17:1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he looked upward 17 to heaven 18 and said, “Father, the time 19 has come. Glorify your Son, so that your 20 Son may glorify you –
4:4 But he had 21 to pass through Samaria. 22 4:5 Now he came to a Samaritan town 23 called Sychar, 24 near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 25
1 tn Grk “And the.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
2 sn Is the manager dishonest because of what he just did? Or is it a reference to what he had done earlier, described in v. 1? This is a difficult question, but it seems unlikely that the master, having fired the man for prior dishonesty, would now commend those same actions. It would also be unusual for Jesus to make that point of the story the example. Thus it is more likely the reference to dishonesty goes back to the earliest events, while the commendation is for the cleverness of the former manager reflected in vv. 5-7.
3 sn Where this parable ends is debated: Does it conclude with v. 7, after v. 8a, after v. 8b, or after v. 9? Verse 8a looks as if it is still part of the story, with its clear reference to the manager, while 8b looks like Jesus’ application, since its remarks are more general. So it is most likely the parable stops after v. 8a.
4 tn Grk “sons” (an idiom).
5 tn Grk “with their own generation.”
6 tn Grk “sons.” Here the phrase “sons of light” is a reference to the righteous. The point is that those of the world often think ahead about consequences better than the righteous do.
7 tn Grk “And he said to them.”
8 tn The word “people” is supplied in English to clarify the plural Greek pronoun and verb.
9 tn Grk “if you were of the world.”
10 tn The words “you as” are not in the original but are supplied for clarity.
11 tn Grk “because you are not of the world.”
12 tn Or “world, therefore.”
13 sn I chose you out of the world…the world hates you. Two themes are brought together here. In 8:23 Jesus had distinguished himself from the world in addressing his Jewish opponents: “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” In 15:16 Jesus told the disciples “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you.” Now Jesus has united these two ideas as he informs the disciples that he has chosen them out of the world. While the disciples will still be “in” the world after Jesus has departed, they will not belong to it, and Jesus prays later in John 17:15-16 to the Father, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The same theme also occurs in 1 John 4:5-6: “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.” Thus the basic reason why the world hates the disciples (as it hated Jesus before them) is because they are not of the world. They are born from above, and are not of the world. For this reason the world hates them.
14 tn Or “your message.”
15 tn Grk “because they are not of the world.”
16 tn Grk “just as I am not of the world.”
17 tn Grk “he raised his eyes” (an idiom).
18 tn Or “to the sky.” The Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos) may be translated “sky” or “heaven” depending on the context.
19 tn Grk “the hour.”
20 tc The better witnesses (א B C* W 0109 0301) have “the Son” (ὁ υἱός, Jo Juios) here, while the majority (C3 L Ψ Ë13 33 Ï) read “your Son also” (καὶ ὁ υἱὸς σου, kai Jo Juio" sou), or “your Son” (ὁ υἱὸς σου; A D Θ 0250 1 579 pc lat sy); the second corrector of C has καὶ ὁ υἱός (“the Son also”). The longer readings appear to be predictable scribal expansions and as such should be considered secondary.
21 sn Travel through Samaria was not geographically necessary; the normal route for Jews ran up the east side of the Jordan River (Transjordan). Although some take the impersonal verb had to (δεῖ, dei) here to indicate logical necessity only, normally in John’s Gospel its use involves God’s will or plan (3:7, 3:14, 3:30, 4:4, 4:20, 4:24, 9:4, 10:16, 12:34, 20:9).
22 sn Samaria. The Samaritans were descendants of 2 groups: (1) The remnant of native Israelites who were not deported after the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722
23 tn Grk “town of Samaria.” The noun Σαμαρείας (Samareias) has been translated as an attributive genitive.
24 sn Sychar was somewhere in the vicinity of Shechem, possibly the village of Askar, 1.5 km northeast of Jacob’s well.
25 sn Perhaps referred to in Gen 48:22.