Exodus 40:31-32

40:31 Moses and Aaron and his sons would wash their hands and their feet from it. 40:32 Whenever they entered ¹  the tent of meeting, and whenever they approached ²  the altar, they would wash, ³  just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Psalms 26:6

26:6 I maintain a pure lifestyle, ⁴ 

so I can appear before your altar, ⁵  O Lord,

Isaiah 52:11

52:11 Leave! Leave! Get out of there!

Don’t touch anything unclean!

Get out of it!

Stay pure, you who carry the Lord’s holy items! ⁶ 

John 13:8-10

13:8 Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet!” ⁷  Jesus replied, ⁸  “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹  13:9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, wash ¹⁰  not only my feet, but also my hands and my head!” 13:10 Jesus replied, ¹¹  “The one who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, ¹²  but is completely ¹³  clean. ¹⁴  And you disciples ¹⁵  are clean, but not every one of you.”

John 13:1

Washing the Disciples’ Feet

13:1 Just before the Passover feast, Jesus knew that his time ¹⁶  had come to depart ¹⁷  from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now loved them to the very end. ¹⁸ 

Colossians 1:9-11

Paul’s Prayer for the Growth of the Church

1:9 For this reason we also, from the day we heard about you, ¹⁹  have not ceased praying for you and asking God ²⁰  to fill ²¹  you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 1:10 so that you may live ²²  worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects ²³  – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God, 1:11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the display of ²⁴  all patience and steadfastness, joyfully

Titus 3:5

3:5 he saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit,

Hebrews 9:10

9:10 They served only for matters of food and drink ²⁵  and various washings; they are external regulations ²⁶  imposed until the new order came. ²⁷ 

Hebrews 10:22

10:22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in the assurance that faith brings, ²⁸  because we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience ²⁹  and our bodies washed in pure water.

Revelation 1:5-6

1:5 and from Jesus Christ – the faithful ³⁰  witness, ³¹  the firstborn from among the dead, the ruler over the kings of the earth. To the one who loves us and has set us free ³²  from our sins at the cost of ³³  his own blood 1:6 and has appointed ³⁴  us as a kingdom, ³⁵  as priests ³⁶  serving his God and Father – to him be the glory and the power for ever and ever! ³⁷  Amen.

[40:32]  ¹ tn The construction is the infinitive construct with the temporal preposition and the suffixed subjective genitive. This temporal clause indicates that the verb in the preceding verse was frequentative.

[40:32]  ² tn This is another infinitive construct in a temporal clause.

[40:32]  ³ tn In this explanatory verse the verb is a customary imperfect.

[26:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “I wash my hands in innocence.” The psalmist uses an image from cultic ritual to picture his moral lifestyle. The imperfect verbal emphasizes that this is his habit.

[26:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “so I can go around your altar” (probably in ritual procession). Following the imperfect of the preceding line, the cohortative with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose or result.

[52:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “the vessels of the Lord” (so KJV, NAB).

[13:8]  ⁷ tn Grk “You will never wash my feet forever.” The negation is emphatic in Greek but somewhat awkward in English. Emphasis is conveyed in the translation by the use of an exclamation point.

[13:8]  ⁸ tn Grk “Jesus answered him.”

[13:8]  ⁹ tn Or “you have no part in me.”

[13:9]  ¹⁰ tn The word “wash” is not in the Greek text, but is implied. Here it is supplied to improve the English style by making Peter’s utterance a complete sentence.

[13:10]  ¹¹ tn Grk “Jesus said to him.”

[13:10]  ¹² tn Grk “has no need except to wash his feet.”

[13:10]  ¹³ tn Or “entirely.”

[13:10]  ¹⁴ sn The one who has bathed needs only to wash his feet. A common understanding is that the “bath” Jesus referred to is the initial cleansing from sin, which necessitates only “lesser, partial” cleansings from sins after conversion. This makes a fine illustration from a homiletic standpoint, but is it the meaning of the passage? This seems highly doubtful. Jesus stated that the disciples were completely clean except for Judas (vv. 10b, 11). What they needed was to have their feet washed by Jesus. In the broader context of the Fourth Gospel, the significance of the foot-washing seems to point not just to an example of humble service (as most understand it), but something more – Jesus’ self-sacrificial death on the cross. If this is correct, then the foot-washing which they needed to undergo represented their acceptance of this act of self-sacrifice on the part of their master. This makes Peter’s initial abhorrence of the act of humiliation by his master all the more significant in context; it also explains Jesus’ seemingly harsh reply to Peter (above, v. 8; compare Matt 16:21-23 where Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan”).

[13:10]  ¹⁵ tn The word “disciples” is supplied in English to clarify the plural Greek pronoun and verb. Peter is not the only one Jesus is addressing here.

[13:1]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “his hour.”

[13:1]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “that he should depart.” The ἵνα (Jina) clause in Koine Greek frequently encroached on the simple infinitive (for the sake of greater clarity).

[13:1]  ¹⁸ tn Or “he now loved them completely,” or “he now loved them to the uttermost” (see John 19:30). All of John 13:1 is a single sentence in Greek, although in English this would be unacceptably awkward. At the end of the verse the idiom εἰς τέλος (eis telos) was translated literally as “to the end” and the modern equivalents given in the note above, because there is an important lexical link between this passage and John 19:30, τετέλεσται (tetelestai, “It is ended”).

[1:9]  ¹⁹ tn Or “heard about it”; Grk “heard.” There is no direct object stated in the Greek (direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context). A direct object is expected by an English reader, however, so most translations supply one. Here, however, it is not entirely clear what the author “heard”: a number of translations supply “it” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV; NAB “this”), but this could refer back either to (1) “your love in the Spirit” at the end of v. 8, or (2) “your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints” (v. 4). In light of this uncertainty, other translations supply “about you” (TEV, NIV, CEV, NLT). This is preferred by the present translation since, while it does not resolve the ambiguity entirely, it does make it less easy for the English reader to limit the reference only to “your love in the Spirit” at the end of v. 8.

[1:9]  ²⁰ tn The term “God” does not appear in the Greek text, but the following reference to “the knowledge of his will” makes it clear that “God” is in view as the object of the “praying and asking,” and should therefore be included in the English translation for clarity.

[1:9]  ²¹ tn The ἵνα (Jina) clause has been translated as substantival, indicating the content of the prayer and asking. The idea of purpose may also be present in this clause.

[1:10]  ²² tn The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (peripathsai, “to walk, to live, to live one’s life”) is best taken as an infinitive of purpose related to “praying” (προσευχόμενοι, proseucomenoi) and “asking” (αἰτούμενοι, aitoumenoi) in v. 9 and is thus translated as “that you may live.”

[1:10]  ²³ tn BDAG 129 s.v. ἀρεσκεία states that ἀρεσκείαν (areskeian) refers to a “desire to please εἰς πᾶσαν ἀ. to please (the Lord) in all respects Col 1:10.”

[1:11]  ²⁴ tn The expression “for the display of” is an attempt to convey in English the force of the Greek preposition εἰς (eis) in this context.

[9:10]  ²⁵ tn Grk “only for foods and drinks.”

[9:10]  ²⁶ tc Most witnesses (D¹ Ï) have “various washings, and external regulations” (βαπτισμοῖς καὶ δικαιώμασιν, baptismoi" kai dikaiwmasin), with both nouns in the dative. The translation “washings; they are… regulations” renders βαπτισμοῖς, δικαιώματα (baptismoi", dikaiwmata; found in such important mss as Ì⁴⁶ א* A I P 0278 33 1739 1881 al sa) in which case δικαιώματα is taken as the nominative subject of the participle ἐπικείμενα (epikeimena). It seems far more likely that scribes would conform δικαιώματα to the immediately preceding datives and join it to them by καί than they would to the following nominative participle. Both on external and internal evidence the text is thus secure as reading βαπτισμοῖς, δικαιώματα.

[9:10]  ²⁷ tn Grk “until the time of setting things right.”

[10:22]  ²⁸ tn Grk “in assurance of faith.”

[10:22]  ²⁹ sn The phrase our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience combines the OT imagery of the sprinkling with blood to give ritual purity with the emphasis on the interior cleansing provided by the new covenant: It is the heart that is cleansed and the conscience made perfect (cf. Heb 8:10; 9:9, 14; 10:2, 16).

[1:5]  ³⁰ tn Or “Jesus Christ – the faithful one, the witness…” Some take ὁ πιστός (Jo pistos) as a second substantive in relation to ὁ μάρτυς (Jo martus). In the present translation, however, ὁ πιστός was taken as an adjective in attributive position to ὁ μάρτυς. The idea of martyrdom and faithfulness are intimately connected. See BDAG 820 s.v. πιστός 1.a.α: “ὁ μάρτυς μου ὁ πιστός μου Rv 2:13 (μάρτυς 3); in this ‘book of martyrs’ Christ is ὁ μάρτυς ὁ πιστὸς (καὶ ὁ ἀληθινός) 1:5; 3:14; cp. 19:11 (the combination of ἀληθινός and πιστός in the last two passages is like 3 Macc 2:11). Cp. Rv 17:14.”

[1:5]  ³¹ sn The Greek term translated witness can mean both “witness” and “martyr.”

[1:5]  ³² tc The reading “set free” (λύσαντι, lusanti) has better ms support (̹⁸ א A C 1611 2050 2329 2351 Ï^A sy) than its rival, λούσαντι (lousanti, “washed”; found in P 1006 1841 1854 2053 2062 Ï^K lat bo). Internally, it seems that the reading “washed” could have arisen in at least one of three ways: (1) as an error of hearing (both “released” and “washed” are pronounced similarly in Greek); (2) an error of sight (both “released” and “washed” look very similar – a difference of only one letter – which could have resulted in a simple error during the copying of a ms); (3) through scribal inability to appreciate that the Hebrew preposition ב can be used with a noun to indicate the price paid for something. Since the author of Revelation is influenced significantly by a Semitic form of Greek (e.g., 13:10), and since the Hebrew preposition “in” (ב) can indicate the price paid for something, and is often translated with the preposition “in” (ἐν, en) in the LXX, the author may have tried to communicate by the use of ἐν the idea of a price paid for something. That is, John was trying to say that Christ delivered us at the price of his own blood. This whole process, however, may have been lost on a later scribe, who being unfamiliar with Hebrew, found the expression “delivered in his blood” too difficult, and noticing the obvious similarities between λύσαντι and λούσαντι, assumed an error and then proceeded to change the text to “washed in his blood” – a thought more tolerable in his mind. Both readings, of course, are true to scripture; the current question is what the author wrote in this verse.

[1:5]  ³³ tn The style here is somewhat Semitic, with the use of the ἐν (en) + the dative to mean “at the price of.” The addition of “own” in the English is stylistic and is an attempt to bring out the personal nature of the statement and the sacrificial aspect of Jesus’ death – a frequent refrain in the Apocalypse.

[1:6]  ³⁴ tn The verb ποιέω (poiew) can indicate appointment or assignment rather than simply “make” or “do.” See Mark 3:14 (L&N 37.106).

[1:6]  ³⁵ tn See BDAG 168 s.v. βασιλεία 1.a for the idea of “he made us a kingdom,” which was translated as “he appointed us (to be or function) as a kingdom” (see the note on the word “appointed” earlier in the verse).

[1:6]  ³⁶ tn Grk “a kingdom, priests.” The term ἱερεῖς (Jiereis) is either in apposition to βασιλείαν (basileian) or as a second complement to the object “us” (ἡμᾶς, Jhmas). The translation retains this ambiguity.

[1:6]  ³⁷ tc Both the longer reading τῶν αἰώνων (twn aiwnwn, “to the ages of the ages” or, more idiomatically, “for ever and ever”; found in א C Ï) and the shorter (“for ever”; found in ̹⁸ A P 2050 pc bo) have good ms support. The author uses the longer expression (εἰς [τοὺς] αἰῶνας [τῶν] αἰώνων, ei" [tou"] aiwna" [twn] aiwnwn) in every other instance of αἰών in Revelation, twelve passages in all (1:18; 4:9, 10; 5:13; 7:12; 10:6; 11:15; 14:11; 15:7; 19:3; 20:10; 22:5). Thus, on the one hand, the style of the author is consistent, while on the other hand, the scribes may have been familiar with such a stylistic feature, causing them to add the words here. The issues are more complex than can be presented here; the longer reading, however, is probably original (the shorter reading arising from accidental omission of the genitive phrase due to similarity with the preceding words).