John 12:27-50

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. John 12:27 tn Or “save me.”
2. John 12:27 tn Or “this occasion.”sn Father, deliver me from this hour. It is now clear that Jesus’ hour has come—the hour of his return to the Father through crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension (see 12:23). This will be reiterated in 13:1 and 17:1. Jesus states (employing words similar to those of Ps 6:4) that his soul is troubled. What shall his response to his imminent death be? A prayer to the Father to deliver him from that hour? No, because it is on account of this very hour that Jesus has come. His sacrificial death has always remained the primary purpose of his mission into the world. Now, faced with the completion of that mission, shall he ask the Father to spare him from it? The expected answer is no.
3. John 12:27 tn Or “this occasion.”
4. John 12:28 tn Or “from the sky” (see note on 1:32).
5. John 12:28 tn “It” is not in the Greek text. Direct objects were often omitted in Greek when clear from the context.
6. John 12:28 tn “It” is not in the Greek text. Direct objects were often omitted in Greek when clear from the context.
7. John 12:29 tn “The voice” is not in the Greek text. Direct objects were often omitted in Greek when clear from the context.
8. John 12:29 tn Grk “Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” The direct discourse in the second half of v. 29 was converted to indirect discourse in the translation to maintain the parallelism with the first half of the verse, which is better in keeping with English style.
9. John 12:30 tn Grk “Jesus answered and said.”
10. John 12:30 tn Or “for my sake.”
11. John 12:31 sn The ruler of this world is a reference to Satan.
12. John 12:31 tn Or “will be thrown out.” This translation regards the future passive ἐκβληθήσεται (ekblēthēsetai) as referring to an event future to the time of speaking.sn The phrase driven out must refer to Satan’s loss of authority over this world. This must be in principle rather than in immediate fact, since 1 John 5:19 states that the whole world (still) lies in the power of the evil one (a reference to Satan). In an absolute sense the reference is proleptic. The coming of Jesus’ hour (his crucifixion, death, resurrection, and exaltation to the Father) marks the end of Satan’s domain and brings about his defeat, even though that defeat has not been ultimately worked out in history yet and awaits the consummation of the age.
13. John 12:32 tn Grk “all.” The word “people” is not in the Greek text but is supplied for stylistic reasons and for clarity (cf. KJV “all men”).
14. John 12:33 sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.
15. John 12:34 tn Grk “Then the crowd answered him.”
16. John 12:34 tn Or “the Messiah” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed”).sn See the note on Christ in 1:20.
17. John 12:34 tn Probably an allusion to Ps 89:35-37. It is difficult to pinpoint the passage in the Mosaic law to which the crowd refers. The ones most often suggested are Pss 89:36-37; 110:4, Isa 9:7, Ezek 37:25, and Dan 7:14. None of these passages are in the Pentateuch per se, but “law” could in common usage refer to the entire OT (compare Jesus’ use in John 10:34). Of the passages mentioned, Ps 89:36-37 is the most likely candidate. This verse speaks of David’s “seed” remaining forever. Later in the same psalm, v. 51 speaks of the “anointed” (Messiah), and the psalm was interpreted messianically in both the NT (Acts 13:22, Rev 1:5; 3:14) and in the rabbinic literature (Genesis Rabbah 97).
18. John 12:34 tn Grk “And how”; the conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has been left untranslated here for improved English style.
19. John 12:35 tn Grk “Then Jesus said to them.”
20. John 12:35 tn Grk “Yet a little while the light is with you.”
21. John 12:35 sn The warning Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you operates on at least two different levels: (1) To the Jewish people in Jerusalem to whom Jesus spoke, the warning was a reminder that there was only a little time left for them to accept him as their Messiah. (2) To those later individuals to whom the Fourth Gospel was written, and to every person since, the words of Jesus are also a warning: There is a finite, limited time in which each individual has opportunity to respond to the Light of the world (i.e., Jesus); after that comes darkness. One’s response to the Light decisively determines one’s judgment for eternity.
22. John 12:36 tn The idiom “sons of light” means essentially “people characterized by light,” that is, “people of God.”sn The expression sons of light refers to men and women to whom the truth of God has been revealed and who are therefore living according to that truth, thus, “people of God.”
23. John 12:37 tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
24. John 12:37 tn Or “done.”
25. John 12:38 tn Or “message.”
26. John 12:38 tn Grk “who said.”
27. John 12:38 tn “The arm of the Lord” is an idiom for “God’s great power” (as exemplified through Jesus’ miraculous signs). This response of unbelief is interpreted by the author as a fulfillment of the prophetic words of Isaiah (Isa 53:1). The phrase ὁ βραχίων κυρίου (ho brachiōn kuriou) is a figurative reference to God’s activity and power which has been revealed in the sign-miracles which Jesus has performed (compare the previous verse).
28. John 12:38 sn A quotation from Isa 53:1.
29. John 12:39 sn The author explicitly states here that Jesus’ Jewish opponents could not believe, and quotes Isa 6:10 to show that God had in fact blinded their eyes and hardened their heart. This OT passage was used elsewhere in the NT to explain Jewish unbelief: Paul’s final words in Acts (28:26-27) are a quotation of this same passage, which he uses to explain why the Jewish people have not accepted the gospel he has preached. A similar passage (Isa 29:10) is quoted in a similar context in Rom 11:8.
30. John 12:40 tn Or “closed their mind.”
31. John 12:40 tn Or “their mind.”
32. John 12:40 tn One could also translate στραφῶσιν (straphōsin) as “repent” or “change their ways,” but both of these terms would be subject to misinterpretation by the modern English reader. The idea is one of turning back to God, however. The words “to me” are not in the Greek text, but are implied.
33. John 12:40 sn A quotation from Isa 6:10.
34. John 12:41 tn Grk “his”; the referent (Christ) has been specified in the translation for clarity. The referent supplied here is “Christ” rather than “Jesus” because it involves what Isaiah saw. It is clear that the author presents Isaiah as having seen the preincarnate glory of Christ, which was the very revelation of the Father (see John 1:18; John 14:9).sn Because he saw Christ’s glory. The glory which Isaiah saw in Isa 6:3 was the glory of Yahweh (typically rendered as “Lord” in the OT). Here John speaks of the prophet seeing the glory of Christ since in the next clause and spoke about him, “him” can hardly refer to Yahweh, but must refer to Christ. On the basis of statements like 1:14 in the prologue, the author probably put no great distinction between the two. Since the author presents Jesus as fully God (cf. John 1:1), it presents no problem to him to take words originally spoken by Isaiah of Yahweh himself and apply them to Jesus.
35. John 12:42 sn The term rulers here denotes members of the Sanhedrin, the highest legal, legislative, and judicial body among the Jews. Note the same word (“ruler”) is used to describe Nicodemus in 3:1.
36. John 12:42 sn See the note on Pharisees in 1:24.
37. John 12:42 tn The words “Jesus to be the Christ” are not in the Greek text, but are implied (see 9:22). As is often the case in Greek, the direct object is omitted for the verb ὡμολόγουν (hōmologoun). Some translators supply an ambiguous “it,” or derive the implied direct object from the previous clause “believed in him” so that the rulers would not confess “their faith” or “their belief.” However, when one compares John 9:22, which has many verbal parallels to this verse, it seems clear that the content of the confession would have been “Jesus is the Christ (i.e., Messiah).”sn See the note on Christ in 1:20.
38. John 12:42 tn Or “be expelled from.”
39. John 12:42 sn Cf. John 9:22. See the note on synagogue in 6:59.
40. John 12:43 tn Grk “the glory.”
41. John 12:43 tn Grk “the glory.”
42. John 12:44 tn Grk “shouted out and said.”
43. John 12:44 sn The one who sent me refers to God the Father.
44. John 12:45 sn Cf. John 1:18 and 14:9.
45. John 12:47 tn Grk “And if anyone”; the conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has been left untranslated here for improved English style.
46. John 12:47 tn Or “guard them,” “keep them.”
47. John 12:47 sn Cf. John 3:17.
48. John 12:48 tn Or “does not receive.”
49. John 12:48 tn Grk “has one who judges him.”
50. John 12:48 tn Or “message.”
51. John 12:49 tn Grk “I have not spoken from myself.”
52. John 12:49 tn Grk “has given me commandment.”
53. John 12:50 tn Or “his commandment results in eternal life.”
54. John 12:50 tn Grk “The things I speak, just as the Father has spoken to me, thus I speak.”