Jun 22, 2022
2SAMUEL 23:
Yesterday we read David’s long poem of praise
for God giving him victory and deliverance from his
enemies.
PSALM 119a:
This
psalm is famous for being the longest chapter in the Bible, and it
is an acrostic psalm with a difference. In this psalm, every line
of each stanza starts with the same letter of the alphabet, instead
of every line with a different letter. The psalm has 22 stanzas,
one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And this psalm has a
clear theme: God’s Word— or a synonym for it, is mentioned in
almost every verse.
Re-reading JOHN 3:
One
of the features of John's Gospel is that he breaks in with
commentary without warning. Because of the lack of quote marks in
ancient Greek, there were no overt signs marking the end of Jesus'
speech and John's comment, or at the end of this chapter, John the
Baptist's speech and John's comment. I personally don't think that
John 3:16 is Jesus' words about himself, but is the start of John's
explanation of Jesus' enigmatic words: “as Moses lifted up the
bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so [I,] the Son of Man
must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in [Me/him] will
have eternal life.” We have read that story in Numbers 21. Imagine
that all one had to do to be healed of a snake bite was to look at
the bronze snake which Moses had put up on a pole. Do you think any
of the people who were bitten refused to look up at that bronze
snake? (Don’t miss that the shape this cast would have been very
much like the shape of a cross.)
GNT Translation
notes:
John
3:13 And no one has ever gone up to heaven except [Me,] the Son of
Man, who came down from heaven.”|
14
As Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the desert,
in the same way [I,] the Son of Man[,] must be lifted up,
[Exegetes and commentators disagree on where to
stop Jesus’ quoted conversation with Nicodemus. Ancient Greek
didn’t have mark quotes. GNT stops the quote at the end of 13,
which is quite early compared with other translations. Note that
inserting unmarked parenthetical comments or teachings is a feature
of John’s style. To me, I feel it makes most sense that John 3:16
is John’s explanation of Jesus’ very figurative saying in verse
14-15. There is another example of the difficulty of placing quote
marks in this chapter. I think that John the Baptist’s quote ends
at verse 30 not at the end of the chapter. So I differ with NLT’s
quote marks for the last paragraph.]
20
Those who do evil things hate the light and will not come to the
light, because they do not want their evil deeds to be
[revealed//shown up].
[The
meaning is definitely not the newer ‘show up’ meaning
(surpass)!]
32
He tells what he has seen and heard, yet [so few accept//no one
accepts (hyperbole)] his message.