John 3:4

3:4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time, can he?” ¹ 

John 3:1

Conversation with Nicodemus

3:1 Now a certain man, a Pharisee ²  named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council, ³ 

Colossians 2:14

2:14 He has destroyed ⁴  what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness ⁵  expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.

¹ tn The grammatical structure of the question in Greek presupposes a negative reply.

² sn See the note on Pharisees in 1:24.

³ tn Grk “a ruler of the Jews” (denoting a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest legal, legislative, and judicial body among the Jews).

⁴ tn The participle ἐξαλείψας (exaleiyas) is a temporal adverbial participle of contemporaneous time related to the previous verb συνεζωοποίησεν (sunezwopoihsen), but has been translated as a finite verb because of the complexity of the Greek sentence and the tendency of contemporary English to use shorter sentences. For the meaning “destroy” see BDAG 344-45 s.v. ἐξαλείφω 2.

⁵ tn On the translation of χειρόγραφον (ceirografon), see BDAG 1083 s.v. which refers to it as “a certificate of indebtedness.”