Mazmur 40:9-10

40:9 I have told the great assembly ¹  about your justice. ² 

Look! I spare no words! ³ 

O Lord, you know this is true.

40:10 I have not failed to tell about your justice; ⁴ 

I spoke about your reliability and deliverance;

I have not neglected to tell the great assembly about your loyal love and faithfulness. ⁵ 

Mazmur 78:2-4

78:2 I will sing a song that imparts wisdom;

I will make insightful observations about the past. ⁶ 

78:3 What we have heard and learned ⁷  –

that which our ancestors ⁸  have told us –

78:4 we will not hide from their ⁹  descendants.

We will tell the next generation

about the Lord’s praiseworthy acts, ¹⁰ 

about his strength and the amazing things he has done.

Pengkhotbah 12:14

12:14 For God will evaluate every deed, ¹¹ 

including every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Matius 10:26-27

Fear God, Not Man

10:26 “Do ¹²  not be afraid of them, for nothing is hidden ¹³  that will not be revealed, ¹⁴  and nothing is secret that will not be made known. 10:27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what is whispered in your ear, ¹⁵  proclaim from the housetops. ¹⁶ 

Lukas 8:17

8:17 For nothing is hidden ¹⁷  that will not be revealed, ¹⁸  and nothing concealed that will not be made known and brought to light.

Lukas 12:2-3

12:2 Nothing is hidden ¹⁹  that will not be revealed, ²⁰  and nothing is secret that will not be made known. 12:3 So then ²¹  whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered ²²  in private rooms ²³  will be proclaimed from the housetops. ²⁴ 

Kisah Para Rasul 4:20

4:20 for it is impossible ²⁵  for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.”

Kisah Para Rasul 20:27

20:27 For I did not hold back from ²⁶  announcing ²⁷  to you the whole purpose ²⁸  of God.

Kisah Para Rasul 20:1

Paul Travels Through Macedonia and Greece

20:1 After the disturbance had ended, Paul sent for the disciples, and after encouraging ²⁹  them and saying farewell, ³⁰  he left to go to Macedonia. ³¹ 

Kolose 4:5

4:5 Conduct yourselves ³²  with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunities.

Kolose 4:1

4:1 Masters, treat your slaves with justice and fairness, because you know that you also have a master in heaven.

Yohanes 1:1-3

The Prologue to the Gospel

1:1 In the beginning ³³  was the Word, and the Word was with God, ³⁴  and the Word was fully God. ³⁵  1:2 The Word ³⁶  was with God in the beginning. 1:3 All things were created ³⁷  by him, and apart from him not one thing was created ³⁸  that has been created. ³⁹ 

[40:9]  ¹ sn The great assembly is also mentioned in Pss 22:25 and 35:18.

[40:9]  ² tn Heb “I proclaim justice in the great assembly.” Though “justice” appears without a pronoun here, the Lord’s just acts are in view (see v. 10). His “justice” (צֶדֶק, tsedeq) is here the deliverance that originates in his justice; he protects and vindicates the one whose cause is just.

[40:9]  ³ tn Heb “Look! My lips I do not restrain.”

[40:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “your justice I have not hidden in the midst of my heart.”

[40:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “I have not hidden your loyal love and reliability.”

[78:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “I will open with a wise saying my mouth, I will utter insightful sayings from long ago.” Elsewhere the Hebrew word pair חִידָה+מָשָׁל (mashal + khidah) refers to a taunt song (Hab 2:6), a parable (Ezek 17:2), proverbial sayings (Prov 1:6), and an insightful song that reflects on the mortality of humankind and the ultimate inability of riches to prevent death (Ps 49:4).

[78:3]  ⁷ tn Or “known.”

[78:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 5, 8, 12, 57).

[78:4]  ⁹ tn The pronominal suffix refers back to the “fathers” (“our ancestors,” v. 3).

[78:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to a following generation telling the praises of the Lord.” “Praises” stand by metonymy for the mighty acts that prompt worship. Cf. Ps 9:14.

[12:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “will bring every deed into judgment.”

[10:26]  ¹² tn Grk “Therefore do not.” Here οὖν (oun) has not been translated.

[10:26]  ¹³ tn Or “concealed.”

[10:26]  ¹⁴ sn I.e., be revealed by God. The passive voice here and in the next verb see the revelation as coming from God. The text is both a warning about bad things being revealed and an encouragement that good things will be made known.

[10:27]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “what you hear in the ear,” an idiom.

[10:27]  ¹⁶ tn The expression “proclaim from the housetops” is an idiom for proclaiming something publicly (L&N 7.51). Roofs of many first century Jewish houses in Judea and Galilee were flat and had access either from outside or from within the house. Something shouted from atop a house would be heard by everyone in the street below.

[8:17]  ¹⁷ sn Nothing is hidden. Light also exposes, and Jesus was suggesting that his teaching likewise revealed where people are and where they will be. Truth will be manifest in the future, just as it was declared by him then. Nothing will be concealed.

[8:17]  ¹⁸ tn Or “disclosed.”

[12:2]  ¹⁹ tn Or “concealed.”

[12:2]  ²⁰ sn I.e., be revealed by God. The passive voice verbs here (“be revealed,” be made known”) see the revelation as coming from God. The text is both a warning about bad things being revealed and an encouragement that good things will be made known, though the stress with the images of darkness and what is hidden in vv. 2-3 is on the attempt to conceal.

[12:3]  ²¹ tn Or “because.” Understanding this verse as a result of v. 2 is a slightly better reading of the context. Knowing what is coming should impact our behavior now.

[12:3]  ²² tn Grk “spoken in the ear,” an idiom. The contemporary expression is “whispered.”

[12:3]  ²³ sn The term translated private rooms refers to the inner room of a house, normally without any windows opening outside, the most private location possible (BDAG 988 s.v. ταμεῖον 2).

[12:3]  ²⁴ tn The expression “proclaimed from the housetops” is an idiom for proclaiming something publicly (L&N 7.51). Roofs of many first century Jewish houses in Judea and Galilee were flat and had access either from outside or from within the house. Something shouted from atop a house would be heard by everyone in the street below.

[4:20]  ²⁵ tn Grk “for we are not able not to speak about what we have seen and heard,” but the double negative, which cancels out in English, is emphatic in Greek. The force is captured somewhat by the English translation “it is impossible for us not to speak…” although this is slightly awkward.

[20:27]  ²⁶ tn Or “did not avoid.” BDAG 1041 s.v. ὑποστέλλω 2.b has “shrink from, avoid implying fear…οὐ γὰρ ὑπεστειλάμην τοῦ μὴ ἀναγγεῖλαι I did not shrink from proclaiming Ac 20:27”; L&N 13.160 has “to hold oneself back from doing something, with the implication of some fearful concern – ‘to hold back from, to shrink from, to avoid’…‘for I have not held back from announcing to you the whole purpose of God’ Ac 20:27.”

[20:27]  ²⁷ tn Or “proclaiming,” “declaring.”

[20:27]  ²⁸ tn Or “plan.”

[20:1]  ²⁹ tn Or “exhorting.”

[20:1]  ³⁰ tn Or “and taking leave of them.”

[20:1]  ³¹ sn Macedonia was the Roman province of Macedonia in Greece.

[4:5]  ³² tn Grk “walk.” The verb περιπατέω (peripatew) is a common NT idiom for one’s lifestyle, behavior, or manner of conduct (L&N 41.11).

[1:1]  ³³ sn In the beginning. The search for the basic “stuff” out of which things are made was the earliest one in Greek philosophy. It was attended by the related question of “What is the process by which the secondary things came out of the primary one (or ones)?,” or in Aristotelian terminology, “What is the ‘beginning’ (same Greek word as beginning, John 1:1) and what is the origin of the things that are made?” In the New Testament the word usually has a temporal sense, but even BDAG 138 s.v. ἀρχή 3 lists a major category of meaning as “the first cause.” For John, the words “In the beginning” are most likely a conscious allusion to the opening words of Genesis – “In the beginning.” Other concepts which occur prominently in Gen 1 are also found in John’s prologue: “life” (1:4) “light” (1:4) and “darkness” (1:5). Gen 1 describes the first (physical) creation; John 1 describes the new (spiritual) creation. But this is not to play off a false dichotomy between “physical” and “spiritual”; the first creation was both physical and spiritual. The new creation is really a re-creation, of the spiritual (first) but also the physical. (In spite of the common understanding of John’s “spiritual” emphasis, the “physical” re-creation should not be overlooked; this occurs in John 2 with the changing of water into wine, in John 11 with the resurrection of Lazarus, and the emphasis of John 20-21 on the aftermath of Jesus’ own resurrection.)

[1:1]  ³⁴ tn The preposition πρός (pros) implies not just proximity, but intimate personal relationship. M. Dods stated, “Πρός …means more than μετά or παρά, and is regularly employed in expressing the presence of one person with another” (“The Gospel of St. John,” The Expositor’s Greek Testament, 1:684). See also Mark 6:3, Matt 13:56, Mark 9:19, Gal 1:18, 2 John 12.

[1:1]  ³⁵ tn Or “and what God was the Word was.” Colwell’s Rule is often invoked to support the translation of θεός (qeos) as definite (“God”) rather than indefinite (“a god”) here. However, Colwell’s Rule merely permits, but does not demand, that a predicate nominative ahead of an equative verb be translated as definite rather than indefinite. Furthermore, Colwell’s Rule did not deal with a third possibility, that the anarthrous predicate noun may have more of a qualitative nuance when placed ahead of the verb. A definite meaning for the term is reflected in the traditional rendering “the word was God.” From a technical standpoint, though, it is preferable to see a qualitative aspect to anarthrous θεός in John 1:1c (ExSyn 266-69). Translations like the NEB, REB, and Moffatt are helpful in capturing the sense in John 1:1c, that the Word was fully deity in essence (just as much God as God the Father). However, in contemporary English “the Word was divine” (Moffatt) does not quite catch the meaning since “divine” as a descriptive term is not used in contemporary English exclusively of God. The translation “what God was the Word was” is perhaps the most nuanced rendering, conveying that everything God was in essence, the Word was too. This points to unity of essence between the Father and the Son without equating the persons. However, in surveying a number of native speakers of English, some of whom had formal theological training and some of whom did not, the editors concluded that the fine distinctions indicated by “what God was the Word was” would not be understood by many contemporary readers. Thus the translation “the Word was fully God” was chosen because it is more likely to convey the meaning to the average English reader that the Logos (which “became flesh and took up residence among us” in John 1:14 and is thereafter identified in the Fourth Gospel as Jesus) is one in essence with God the Father. The previous phrase, “the Word was with God,” shows that the Logos is distinct in person from God the Father.

[1:1]  sn And the Word was fully God. John’s theology consistently drives toward the conclusion that Jesus, the incarnate Word, is just as much God as God the Father. This can be seen, for example, in texts like John 10:30 (“The Father and I are one”), 17:11 (“so that they may be one just as we are one”), and 8:58 (“before Abraham came into existence, I am”). The construction in John 1:1c does not equate the Word with the person of God (this is ruled out by 1:1b, “the Word was with God”); rather it affirms that the Word and God are one in essence.

[1:2]  ³⁶ tn Grk “He”; the referent (the Word) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:3]  ³⁷ tn Or “made”; Grk “came into existence.”

[1:3]  ³⁸ tn Or “made”; Grk “nothing came into existence.”

[1:3]  ³⁹ tc There is a major punctuation problem here: Should this relative clause go with v. 3 or v. 4? The earliest mss have no punctuation (Ì^66,75* א* A B Δ al). Many of the later mss which do have punctuation place it before the phrase, thus putting it with v. 4 (Ì^75c C D L W^s 050* pc). NA²⁵ placed the phrase in v. 3; NA²⁶ moved the words to the beginning of v. 4. In a detailed article K. Aland defended the change (“Eine Untersuchung zu Johannes 1, 3-4. Über die Bedeutung eines Punktes,” ZNW 59 [1968]: 174-209). He sought to prove that the attribution of ὃ γέγονεν (}o gegonen) to v. 3 began to be carried out in the 4th century in the Greek church. This came out of the Arian controversy, and was intended as a safeguard for doctrine. The change was unknown in the West. Aland is probably correct in affirming that the phrase was attached to v. 4 by the Gnostics and the Eastern Church; only when the Arians began to use the phrase was it attached to v. 3. But this does not rule out the possibility that, by moving the words from v. 4 to v. 3, one is restoring the original reading. Understanding the words as part of v. 3 is natural and adds to the emphasis which is built up there, while it also gives a terse, forceful statement in v. 4. On the other hand, taking the phrase ὃ γέγονεν with v. 4 gives a complicated expression: C. K. Barrett says that both ways of understanding v. 4 with ὃ γέγονεν included “are almost impossibly clumsy” (St. John, 157): “That which came into being – in it the Word was life”; “That which came into being – in the Word was its life.” The following stylistic points should be noted in the solution of this problem: (1) John frequently starts sentences with ἐν (en); (2) he repeats frequently (“nothing was created that has been created”); (3) 5:26 and 6:53 both give a sense similar to v. 4 if it is understood without the phrase; (4) it makes far better Johannine sense to say that in the Word was life than to say that the created universe (what was made, ὃ γέγονεν) was life in him. In conclusion, the phrase is best taken with v. 3. Schnackenburg, Barrett, Carson, Haenchen, Morris, KJV, and NIV concur (against Brown, Beasley-Murray, and NEB). The arguments of R. Schnackenburg, St. John, 1:239-40, are particularly persuasive.

[1:3]  tn Or “made”; Grk “that has come into existence.”