4:10 Jesus answered 4 her, “If you had known 5 the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water 6 to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 7
1 tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
2 tn Or “during the night.”
3 sn The reference to signs (σημεῖα, shmeia) forms a link with John 2:23-25. Those people in Jerusalem believed in Jesus because of the signs he had performed. Nicodemus had apparently seen them too. But for Nicodemus all the signs meant is that Jesus was a great teacher sent from God. His approach to Jesus was well-intentioned but theologically inadequate; he had failed to grasp the messianic implications of the miraculous signs.
1 tn Grk “answered and said to her.”
2 tn Or “if you knew.”
3 tn The phrase “some water” is supplied as the understood direct object of the infinitive πεῖν (pein).
4 tn This is a second class conditional sentence in Greek.
1 tn Grk “Jesus answered and said to them.”
2 tn The word “people” is supplied in the translation to indicate that the pronoun (“you”) and verb (“do not know”) in Greek are plural.
3 sn You people do not know where I came from or where I am going. The ignorance of the religious authorities regarding Jesus’ origin works on two levels at once: First, they thought Jesus came from Galilee (although he really came from Bethlehem in Judea) and second, they did not know that he came from heaven (from the Father), and this is where he would return. See further John 7:52.
1 tn Grk “Then Jesus said to them.”
2 tn Grk “Yet a little while the light is with you.”
3 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.