Barrett, 224).
42. This is the case in all the earliest and most reliable manuscripts. At the end of verse 36, however, a few later witnesses, including one minuscule (2145), one old Latin version (e), and one late Syriac version (the margin of the Harklean Syriac), add the explicit notice, “and after these things John was delivered up,” in keeping with similar notices in the synoptic tradition.
43. Jesus too in this Gospel goes to his arrest and death on his own initiative, and with a much longer farewell (not only 10:17–18, but chapters 13–17, and 18:1–11).
44. See J. H. Neyrey and R. L. Rohrbaugh, “ ‘He Must Increase, I Must Decrease’ (John 3:30): A Cultural and Social Interpretation,” CBQ 63.3 (2001), 464–83, especially their conclusion: “Rarely does one find in Greek or Israelite literature a public figure who willingly and peacefully allows his honor and prestige to diminish without envy and hostile reaction” (482–83).
45. Bultmann, for example, from whom we expect such rearrangements, places 3:31–36 right after 3:21 (160), while Schnackenburg, from whom we do not, places it just before 3:13 (1.380–92). Barrett comments rightly that “Schnackenburg is not wrong … that v. 31 continues the thought of 3:12, but it does so with greater force and clarity when vv. 13–17, 27–30, are allowed to intervene” (224).
46. See Barrett, 224–25. Many commentators differ, arguing that the phrase “has a more general application” to all who are “unable to transcend the things of this world (epigeia) and thus cannot accept the revelation of the heavenly (epourania) that takes place in Jesus” (Moloney, 111). This is Schnackenburg’s view as well, but his judgment here is linked to his rearrangement of 3:31–36 right after 3:12. Significantly, he admits that whoever shifted 3:31–36 to its present position after 3:30 may well have understood “He who is from the earth” as John (1.383).
47. Here Jesus in the Gospel of John answers the question he raised in Mark, “The baptism of John—was it from heaven, or from humans?” (Mk 11:30). See also Mt 11:11 and Lk 7:28, where John is the greatest among “those born of women”; also the contrast between Jesus and the first Adam (1 Cor 15:47). It is important not to confuse the expression “from the earth” (ἐκ τῆς γῆς) with “from [or of] the world” (ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου), or “of this world” (as in 8:23, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world”). The latter suggests not merely human limitation, but dualism and opposition to God (see 8:24, “you will die in your sins”).
48. Compare 5:33–34, “You have sent word to John, and he has testified to the truth. I, however, do not accept the testimony from a human” (παρὰ ἀνθρώπου).
49. It is characteristic of the Gospel’s style that “has seen” is perfect tense (ἑώρακεν; compare 1:34; 8:38; 19:35; 20:18, 25, 29), while “heard” is aorist (ἤκουσεν; compare 8:26, 40, 15; this in contrast to 1 Jn 1:1 and 3, where both verbs are perfect). It is doubtful that any difference in emphasis is intended (as proposed in BDF, §342[2]). In John 5:37, “heard” is perfect tense only because it is used with πώποτε, “ever,” or “at any time.”
50. Without going this far, B. F. Westcott commented that “The reference appears to be directly historic, going back to the time when the disciples were first gathered around the Lord” (1.133).
51. In Christian tradition the verb comes to refer to the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion (2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13; 4:30), and “the seal” (ἡ σφραγίς), consequently, to baptism (see Hermas, Similitudes 9.16.4, “The seal, then, is the water. They go down into the water dead, and come up alive. The seal, then, was preached to them also, and they made use of it to enter the kingdom of God”). No such meaning is applicable here, where the “confirming” or “certification” is done not by God but by the believer.
53. See 13:20, “the person who receives [ὁ λαμβάνων] me receives [λαμβάνει] the One who sent me,” and 12:44, “the person who believes in me does not believe in me, but in the One who sent me.”
54. Not surprisingly a number of later manuscripts in 1 John 5:10 substitute “the Son,” or “the Son of God,” or “Jesus Christ,” for “God” as the one who is “made a liar” by those who disbelieve.
55. Barrett rightly observes that the conjunction “for” (γάρ) “is to be noted: to accept the testimony of Christ means to attest the truth of God because Jesus as God’s accredited envoy speaks the words of God” (226).
56. Two variant readings suggest that some scribes feared that the clause could be (mis)read with “the Spirit” as the subject, and tried to avoid that impression. One group (including A, D, Θ, Ψ, the Syriac and much of the Latin, and the majority of later manuscripts) did it by inserting ὁ θεός before τὸ πνεῦμα, making “God” explicit as the subject. Another reading (including the first hand of B) omitted τὸ πνεῦμα altogether.
57. Compare perhaps 6:32, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you [οὐ … δέδωκεν] that bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you [δίδωσιν] the true bread from heaven.”
58. See the late midrash, Leviticus Rabbah 15.2: “Even the Holy Spirit resting on the prophets does so by weight, one prophet speaking one book of prophecy and another speaking two books” (Midrash Rabbah [London: Soncino, 1961], 4.189). John’s expression, ἐκ μέτρου (literally, “from a measure”), occurs nowhere else in Greek literature (ἐν μέτρῳ or κατὰ μέτρον would have been expected). Schlatter (111) attempts to take the ἐκ literally as “from,” but it seems to function here much as it does in the expression ἐκ μέρους, “in part” (1 Cor 12:27; 13:9, 10, 12).
59. Compare the distinction in Hebrews 1:1–2 between God’s speech through the prophets and through the Son.
60. See 13:3, “Knowing that the Father had given him all things [πάντα] into his hands.” This thought too is paralleled in certain synoptic passages: “All things [πάντα] have been handed over to me by my Father” (Mt 11:27//Lk 10:22); “All authority has been given me in heaven and on earth” (Mt 28:18).
61. So rightly Lindars (171): “it combines the implications of ‘he who does not believe’ (verse 18) and ‘every one who does evil’ (20), whose condition blinds him to the truth of the Gospel.” For a similar interplay of the same two verbs, see 1 Peter 2:6–8.
62. “To see life” occurs only here in the New Testament (though compare 1 Pet 3:10), but “to enter into life” occurs several times in the synoptic Gospels, probably as an equivalent expression (Mt 18:8–9; 19:17; Mk 9:43, 45).
63. Barrett (227) calls this “the climax of the chapter, and a final indication that it is right to read it in the order in which it stands in the MSS.” John’s pronouncement corresponds closely to the conclusion of the main argument in 1 John: “Whoever has [ὁ ἔχων] the Son has [ἔχει] life; whoever does not have [ὁ μὴ ἔχων] the Son of God does not have [οὐκ ἔχει] life” (1 Jn 5:12).
1. “The Lord” (ὁ κύριος) is the reading of P66, P75, A, B, C, L, and the majority of later manuscripts, plus two old Latin versions, the Sinaitic Syriac, and the Sahidic Coptic. Other witnesses (א, D, Θ, among others, plus most of the old Latin and Syriac versions, and the Bohairic Coptic) have instead the more common “Jesus” (ὁ Ἰησοῦς). Both the manuscript evidence and the likelihood that a scribal change would have been in the direction of a more familiar and expected reading favor “the Lord” as original. The argument that “Jesus” is original and was changed to “the Lord” to avoid an awkward repetition of the proper name (see Metzger, Textual Commentary, 205–6) is less convincing. Such a change would only have raised, needlessly, the question of whether “the Lord” and “Jesus” were the same. The text does not give evidence of aiming for smoothness in any case.
2. There are six Johannine examples, but three of these (20:20; 21:7, 12) are simply narrative echoes of lines uttered by characters in the story (“I have seen the Lord,” 20:18; compare v. 24; and “It is the Lord,” 21:7), leaving only 4:1, 6:23, and 11:2. The latter two refer to things that happened to “the Lord” outside the immediate narrative, either before or after what is being described (see 6:11 and 12:3 respectively). In this sense, 4:1 is unique.
3. This is in keeping with the Gospel’s common use of the aorist (ἔγνω) of the verb “know” (γινώσκειν) to mean “learn,” “find out,” or “come to know” (see Jn 1:10; 4:53; 5:6; 6:15; 7:51; 10:38; 11:57; 12:9; 13:28; 16:19; 17:25; 19:4).
4. Compare Matthew 28:19–20, where “making disciples” is defined as “baptizing” and “teaching.”
5. Their number must have increased considerably, for two chapters later (6:66–70) it is reduced to twelve!
6. The latter is commonly taken for granted, often with the added claim that John is right over against the Synoptics (see, for example, John Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2.123).
7. See R. T. France, “Jesus the Baptist?” in Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ (ed. J. B. Green and M. Turner; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 94–111.
8. Moloney (116) reads it not as a belated comment, but a change from 3:22 and 26: “Once there was one baptizer, John (1:28); then there were two, John and Jesus (3:22–23); now there are many baptizers, all the disciples of Jesus (4:2). There is a proliferation of baptizers, and the purpose of the baptismal activity of the disciples of Jesus is to draw more people to their master.” But the point is not so much that Jesus’ disciples are baptizing as that Jesus himself is not personally doing so. John’s testimony in 3:27–36 suggests that “more disciples” are being baptized not simply because there are more baptizers, but because Jesus is greater than John.
9. Meier (A Marginal Jew, 2.121–22) attributes the remark to a later redactor who “apparently found the idea of Jesus baptizing objectionable, and in his usual [sic] wooden, mechanical way … issues a ‘clarification’ correcting any false impression the narrative might give.” Meier’s knowledge of what is “usual” for his supposed redactor on the basis of one brief sample is rather puzzling. Where are all the other “wooden” and “mechanical” comments, and do they all come from the same redactor?
10. It also tends to validate what must have been the churches’ practice at the time John’s Gospel was written, in which Jesus’ disciples baptize “in his name” (see Mt 28:19; Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5; compare 1 Cor 1:13, 15).
11. While πάλιν is omitted in certain manuscripts (A, B*, and the majority of later manuscripts), it is present in the most reliable witnesses (including P66, P75, א, D, L, and virtually all the Latin and Syriac versions) and is undoubtedly original.
12. For example, Brown, 1.169; Morris, 226; Moloney, 116; Michaels, 69 (I have since changed my mind).
13. Compare Bultmann (176); Schnackenburg (1.422); Carson, 215–16; Barrett, 230. Despite their differences, Jews and Samaritans seem not to have deliberately avoided one another’s territory (see Lk 10:30–33; 17:11–19). While Jesus warned his disciples in Matthew not to enter Samaritan towns (Mt 10:5), in Luke he explicitly sent them there to prepare for his own arrival (Lk 9:52; compare 10:1).
14. Vita 269 (LCL, 1.101); see also Antiquities 20.118. Josephus’s “three days” exhibits (coincidentally) the same interest as John’s Gospel in how long such journeys take; see John 2:1, “on the third day”; 4:40, “two days”; 4:43, “after the two days.”
15. The latter is the common practice in John’s Gospel in describing Jesus’ itinerary, sometimes because the starting point is clear from the context (as in 1:43; 2:12, 13; 4:43, 46; 5:1; 10:40; 12:1), but also when it is not (3:22; 6:1).
16. Its location is still unknown. Identified on the sixth-century Madeba map as “[Sy]char, now [Sy]chora,” it is believed to correspond to the present-day Arab village of Askar, a mile east of Nablus on the slope of Mount Ebal. (The Mishnah refers vaguely to a valley or plain of En Soker, or “spring of Soker,” Menaḥot 10.2). Because the name Shechem was much better known, two Syriac manuscripts and some interpreters (beginning with Jerome) have read “Shechem” here, but if Shechem were original, there would have been no reason to change it to the unfamiliar Sychar. The biblical Shechem, known as Tell Balatah since the excavations of Sellin and Wright, is less than a mile from Askar, and has by it a very deep spring, shown to visitors as “Jacob’s well.” While this is likely the spring John’s Gospel has in mind, there is no evidence that a town even existed there in Jesus’ time. The movements in the story between the spring and the town make better sense if the distance is one kilometer (as from the spring to Askar) than if it is only 250 feet (as from the spring to Tell Balatah). Yet Askar has its own spring, and the question remains why, if Sychar is the modern Askar, the woman came the extra distance to draw water. Was it the spring’s depth and purity, or its association with Jacob? Or was she unwelcome at her own town’s spring? There is no evidence for the latter. As far as the reader knows, Jacob’s spring was the natural place for her to come.
17. Compare the otherwise unknown “town called Ephraim,” vaguely located “in the region near the desert” (11:54), as well as John’s mysterious “Bethany, beyond the Jordan” (1:28) and “Aenon near the Salim” (3:23).
18. “Portion,” literally “shoulder,” is 
(in the LXX, Σικιμα), playing on the name Shechem. It is not entirely clear to what event Jacob is referring. Genesis 33:19 (NRSV), where he had bought “from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, … the plot of land on which he had pitched his tent,” implies a peaceful acquisition of the land, while Genesis 34:25–29, where his sons “killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword” and “plundered the city” (presumably Shechem), suggests something quite different. Nor do the biblical texts mention a spring or well.
19. Compare the repeated use of “there” (ἐκεῖ) in 2:1, 6, 12; 3:22, 23, and in the present story notice how ἐκεῖ is repeated in verse 40 so as to frame the whole (“… and he remained there two days”).
20. Chrysostom asks, “Why is the Evangelist exact about the place? It is, that when thou hearest the woman say, ‘Jacob our father gave us this well,’ thou mayest not think it strange. For this was the place where Levi and Simeon, being angry because of Dinah, wrought that cruel slaughter” (Homilies 31; NPNF, 1st ser., 14.107).
21. The latter is “the well” (τὸ φρέαρ, vv. 11, 12). See verse 14, where πηγή refers to a water supply that has nothing to do with a “well.” The distinction affects the meaning of the phrase ἐπὶ τῇ πηγῇ: not “on the well,” but “at the spring” (see BDAG, 363).
22. For evidence that “the sixth hour” was noon, see above on 1:39.
23. The expression is exactly the same in both passages, ὥρα ἦν ὡς ἕκτη, not merely “the sixth hour,” but “about the sixth hour”).
24. See, for example, Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 51–62; Paul Duke, Irony in the Fourth Gospel (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985), 101–3; Sandra M. Schneiders, The Revelatory Text (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 187–94.
25. The translation is from LCL, 4.277. In the LXX we are told only that, “having come into the land, he sat down on the well” (Exod 2:15). The other two biblical incidents give the time either as “toward evening, the time when women go out to draw water” (Gen 24:11), or (more vaguely) “still broad daylight” (Gen 29:7).
26. For οὕτως used in this way, see 13:25; also the variant reading added to 8:59 in certain ancient manuscripts.
27. According to Chrysostom, “He sat ‘thus.’ What meaneth ‘thus’? Not upon a throne, not upon a cushion, but simply and as He was [Gr. ὡς ἔτυχεν, “as it happened”], upon the ground” (Homilies 31; NPNF, 1st ser., 14.109).
28. See NASB, NRSV, REB (implied also by the KJV and ERV, “sat thus,” and the NLT, “sat wearily”). Most modern English translations, however, render it “sat down,” as if the verb were aorist (for example, RSV, NEB, NIV, NAB, JB, TEV, CEV, J. B. Phillips, Richmond Lattimore, Reynolds Price).
29. “From Samaria” (ἐκ τῆς Σαμαρείας) must obviously be read with “woman,” not with the verb (see Bultmann, 178, n. 4). She is a woman “from” or “of” Samaria. Yet the expression is not quite equivalent (as Bultmann implies) to Nicodemus as a man “of the Pharisees” (ἐκ τῶν Φαρισαίων, 3:1), for the ἐκ is not partitive here but denotes the woman’s ethnic origin. The phrase puts the woman at a certain distance from the presumed readers of the Gospel as a resident of a foreign country.
30. Dorothy Sayers, referring to those who “infer that He never said ‘Please’ or ‘Thank you,’ ” observed that “perhaps these common courtesies were left unrecorded precisely because they were common” (“A Vote of Thanks to Cyrus,” in Unpopular Opinions [London: Gollancz, 1946], 28). It is amusing to hear Jesus made to say “Please” to the Samaritan woman in some of the more paraphrastic versions (NLT, CEV, Phillips)!
31. See Sirach 9:1–9; also Pirqe ʾAbot 1.5: “Hence the Sages have said: ‘He that talks much with womankind brings evil on himself and neglects the study of the Law and at the last will inherit Gehenna’ ” (translation from Danby, 446). The accent seems to have been on “much,” for a story in the Talmud tells of a Galilean rabbi who asked a wise woman, “By what road do we go to Lydda?” “Foolish Galilean,” she replied, “did not the Sages say this: Engage not in much talk with women? You should have asked: By which to Lydda” (ʿErubin 53b; translation from Babylonian Talmud: Seder Moʾed [London: Soncino, 1938], 2.374).
32. Being alone together was not an inevitable feature of the biblical stories of a bridegroom meeting a bride by a well. They are alone in Genesis 24:1–27, but not in Genesis 29:1–12 (where Jacob first met some shepherds), or in Exodus 2:15–21 (where seven daughters came out to draw water). Even in the first story, Josephus’s retelling has Abraham’s servant meeting “a number of maidens going to fetch water,” and choosing from among them the one who grants his request for a drink (Antiquities 1.244–48).
33. How did she know he was a Jew? Chrysostom supposes, “From His dress, perhaps, and from His dialect” (Homilies 31; NPNF, 1st ser., 14.109), but it is of no interest to the Gospel writer.
34. Her comment is commonly viewed as that of the Gospel writer, explaining to the reader why she said what she did. Yet the writer seems to attribute it to the woman herself (see Hoskyns, 242; Lindars, 181), just as he attributed 3:16–21 to Jesus and 3:31–36 to John, and just as he will attribute to Jesus the comment that “salvation is from the Jews” (v. 22b). In this instance, however, the writer may regard the comment as unreliable, because he has already told us that the disciples are off to town precisely to deal with Samaritans (v. 8).
35. The verb in Greek is συγχρῶνται (see BDAG, 953–54). The second option was the proposal of David Daube, “Jesus and the Samaritan Woman: The Meaning of συγχρῶνται,” JBL 69 (1950), 137–47, followed by a number of commentators since (for example, Barrett, 232–33; Brown, 1.170; Morris, 229; Moloney, 121; Carson, 218). Jews viewed Samaritan women in particular as “menstruants from their cradle” (Niddah 4.1), so that one could never be sure they were not unclean.
36. Augustine noticed this, even without Daube’s help: “You see that they were aliens: indeed the Jews would not use their vessels. And as the woman brought with her a vessel with which to draw the water, it made her wonder that a Jew sought drink of her—a thing to which the Jews were not accustomed. But He who was asking drink was thirsting for the faith of the woman herself.” Tractates 15.11 (NPNF, 1st ser., 7.102).
37. Compare Lindars, 181: “The difficulty of this view is that it fails as an explanation for Gentiles, being a case of expounding ignotum per ignotus; also the verb has no object, so that ‘vessels’ has to be understood.” So too Haenchen, 1.220; Schnackenburg, 1.425; Beasley-Murray, 58.
38. The narrative aside is missing altogether in a number of ancient textual witnesses: א*, D, and several old Latin versions (a, b, e, and j). It is, however, precisely the sort of comment that characterizes this writer. Possibly some scribes preferred to see Jesus’ request as contrary only to Samaritan, not Jewish practice, and the woman’s response, consequently, as based on a misunderstanding. While it was a matter of custom and not law, even the appearance of Jesus as a lawbreaker may have been distasteful to some.
39. While Ἰουδαῖος here could be translated either “Jew” or “Judean,” it cannot mean “Judean” in contrast to “Galilean.” To the woman, Galileans and Judeans were all Ἰουδαῖοι because they worshiped God in Jerusalem (v. 20), in “the land of Judea” (see 3:22).
40. This device is not unknown in other Gospels. See, for example, Matthew 15:2–3, where the Pharisees ask Jesus, “Why [διὰ τί] do your disciples transgress [παραβαίνουσιν] the tradition of the elders?” (v. 2), and Jesus responds with a question of his own, “Why [διὰ τί] do you also [καὶ ὑμεῖς] transgress [παραβαίνετε] the command of God?” (v. 3).
41. The italicized words call attention to the repetition in Greek of the emphatic “you” (σύ), and of the verb “ask” (αἰτεῖν).
42. Moloney (117) makes these two things “the basis for the entire discussion between Jesus and the woman. The first part of the discussion will concentrate on the living water, the gift of God (vv. 10–15 …), and the second will be concerned with who it is who is speaking (vv. 16–30 …).”
43. In each of these instances, the same word for “gift” (ἡ δωρεά) is used.
44. Gr. ὕδωρ ζῶν (BDAG, 426). See the LXX of Genesis 26:19, Leviticus 14:5, Zechariah 14:8, and a variant reading in Jeremiah 2:13 (A and a corrector of À); also Didache 7.1–2.
45. English versions tend to translate it “Sir” when the speaker is not a committed disciple (as here; also vv. 15, 19, 49; 5:7; 6:34; 8:11; 9:36; 11:34; compare 12:21; 20:15), and “Lord” when it is one of the Twelve (6:68; 11:3, 12; 13:6, 9, 25, 36, 37; 14:5, 8, 22; 21:15, 16, 17, 20, 21), or Mary or Martha (11:21, 27, 32, 39), or the man born blind on coming to faith (9:38). But the distinction is very arbitrary, as one can easily see by comparing the former blind man’s words in 9:36 and 38, or by comparing Mary and Martha’s words (11:32, 39) with those of “the Jews” (11:34). It is unlikely that the term is ever addressed to Jesus without at least a hint of allegiance (above all, see 13:13; 20:28).
46. The woman’s word for the well is φρέαρ (translated here as “well”), in contrast to the Gospel writer’s πηγή (translated as “spring”). The most plausible distinction is that the latter refers to a natural water source and the former to something dug or constructed by human beings (see above, n. 21). Possibly this is why she can say that Jacob (and not God) “gave us the well.”
47. So Josephus, Antiquities 11.341: “tracing their line back to Ephraim and Manasseh, the descendants of Joseph” (LCL, 6.479).
48. According to Stephen D. Moore (in The Interpretation of John, 2d ed., ed. John Ashton; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 280: “What Jesus longs for from this woman, even more than delicious spring water, is that she long for the living water that he longs to give her. Jesus thirsts to arouse her thirst. His desire is to arouse her desire, to be himself desired.… His desire is to fill up her lack.” This thought, while very appealing (compare Augustine’s comment above, n. 36), draws too heavily on the image of Jesus as bridegroom, and goes beyond what the reader is able to conclude at this point from the narrative. The real nature of Jesus’ thirst emerges only in the passion, at 19:28.
49. The emphatic ἐγώ occurs with δώσω in all manuscripts in the first clause of verse 14, but only in some manuscripts (א, D, N, and others) in the last clause (“the water I will give him will become in him a spring”). Probably the omission was original, for the emphatic ἐγώ would have been understood in any case.
50. The same was true in the case of Nicodemus, where the necessity of rebirth was held out to “someone” (τις, 3:3 and 5), or to “you people” (ὑμᾶς, 3:7), not just to Nicodemus personally.
51. Gr. αὐτῷ … αὐτῷ … ἐν αὐτῷ.
52. This is the proper response to Sandra Schneiders, “A Case Study: A Feminist Interpretation of John 4:1–42” (in The Interpretation of John, 2d ed., 240), who objects to translating the masculine pronoun into English as “him.” Her point is well taken as far as standard English translations are concerned, but in a translation accompanying a commentary it is important to reflect such specific features of text as masculine pronouns.
53. See Abbott, Johannine Grammar, 243–44.
54. The same is true of the purpose clauses in 3:15 and 16, 6:40, and 17:2.
55. See John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (New York: Knopf, 1989), 212–57.
56. See 1 John 5:11–12, “And this is the testimony, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life, and whoever does not have the Son does not have life.” “Eternal life” and “life” are used interchangeably in John 3:36, 5:24, 5:39–40, and 6:53–54.
57. The book of Acts has several examples (11:14; 16:15, 31–33; 18:8; see also 1 Cor 1:16; 16:15).
58. Chrysostom hints at a similar interpretation: “Christ saith, ‘Call thy husband,’ showing that he also must share in these things” (Homilies 32; NPNF, 1st ser., 14.113).
59. Bultmann, 187.
60. The woman says, “I have no husband” (οὐκ ἔχω ἄνδρα), but Jesus changes the word order (ἄνδρα οὐκ ἔχω), putting “husband” front and center. Then he accents “five husbands” by placing it first as well (see Morris, 234, n. 40).
61. “You have said it well” and “What you have just said is true” frame the whole pronouncement and mean exactly the same thing. “Well” (καλῶς) means “rightly” or “truly,” as in 8:48, 13:13, and 18:23. “Just said” is an effort to render the demonstrative τοῦτο, “this.” Origen’s reading of Jesus’ words as a “a reproof … as though her former statements were not true” (Commentary on John 13.53; FC, 89.80) led him to conclude that what the woman said in verses 9, 11, and 12 were lies! (compare Abbott, Johannine Grammar, 9–10). All this from a simple demonstrative pronoun!
62. Lindars, 185: “The reason could be that she wants to get the water without going all the way back to Sychar first.”
63. According to 2 Kings 17:24, the tribes were “from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim” (NRSV), but according to 17:29–32 there were seven gods in all, because two of the tribes, the Avvites and the Sepharvites, had two gods each. According to Josephus, “each of their tribes—there were five—brought along its own god” (LCL, 6.153). The interpretation, therefore, depends on Josephus, and has been traced to a thirteenth-century marginal notation citing John 4:18 in a manuscript of Josephus (see W. F. Howard, The Fourth Gospel in Recent Criticism, 183). But as Morris cautions (235), not even Josephus explicitly states that there were just five gods.
64. See Schneiders, “A Case Study,” 235–60, a curious combination of a literal and a representative (or symbolic) understanding of the Samaritan woman. The weakness of her approach is evident in her paraphrase of v. 29: “Come and see a man who told me [that is, us] all I [that is, we] have ever done!” (249).
65. A. S. Peake (quoted in Howard, 183) summed up concisely the arguments against the allegorical approach: “It is a pity for this interpretation that these gods were seven and not five; that they were worshipped simultaneously and not successively; and it is hardly likely that idolatry should be represented as marriage, when its usual symbol is adultery, or that the author should have represented Yahweh under so offensive a figure.” So too Bultmann, 188; Beasley-Murray, 61.
66. The text neither mentions divorce nor specifies how it came about that she had five husbands. The Gospels tell of at least one case in which a woman had seven husbands without ever being divorced or judged immoral (Mk 12:18–23 and par.).
67. For any readers acquainted with Luke there is irony here, given the Pharisees’ claim in Luke about the woman who anointed Jesus: “If this man were a prophet, he would have known what kind of woman this is, that she is a sinner” (Lk 7:39). Here Jesus as prophet knows “what kind of woman” this woman of Samaria is, yet he continues to deal with her as a legitimate dialogue partner.
69. The parallel is not exact because Paul’s comment was based on certain “objects of worship” that he had literally seen (ἀναθεωρῶν, v. 23), while the woman’s comment is a conclusion drawn from what Jesus has just said.
70. According to Deuteronomy 11:29, Gerizim had been a place of blessing and Ebal a place of cursing, suggesting to some interpreters that “Mount Gerizim” (with the Samaritan Pentateuch) may have been the correct reading in Deuteronomy 27:4.
71. Tom Thatcher, The Riddles of Jesus in John, 220, reads the “our” as including both Samaritans and Jews, but the precedent of verse 12 (“our father Jacob, who gave us the well”) makes this unlikely.
72. The closest parallel within John’s Gospel is 14:11, where Jesus tells those who are already his disciples, “Believe me [πιστεύετέ μοι], that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or if not, then believe because of the works themselves.”
73. See Brown’s helpful distinction (1.517–18) between the uses of “hour” with the definite article or possessive pronoun (“the hour,” “my hour,” “his hour”), and those where “hour” is used indefinitely, as here. The latter, he suggests, “apply the effects of Jesus’ hour to those who believe in him” (compare 5:25, 28–29; 16:2, 25, 32).
74. Lindars, 188. In settings where Paul (for example) preaches to Gentiles, God is more likely to be called “the living God” (Acts 14:15), or “the living and true God” (1 Thess 1:9), or “the God who made the world” (Acts 17:24), than “Father.” The closest Paul comes to “Father” in preaching to Gentiles is “We are his offspring” (Acts 17:28), but this is meant more in the sense of universal fatherhood as Lindars describes it than like fatherhood in the Gospel of John.
75. The Gospel writer has mentioned “the Father” once (1:18), and John did so in his farewell speech (3:35), but Jesus has referred only to “my Father’s house,” using the possessive pronoun (2:16).
76. John has already used “the Father” and “the Son” together (3:35), and Jesus will do so again and again as well, beginning in 5:19.
77. See 14:6, “No one comes to the Father except through me.”
78. Efforts to make “you people” refer to both Jews and Samaritans, and “we” to the Christian community (Odeberg, The Fourth Gospel, 170–71, citing 3:11 as a parallel) not only ignore the dynamics of the conversation, but violate the immediate context, making it necessary to excise the clause, “for salvation is from the Jews,” as a gloss (see n. 80).
79. Lindars calls it “not a contemptuous assertion of Jewish superiority” (188), but it certainly could be read that way.
80. Some scholars, unable to fathom such irony, have assigned either the last clause, “for salvation is from the Jews” (Odeberg, The Fourth Gospel, 171), or the whole of verse 22, to a later editor, effectively removing it from the Gospel (see Bultmann, 189, n. 6; Haenchen, John 1, 222). Another desperate move was that of Abbott, who assigned verse 22 “to the Samaritan woman as her account of what the Rabbis say” (Johannine Grammar, 100; also Johannine Vocabulary, 140). Such expedients stumble on the ἀλλά (“and yet”) of verse 23, and leave verses 21 and 23 standing awkwardly side by side. In favor of the text as it stands, see Schnackenburg, 1.436, Barrett, 237, and the bibliography assembled by Moloney (132). Nor is it plausible, given the text as it stands, to attribute the pronouncement to the Gospel writer as an editorial comment or narrative aside. Clearly, it is part and parcel of Jesus’ answer to the woman.
81. In keeping with the personal nature of “Spirit” in this Gospel (see v. 24), I have capitalized it here as in most other places (for example, 1:32–33; 3:5, 6, 8, 34).
82. For the longer form, “an hour is coming and now is,” compare 5:25; see also 16:32; 1 John 4:3.
83. This is not the case in 5:25, 28–29, where the longer form comes first (v. 25) and refers to a nearer future in which the author and his readers live, while the shorter form (vv. 28–29) refers to a more distant time at the end of the age, when “those who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out,” etc.
84. See Bultmann’s classic statement in his Theology of the New Testament (2.66): “Thus it turns out in the end that Jesus as the Revealer of God reveals nothing but that he is the Revealer.”
85. C. K. Barrett comments, “This clause has perhaps as much claim as 20:30f. to be regarded as expressing the purpose of the gospel. Such worshippers are what God seeks in sending his Son into the world” (238).
86. There is admittedly a fine line between ζητεῖν as divine longing (see Mt 18:12; Lk 15:8; 19:10) and as divine requirement or demand (see 8:50; Lk 12:48; 13:6–7; 1 Cor 4:2). See H. Greeven, in TDNT, who puts 4:23 in the second category, yet concludes that “the seeking of Jesus is accompanied by and grounded in a claim to what belongs to Him, while on the other side ζητεῖν as requirement does not have the ring of pitiless rigour but rather of patient and hopeful expectation” (2.892).
87. This will become explicit in the next chapter: “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but only what he sees the Father doing, for whatever things he does, these the Son does as well” (5:19).
88. The literal sense of “falling down” or “bowing down” is present in a number of New Testament occurrences of προσκυνεῖν, either with the verb πίπτειν, “to fall,” as almost a helping verb (see Mt 2:11; 4:9; 18:26; Acts 10:25; 1 Cor 14:25; Heb 11:21; Rev 5:14; 7:11; 11:16; 19:10; 22:8), or in some other way (Mt 28:9; Mk 15:19; Rev 3:9).
89. This is what H. Greeven calls it (TDNT, 6.764), adding that “Proskynesis demands visible majesty before which the worshipper bows” (765).
90. For “new race,” see Epistle to Diognetus 1; for “third race” see The Preaching of Peter, cited in Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 6.5: “For what has reference to the Greeks and Jews is old. But we are Christians, who as a third race worship him in a new way” (see Hennecke-Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964], 2.100).
91. This is to be expected in view of the Samaritans’ acceptance of only the Torah as Scripture. The so-called Taheb is mentioned in at least one later (fourth-century) Samaritan source (Memar Markah 4.12), but what connection (if any) can be made between this figure and the woman’s “Messiah” or “Christ” (v. 25) is uncertain (see Moloney, 133–34). Josephus tells of one Samaritan in Jesus’ time possibly playing the role of Taheb with respect to sacred vessels on Mount Gerizim that were supposed to go back to Moses’ time (Antiquities 18.85; see LCL, 9.61–62, note c), but no specific titles are used.
92. Note the references in this Gospel to “the Prophet” (1:21; 6:14; 7:40, 52); also, for the notion that Moses wrote about Jesus, see 1:45; 5:46.
93. Possibly there is a trace of accommodation to a Jewish stranger in her borrowing of two Jewish titles. The words “who is called Christ” (ὁ λεγόμενος χριστός) are the woman’s words, not the Gospel writer’s narrative aside. She is clearly not translating “Messiah” into Greek for Jesus’ benefit (!), or even for the reader’s (as in 1:41). Rather, the expression recalls others in which a person has two names, whether one is a translation of the other or not: “Thomas who is called Didymus” (11:16; 20:24; 21:2), “Simon who is called Peter” (Mt 10:2), “Jesus who is called Justus” (Col 4:11), or “Jesus who is called Christ” (Mt 1:16; 27:17, 22). While she knows that “the Christ” is a title (v. 29), she shows her Gentile orientation here by treating “Christ” and “Messiah” as if they were (interchangeable) proper names.
94. The terminology is also quite in keeping with Jesus’ later promises of “the Advocate,” or “Spirit of truth” (see, for example, 16:13–15).
95. For ἐγώ εἰμι by itself, as Jesus’ self-revelation, see 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5, 6, 8. It is also used once by the man born blind, identifying himself as the well-known former beggar in Jerusalem (9:9). In other passages, Jesus uses ἐγώ εἰμι with a variety of images to explain his redemptive work (see 6:35, 47; 8:12; 10:7, 9, 11, 14; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1, 5). Ἐγώ εἰμι by itself, as here, occurs in the LXX (especially in Isaiah) as a formula for God’s self-revelation; see Isaiah 43:10; 45:18; 51:12, and for an especially close parallel to Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman here (ἐγώ εἰμι, ὁ λαλῶν σοι), see Isaiah 52:6 (ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι αὐτὸς ὁ λαλῶν). But the question of whether or not Jesus is claiming to be God in saying “I am,” or “It is I,” does not come up until 8:58.
96. Schnackenburg (1.424–25) comments that their disappearance and reappearance “need not be considered a piece of stage setting manipulated by the evangelist. Things could have happened that way.” Of course, but historicity does not preclude artistry in the telling!
97. “Surprised” (ἐθαύμαζον) can have a mildly negative connotation (see 5:20; 7:15), but need not imply that they took offense (as perhaps in 5:28 and 7:21).
98. Schnackenburg (1.443) may well be right that τί means “what” here (not “why”), just as in the first unspoken question. As he says, “John uses λαλεῖν with the accusative object … remarkably often, 30 times in all.”
99. So Chrysostom, Homilies on St. John, 33.3: “Still in their amazement they did not ask Him the reason, so well were they taught to keep the station of disciples, so much did they fear and reverence Him” (NPNF, 1st ser., 14.117).
100. In a number of instances Jesus’ opponents in this Gospel direct their questions to each other rather than to Jesus, but then Jesus directs his answers back at them (see, for example, 6:41–43, 52–53, 60–61; 7:15–16; 8:22–23).
101. Commentators have difficulty with the question, “What are you looking for?” Moloney (134) sees “sexual innuendo” in it, while Brown (1.173) suggests that the disciples thought “perhaps he had asked her for food after they had gone to get some.” Some have proposed that this first question was for the woman rather than Jesus (Wesley, Explanatory Notes, 233; Bernard, 1.152; Morris, 243; Carson, 227), but important manuscripts (including א and D) close off this option by adding “to him” (αὐτῷ) just before the two questions, and this seems presupposed in any case.
102. See Brown, 1.173.
103. Barrett, 240.
104. See Chrysostom, Homilies on St. John, 34.1: “They, when they were called, left their nets; she of her own accord leaves her water pot, and winged by joy performs the office of Evangelists. And she calls not one or two, as did Andrew and Philip, but having aroused a whole city and people, so brought them to Him” (NPNF, 1st ser., 14.118). This analogy is of course weakened by the fact that John’s Gospel tells nothing of the first disciples “leaving” their nets, or anything else.
105. “Water jars” (ὑδρίαι) have been mentioned before (2:6–7), but the woman’s jar is obviously much smaller than the six jars at the Cana wedding, and has nothing to do with “purification.”
106. The question (with μήτι) expects a negative answer, as if to say, “He isn’t the Christ, is he?” See BDF, §427(2). But here the remarkable thing is that she is even raising such a question, so that the effect is not to rule anything out, but on the contrary to introduce a possibility not considered before.
107. As in the Roberta Flack ballad: “Telling my whole life with his words.…”
108. Compare also John’s words to the delegation from Jerusalem about “One whom you do not know” (ὃν ὑμεῖς οὐκ οἴδατε, 1:26).
109. Like the woman’s question to the Samaritan townspeople, this question expects a negative answer, as if to say, “Surely no one has brought him anything to eat?”
110. Again they seem to be afraid to ask him (compare 16:5, 19; 21:12). So Chrysostom, Homilies on St. John 34.1: “Why now wonderest thou that the woman, when she heard of ‘water,’ still imagined mere water to be meant, when even the disciples are in the same case, and as yet suppose nothing spiritual, but are perplexed? though they still show their accustomed modesty and reverence toward their Master, conversing one with the other, but not daring to put any question to Him. And this they do in other places, desiring to ask Him, but not asking” (NPNF, 1st ser., 14.119). Yet as we have seen (above, n. 100), in this Gospel even Jesus’ opponents often put their questions to each other rather than Jesus.
111. Moloney (142) finds a difference here between the present ποιῷ (supported by א, A, and the majority of later witnesses) and what he calls the future (actually aorist subjunctive) ποιήσω (supported by P66, P75, B, C, D, and others), preferring the former because it points “to the present nature of Jesus’ acceptance of the Father’s will.” But it is difficult to see any real distinction. If, as he says (138), the καί (“and”) is epexegetic (that is, if “finishing the work” explains “doing the will”), then both should be aorist, in keeping with the better manuscript evidence. Even if the present is preferred as the more difficult reading (Schnackenburg, 1.447), the meaning is virtually the same.
112. In all, Jesus speaks of “the One who sent me” 18 times in this Gospel, and “the Father who sent me” eight times.
113. See also Wisdom 16:26: “… so that your sons, whom you loved, O Lord, might learn that it is not the production of crops that feeds a human being, but that your word preserves those who trust in you.”
114. See 5:17, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working.” Also, 5:36, “the works [τὰ ἔργα] that the Father has given me that I might complete them.” Jesus in his last prayer will report to the Father that he has “completed the work” (τὸ ἔργον τελειώσας) which the Father gave him to do (17:4). There too the context implies that this “work” involves the giving of “eternal life” (17:2–3).
115. See Brown, 1.174; Schnackenburg, 1.449.
116. See Bultmann, 196, n. 4.
117. For similar imagery, accenting patience yet insisting that “the Parousia of the Lord is near,” see James 5:7–8.
118. In Revelation 14:15 a “harvest” is explicitly called an “hour,” but in this instance an hour of judgment and not salvation: “Send your sickle and harvest, for the hour has come to harvest [ἦλθεν ἡ ὥρα θερίσαι], for the harvest [ὁ θερισμός] of the earth is ripe.”
119. While it is possible that a four-month span between sowing and harvest had become proverbial, no evidence exists of any actual proverb to that effect. Nor can we infer that Jesus’ statement supplies real information as to the time of year his visit to Samaria took place (that is, that it was literally four months before harvest, roughly December or January). As Morris comments (246), “Jesus’ request for water points to a time of heat,” and “four months before harvest there would have been plenty of surface water.” Nor can his comment that the fields were now “white for harvest” be taken literally. Schnackenburg is right: “The text cannot be used a firm pointer for the chronology of Jesus’ ministry” (1.449).
120. Compare Paul’s “Look, I tell you a mystery” (ἰδοὺ μυστήριον ὑμῖν λέγω, 1 Cor 15:51). At the same time, the contrast between what “you say” (ὑμεῖς λέγετε) and what “I say to you” (λέγω ὑμῖν) superficially evokes the so-called antitheses in Matthew between what “you have heard it said” and what “I say to you” (Mt 5:21–48). But the parallel is illusory because Jesus is dealing here not with authoritative teaching, but merely with a common cliché.
121. Chrysostom commented, “For as the ears of corn, when they have become white, and are ready for reaping, so these, He saith, are prepared and fitted for salvation.” Homilies on St. John 34.2 (NPNF, 1st ser., 14.119).
122. J. J. Wetstein (Novum Testamentum Graece [Amsterdam, 1751], 1.865) listed four parallels, the closest being Ovid, Fasti 5.357, “An quia maturis albescit messis aristis.”
123. The third-century Acts of Thomas 147 adopts the language of this passage to speak of old age: “The field is become white and the harvest is at hand, that I may receive my reward. My garment that grows old … I have worn out, and the laborious toil that leads to rest I have accomplished. I have kept the first watch and the second and the third, that I may behold thy face and worship thy holy radiance.” Hennecke-Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964), 2.520.
124. In the Revelation, John sees “a great crowd whom no one can number, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and with palm branches in their hands” (Rev 7:9, my italics), and later “a white cloud and someone like a son of man” seated on it, initiating “the harvest of the earth” (Rev 14:14–15; see above, n. 118). Each “white” image is a sequel to a vision of 144,000 (7:1–8; 14:1–5), described in 14:4 as “firstfruits to God and the Lamb.” No such symbolism is evident here, however.
125. This reading is reflected in the RSV, NEB, and REB, and in the versification of the Nestle-Aland 27th edition. Compare 1 John 4:3, and see Moloney (144) and Bernard (1.157).
126. This is the case in 14 other instances in John. Only once (9:27) does it follow the verb (see also 1 Jn 4:3). Of its 61 occurrences throughout the New Testament, I found only eight exceptions, five of them in Luke or the book of Acts. This is the view of most commentators, and is reflected in (among others) the NIV, NRSV, and NAB.
127. So too Lindars: “By specifying eternal life, John has dropped the metaphor and provided the application” (196).
128. So Schnackenburg: “The reception of the reward hardly refers here to the metaphor of payment of wages (compare Mt 20:8ff.). The reward is probably the gathering of the harvest itself; the καί, therefore, gives the precise explanation of the reward” (1.450). See also Abbott, Johannine Grammar, 227.
129. See Barrett, 241.
130. So Bultmann (197), who calls it “a way of referring to the end of the harvest, for the point of the story depends on the temporal relationship of seed-time and harvest.”
131. See my article, “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Paul’s Word from the Lord,” in To Tell the Mystery: Essays on New Testament Eschatology in Honor of Robert H. Gundry (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 182–95, arguing that the imagery of “first and last” points not to reversal but to equity or equality. So too with sower and harvester.
132. Compare 1 Corinthians 3:8, “Now the one who plants and the one who waters are one [ἕν εἰσιν], and each will receive his own payment according to his own labor.”
133. For “joy” as a characteristic of a successful harvest, see Psalm 126:5–6 (NRSV): “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves” (also Isa 9:2, “as with joy at the harvest”).
134. See Barrett (242), who adds, “If, however, John is writing allegorically we must seek a precise meaning for the terms ὁ σπείρων, ὁ θερίζων.”
135. Sometimes it is a matter of divine punishment (see Deut 20:6; 28:30; Job 31:8; Mic 6:15), sometimes of human injustice (see Mt 25:24, 26; Lk 19:21–22), other times simply of circumstances, or “the wry injustices of fate” (Lindars, 196). For the latter, as implied here, see Ecclesiastes 6:2 and Philo, Allegory of the Laws 3.227 (LCL, 1.454–55).
136. As in John 9:30, 13:35, and probably 15:8 (also 1 John 2:3, 5; 3:16, 24; 4:2, 9, 10, 13). In John 16:30 the phrase points back to what has preceded (in 1 Jn 3:10 and 19, 4:17, and 5:2 it could be read either way).
137. “Entered into” is εἰσεληλύθατε. See Matthew 25:21 and 23: “Well done, good and faithful servant!… Enter into [εἴσελθε] the joy of your master.”
138. Schnackenburg, 1.452; see also Bultmann, 199–200; Haenchen, John 1, 225–26. Brown (1.183) is less certain, but his only alternative is to spring verse 38 loose from its narrative context and read it as an independent saying.
139. In a similar vein, Oscar Cullmann revived a view as old as F. C. Baur, that those “sent” were the apostles Peter and John after the resurrection, who conducted a mission to Samaria (Acts 8:14–25), and that the “others” who preceded them were the Hellenists, led by Philip (Acts 8:13). See “Samaria and the Origins of the Christian Mission,” in The Early Church (London: SCM, 1956), 185–92. For a critique, see J. A. T. Robinson, “The ‘Others’ of John 4:38,” in Twelve New Testament Studies (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1962), 61–66.
140. Nor does the fact that he was “weary” (κεκοπιακώς) from his journey (v. 6) in itself identify him as one who “labored” (κεκοπιάκασιν, v. 38) so that the harvest could take place.
141. See Carson (231), but especially Moloney, who implies (without quite saying so) that the disciples went ahead and baptized the Samaritans: “The baptisms of Jesus and John the Baptist have come to an end (compare 3:24; 4:2). The disciples have emerged, sent ones of Jesus (4:38a), as the only baptizers” (141). But if they are truly “sent ones of Jesus,” then their baptisms are his as well. For the notion that Jesus and/or his disciples continued to baptize throughout his ministry, see R. T. France, “Jesus the Baptist?”
142. See also 1 Corinthians 3:6, where Paul is the sower or planter, not one who waters or harvests the crop, and 3:10, where he describes himself as one who lays foundations, not one who builds on foundations.
143. The key word here is “explicitly.” We can assume that others in Judea who “came to him” (3:26), and were “baptized” (3:22, 26) and made “disciples” (4:1), also “believed,” even though that verb is not used.
144. So John Calvin, who commented that “the Samaritans appear to boast that they have now a stronger foundation than a woman’s tongue, which is, for the most part, light and trivial” (Calvin’s Commentaries, Volume 7: The Gospels [Grand Rapids: AP&A, n.d.], 667). While few modern commentators fully agree, Schnackenburg finds “a note of contempt” here (1.457), and Bultmann characterizes λαλιά as “mere words which in themselves do not contain that to which witness is borne” (201).
145. The verb λαλεῖν, “to speak,” is used 49 times in this Gospel to refer to Jesus’ own revelatory speech.
146. Those speaking to the woman (v. 42) must be understood as speaking for all the Samaritan townspeople, not just the “many more” (v. 41) who believed after Jesus stayed with them. This is signaled by the οὐκέτι (“no longer”), implying that some of them at least had believed first on the basis of the woman’s testimony.
147. See Origen on this verse (Commentary on John 13.353; FC, 89.144): “For it is impossible for one who is taught by someone who has seen him and who describes him, to have the same experience that occurred, in respect of the intellect, to the one who has seen him. It is better indeed to walk by sight than by faith.”
148. 1 John combines the terminology of John 3:16–17 with that of the confessing Samaritans: “And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son to be Savior of the world” (σωτῆρα τοῦ κόσμου, 1 Jn 4:14).