Mazmur 48:14

48:14 For God, our God, is our defender forever! ¹ 

He guides ²  us! ³ 

Mazmur 71:20-21

71:20 Though you have allowed me to experience much trouble and distress, ⁴ 

revive me once again! ⁵ 

Bring me up once again ⁶  from the depths of the earth!

71:21 Raise me to a position of great honor! ⁷ 

Turn and comfort me! ⁸ 

Mazmur 73:24

73:24 You guide ⁹  me by your wise advice,

and then you will lead me to a position of honor. ¹⁰ 

Yesaya 58:11

58:11 The Lord will continually lead you;

he will feed you even in parched regions. ¹¹ 

He will give you renewed strength, ¹² 

and you will be like a well-watered garden,

like a spring that continually produces water.

Yohanes 16:13

16:13 But when he, ¹³  the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide ¹⁴  you into all truth. ¹⁵  For he will not speak on his own authority, ¹⁶  but will speak whatever he hears, and will tell you ¹⁷  what is to come. ¹⁸ 

Yohanes 16:2

16:2 They will put you out of ¹⁹  the synagogue, ²⁰  yet a time ²¹  is coming when the one who kills you will think he is offering service to God. ²² 

Yohanes 3:5

3:5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the solemn truth, ²³  unless a person is born of water and spirit, ²⁴  he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

[48:14]  ¹ tn Heb “for this is God, our God, forever and ever.” “This” might be paraphrased, “this protector described and praised in the preceding verses.”

[48:14]  ² tn The imperfect highlights the characteristic nature of the generalizing statement.

[48:14]  ³ tn In the Hebrew text the psalm ends with the words עַל־מוּת (’al-mut, “upon [unto?] dying”), which make little, if any, sense. M. Dahood (Psalms [AB], 1:293) proposes an otherwise unattested plural form עֹלָמוֹת (’olamot; from עוֹלָם, ’olam, “eternity”). This would provide a nice parallel to עוֹלָם וָעֶד (’olam va’ed, “forever”) in the preceding line, but elsewhere the plural of עוֹלָם appears as עֹלָמִים (’olamim). It is preferable to understand the phrase as a musical direction of some sort (see עַל־מוּת [’al-mut] in the superscription of Ps 9) or to emend the text to עַל־עֲלָמוֹת (’al-’alamot, “according to the alamoth style”; see the heading of Ps 46). In either case it should be understood as belonging with the superscription of the following psalm.

[71:20]  ⁴ tn Heb “you who have caused me to see many harmful distresses.”

[71:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “you return, you give me life.” The Hebrew term שׁוּב (shuv, “return”) is used here in an adverbial sense, indicating repetition of the action described by the following verb. The imperfects are understood here as expressing the psalmist’s prayer or wish. (Note the use of a distinctly jussive form at the beginning of v. 21.) Another option is to understand this as a statement of confidence, “you will revive me once again” (cf. NIV, NRSV).

[71:20]  ⁶ tn Heb “you return, you bring me up.” The Hebrew term שׁוּב (shuv, “return”) is used here in an adverbial sense, indicating repetition of the action described by the following verb. The imperfects are understood here as expressing the psalmist’s prayer or wish. (Note the use of a distinctly jussive form at the beginning of v. 21.) Another option is to understand this as a statement of confidence, “you will bring me up once again” (cf. NIV, NRSV).

[71:21]  ⁷ tn Heb “increase my greatness.” The prefixed verbal form is distinctly jussive, indicating this is a prayer or wish. The psalmist’s request for “greatness” (or “honor”) is not a boastful, self-serving prayer for prominence, but, rather, a request that God would vindicate by elevating him over those who are trying to humiliate him.

[71:21]  ⁸ tn The imperfects are understood here as expressing the psalmist’s prayer or wish. (Note the use of a distinctly jussive form at the beginning of v. 21.)

[73:24]  ⁹ tn The imperfect verbal form here suggests this is the psalmist’s ongoing experience.

[73:24]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and afterward [to] glory you will take me.” Some interpreters view this as the psalmist’s confidence in an afterlife in God’s presence and understand כָּבוֹד (cavod) as a metonymic reference to God’s presence in heaven. But this seems unlikely in the present context. The psalmist anticipates a time of vindication, when the wicked are destroyed and he is honored by God for his godly life style. The verb לָקַח (laqakh, “take”) here carries the nuance “lead, guide, conduct,” as in Num 23:14, 27-28; Josh 24:3 and Prov 24:11.

[58:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he will satisfy in parched regions your appetite.”

[58:11]  ¹² tn Heb “and your bones he will strengthen.”

[16:13]  ¹³ tn Grk “that one.”

[16:13]  ¹⁴ tn Or “will lead.”

[16:13]  ¹⁵ sn Three important points must be noted here. (1) When the Holy Spirit comes, he will guide the disciples into all truth. What Jesus had said in 8:31-32, “If you continue to follow my teaching you are really my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” will ultimately be realized in the ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit to the disciples after Jesus’ departure. (2) The things the Holy Spirit speaks to them will not be things which originate from himself (he will not speak on his own authority), but things he has heard. This could be taken to mean that no new revelation is involved, as R. E. Brown does (John [AB], 2:714-15). This is a possible but not a necessary inference. The point here concerns the source of the things the Spirit will say to the disciples and does not specifically exclude originality of content. (3) Part at least of what the Holy Spirit will reveal to the disciples will concern what is to come, not just fuller implications of previous sayings of Jesus and the like. This does seem to indicate that at least some new revelation is involved. But the Spirit is not the source or originator of these things – Jesus is the source, and he will continue to speak to his disciples through the Spirit who has come to indwell them. This does not answer the question, however, whether these words are addressed to all followers of Jesus, or only to his apostles. Different modern commentators will answer this question differently. Since in the context of the Farewell Discourse Jesus is preparing the twelve to carry on his ministry after his departure, it is probably best to take these statements as specifically related only to the twelve. Some of this the Holy Spirit does directly for all believers today; other parts of this statement are fulfilled through the apostles (e.g., in giving the Book of Revelation the Spirit speaks through the apostles to the church today of things to come). One of the implications of this is that a doctrine does not have to be traced back to an explicit teaching of Jesus to be authentic; all that is required is apostolic authority.

[16:13]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “speak from himself.”

[16:13]  ¹⁷ tn Or will announce to you.”

[16:13]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “will tell you the things to come.”

[16:2]  ¹⁹ tn Or “expel you from.”

[16:2]  ²⁰ sn See the note on synagogue in 6:59.

[16:2]  ²¹ tn Grk “an hour.”

[16:2]  ²² sn Jesus now refers not to the time of his return to the Father, as he has frequently done up to this point, but to the disciples’ time of persecution. They will be excommunicated from Jewish synagogues. There will even be a time when those who kill Jesus’ disciples will think that they are offering service to God by putting the disciples to death. Because of the reference to service offered to God, it is almost certain that Jewish opposition is intended here in both cases rather than Jewish opposition in the first instance (putting the disciples out of synagogues) and Roman opposition in the second (putting the disciples to death). Such opposition materializes later and is recorded in Acts: The stoning of Stephen in 7:58-60 and the slaying of James the brother of John by Herod Agrippa I in Acts 12:2-3 are notable examples.

[3:5]  ²³ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[3:5]  ²⁴ tn Or “born of water and wind” (the same Greek word, πνεύματος [pneumatos], may be translated either “spirit/Spirit” or “wind”).

[3:5]  sn Jesus’ somewhat enigmatic statement points to the necessity of being born “from above,” because water and wind/spirit/Spirit come from above. Isaiah 44:3-5 and Ezek 37:9-10 are pertinent examples of water and wind as life-giving symbols of the Spirit of God in his work among people. Both occur in contexts that deal with the future restoration of Israel as a nation prior to the establishment of the messianic kingdom. It is therefore particularly appropriate that Jesus should introduce them in a conversation about entering the kingdom of God. Note that the Greek word πνεύματος is anarthrous (has no article) in v. 5. This does not mean that spirit in the verse should be read as a direct reference to the Holy Spirit, but that both water and wind are figures (based on passages in the OT, which Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel should have known) that represent the regenerating work of the Spirit in the lives of men and women.