Deuteronomy 6:5

6:5 You must love ¹  the Lord your God with your whole mind, ²  your whole being, ³  and all your strength. ⁴ 

Deuteronomy 6:17

6:17 Keep his ⁵  commandments very carefully, ⁶  as well as the stipulations and statutes he commanded you to observe.

Deuteronomy 8:2

8:2 Remember the whole way by which he ⁷  has brought you these forty years through the desert ⁸  so that he might, by humbling you, test you to see if you have it within you to keep his commandments or not.

Deuteronomy 13:3-4

13:3 You must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer, ⁹  for the Lord your God will be testing you to see if you love him ¹⁰  with all your mind and being. ¹¹  13:4 You must follow the Lord your God and revere only him; and you must observe his commandments, obey him, serve him, and remain loyal to him.

John 14:15

Teaching on the Holy Spirit

14:15 “If you love me, you will obey ¹²  my commandments. ¹³ 

John 14:21-24

14:21 The person who has my commandments and obeys ¹⁴  them is the one who loves me. ¹⁵  The one ¹⁶  who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal ¹⁷  myself to him.”

14:22 “Lord,” Judas (not Judas Iscariot) ¹⁸  said, ¹⁹  “what has happened that you are going to reveal ²⁰  yourself to us and not to the world?” 14:23 Jesus replied, ²¹  “If anyone loves me, he will obey ²²  my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him. ²³  14:24 The person who does not love me does not obey ²⁴  my words. And the word ²⁵  you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.

John 14:1

Jesus’ Parting Words to His Disciples

14:1 “Do not let your hearts be distressed. ²⁶  You believe in God; ²⁷  believe also in me.

John 5:2-3

5:2 Now there is ²⁸  in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate ²⁹  a pool called Bethzatha ³⁰  in Aramaic, ³¹  which has five covered walkways. ³²  5:3 A great number of sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed people were lying in these walkways.

[6:5]  ¹ tn The verb אָהַב (’ahav, “to love”) in this setting communicates not so much an emotional idea as one of covenant commitment. To love the Lord is to be absolutely loyal and obedient to him in every respect, a truth Jesus himself taught (cf. John 14:15). See also the note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37.

[6:5]  ² tn Heb “heart.” In OT physiology the heart (לֵב, לֵבָב; levav, lev) was considered the seat of the mind or intellect, so that one could think with one’s heart. See A. Luc, NIDOTTE 2:749-54.

[6:5]  ³ tn Heb “soul”; “being.” Contrary to Hellenistic ideas of a soul that is discrete and separate from the body and spirit, OT anthropology equated the “soul” (נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh) with the person himself. It is therefore best in most cases to translate נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) as “being” or the like. See H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 10-25; D. Fredericks, NIDOTTE 3:133-34.

[6:5]  ⁴ sn For NT variations on the Shema see Matt 22:37-39; Mark 12:29-30; Luke 10:27.

[6:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “the commandments of the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[6:17]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute before the finite verb to emphasize the statement. The imperfect verbal form is used here with an obligatory nuance that can be captured in English through the imperative. Cf. NASB, NRSV “diligently keep (obey NLT).”

[8:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[8:2]  ⁸ tn Or “wilderness” (so KJV, NRSV, NLT); likewise in v. 15.

[13:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “or dreamer of dreams.” See note on this expression in v. 1.

[13:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[13:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “all your heart and soul” (so NRSV, CEV, NLT); or “heart and being” (NCV “your whole being”). See note on the word “being” in Deut 6:5.

[14:15]  ¹² tn Or “will keep.”

[14:15]  ¹³ sn Jesus’ statement If you love me, you will obey my commandments provides the transition between the promises of answered prayer which Jesus makes to his disciples in vv. 13-14 and the promise of the Holy Spirit which is introduced in v. 16. Obedience is the proof of genuine love.

[14:21]  ¹⁴ tn Or “keeps.”

[14:21]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “obeys them, that one is the one who loves me.”

[14:21]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “And the one.” Here the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated to improve the English style.

[14:21]  ¹⁷ tn Or “will disclose.”

[14:22]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “(not Iscariot).” The proper noun (Judas) has been repeated for clarity and smoothness in English style.

[14:22]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “said to him.”

[14:22]  ²⁰ tn Or “disclose.”

[14:23]  ²¹ tn Grk “answered and said to him.”

[14:23]  ²² tn Or “will keep.”

[14:23]  ²³ tn Grk “we will come to him and will make our dwelling place with him.” The context here is individual rather than corporate indwelling, so the masculine singular pronoun has been retained throughout v. 23. It is important to note, however, that the pronoun is used generically here and refers equally to men, women, and children.

[14:24]  ²⁴ tn Or “does not keep.”

[14:24]  ²⁵ tn Or “the message.”

[14:1]  ²⁶ sn The same verb is used to describe Jesus’ own state in John 11:33, 12:27, and 13:21. Jesus is looking ahead to the events of the evening and the next day, his arrest, trials, crucifixion, and death, which will cause his disciples extreme emotional distress.

[14:1]  ²⁷ tn Or “Believe in God.” The translation of the two uses of πιστεύετε (pisteuete) is difficult. Both may be either indicative or imperative, and as L. Morris points out (John [NICNT], 637), this results in a bewildering variety of possibilities. To complicate matters further, the first may be understood as a question: “Do you believe in God? Believe also in me.” Morris argues against the KJV translation which renders the first πιστεύετε as indicative and the second as imperative on the grounds that for the writer of the Fourth Gospel, faith in Jesus is inseparable from faith in God. But this is precisely the point that Jesus is addressing in context. He is about to undergo rejection by his own people as their Messiah. The disciples’ faith in him as Messiah and Lord would be cast into extreme doubt by these events, which the author makes clear were not at this time foreseen by the disciples. After the resurrection it is this identification between Jesus and the Father which needs to be reaffirmed (cf. John 20:24-29). Thus it seems best to take the first πιστεύετε as indicative and the second as imperative, producing the translation “You believe in God; believe also in me.”

[5:2]  ²⁸ tn Regarding the use of the present tense ἐστιν (estin) and its implications for the dating of the Gospel of John, see the article by D. B. Wallace, “John 5,2 and the Date of the Fourth Gospel,” Bib 71 (1990): 177-205.

[5:2]  ²⁹ tn The site of the miracle is also something of a problem: προβατικῇ (probatikh) is usually taken as a reference to the Sheep Gate near the temple. Some (R. E. Brown and others) would place the word κολυμβήθρα (kolumbhqra) with προβατικῇ to read “in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Pool, there is (another pool) with the Hebrew name.” This would imply that there is reference to two pools in the context rather than only one. This does not seem necessary (although it is a grammatical possibility). The gender of the words does not help since both are feminine (as is the participle ἐπιλεγομένη [epilegomenh]). Note however that Brown’s suggestion would require a feminine word to be supplied (for the participle ἐπιλεγομένη to modify). The traditional understanding of the phrase as a reference to the Sheep Gate near the temple appears more probably correct.

[5:2]  ³⁰ tc Some mss (א [L] 33 it) read Bethzatha, while others read Bethsaida (Ì^[66],75 B T W^s [Ψ] pc vg); codex D has Belzetha. A lot of controversy has surrounded the name of the pool itself: The reading of the Byzantine (or majority) text (A C Θ 078 Ë^1,13 Ï), Bethesda, has been virtually discarded by scholars in favor of what is thought to be the more primitive Bethzatha, even though many recent translations continue to employ Bethesda, the traditional reading. The latter is attested by Josephus as the name of a quarter of the city near the northeast corner of the temple area. He reports that the Syrian Legate Cestius burned this suburb in his attack on Jerusalem in October a.d. 68 (J. W. 2.19.4 [2.530]). However, there is some new archaeological evidence for this problem. 3Q15 (Copper Scroll) from Qumran seems to indicate that in the general area of the temple, on the eastern hill of Jerusalem, a treasure was buried in Bet áEsdatayin, in the pool at the entrance to the smaller basin. The name of the region or pool itself seems then to have been Bet ᾿Esda, “house of the flowing.” It appears with the dual ending in the scroll because there were two basins. Bethesda seems to be an accurate Greek rendition of the name, while J. T. Milik suggests Bethzatha is a rendition of the Aramaic intensive plural Bet áEsdata (DJDJ 3, 271). As for the text of John 5:2, the fundamental problems with the Bethesda reading are that it looks motivated (with an edifying Semitic etymology, meaning “House of Mercy” [TCGNT 178]), and is minimally attested. Apart from the Copper Scroll, the evidence for Bethesda is almost entirely shut up to the Byzantine text (C being the most notable exception, but it often has Byzantine encroachments). On the one hand, this argues the Byzantine reading here had ancient, semitic roots; on the other hand, since both readings are attested as historically accurate, a decision has to be based on the better witnesses. The fact that there are multiple readings here suggests that the original was not well understood. Which reading best explains the rise of the others? It seems that Bethzatha is the best choice.

[5:2]  ³¹ tn Grk “in Hebrew.”

[5:2]  ³² tn Or “porticoes,” or “colonnades”; Grk “stoas.”