Genesis 32:20

32:20 You must also say, ‘In fact your servant Jacob is behind us.’” ¹  Jacob thought, ²  “I will first appease him ³  by sending a gift ahead of me. ⁴  After that I will meet him. ⁵  Perhaps he will accept me.” ⁶ 

Exodus 24:10-11

24:10 and they saw ⁷  the God of Israel. Under his feet ⁸  there was something like a pavement ⁹  made of sapphire, clear like the sky itself. ¹⁰  24:11 But he did not lay a hand ¹¹  on the leaders of the Israelites, so they saw God, ¹²  and they ate and they drank. ¹³ 

Exodus 33:20

33:20 But he added, “You cannot see my face, for no one can ¹⁴  see me and live.” ¹⁵ 

Jude 1:22

1:22 And have mercy on those who waver;

Jude 1:21-23

1:21 maintain ¹⁶  yourselves in the love of God, while anticipating ¹⁷  the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that brings eternal life. ¹⁸  1:22 And have mercy on those who waver; 1:23 save ¹⁹  others by snatching them out of the fire; have mercy ²⁰  on others, coupled with a fear of God, ²¹  hating even the clothes stained ²²  by the flesh. ²³ 

Isaiah 6:1-5

Isaiah’s Commission

6:1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death, ²⁴  I saw the sovereign master ²⁵  seated on a high, elevated throne. The hem of his robe filled the temple. 6:2 Seraphs ²⁶  stood over him; each one had six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, ²⁷  and they used the remaining two to fly. 6:3 They called out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy ²⁸  is the Lord who commands armies! ²⁹  His majestic splendor fills the entire earth!” 6:4 The sound of their voices shook the door frames, ³⁰  and the temple was filled with smoke.

6:5 I said, “Too bad for me! I am destroyed, ³¹  for my lips are contaminated by sin, ³²  and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. ³³  My eyes have seen the king, the Lord who commands armies.” ³⁴ 

John 1:18

1:18 No one has ever seen God. The only one, ³⁵  himself God, who is in closest fellowship with ³⁶  the Father, has made God ³⁷  known. ³⁸ 

[32:20]  ¹ tn Heb “and look, your servant Jacob [is] behind us.”

[32:20]  ² tn Heb “for he said.” The referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity. The Hebrew word מַקֵל (maqel), traditionally represents Jacob’s thought or reasoning, and is therefore translated “thought.”

[32:20]  ³ tn Heb “I will appease his face.” The cohortative here expresses Jacob’s resolve. In the Book of Leviticus the Hebrew verb translated “appease” has the idea of removing anger due to sin or guilt, a nuance that fits this passage very well. Jacob wanted to buy Esau off with a gift of more than five hundred and fifty animals.

[32:20]  ⁴ tn Heb “with a gift going before me.”

[32:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will see his face.”

[32:20]  ⁶ tn Heb “Perhaps he will lift up my face.” In this context the idiom refers to acceptance.

[24:10]  ⁷ sn S. R. Driver (Exodus, 254) wishes to safeguard the traditional idea that God could not be seen by reading “they saw the place where the God of Israel stood” so as not to say they saw God. But according to U. Cassuto there is not a great deal of difference between “and they saw the God” and “the Lord God appeared” (Exodus, 314). He thinks that the word “God” is used instead of “Yahweh” to say that a divine phenomenon was seen. It is in the LXX that they add “the place where he stood.” In v. 11b the LXX has “and they appeared in the place of God.” See James Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism in the Old Testament,” VTSup 7 (1959): 31-33. There is no detailed description here of what they saw (cf. Isa 6; Ezek 1). What is described amounts to what a person could see when prostrate.

[24:10]  ⁸ sn S. R. Driver suggests that they saw the divine Glory, not directly, but as they looked up from below, through what appeared to be a transparent blue sapphire pavement (Exodus, 254).

[24:10]  ⁹ tn Or “tiles.”

[24:10]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and like the body of heaven for clearness.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven” or “sky” depending on the context; here, where sapphire is mentioned (a blue stone) “sky” seems more appropriate, since the transparent blueness of the sapphire would appear like the blueness of the cloudless sky.

[24:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he did not stretch out his hand,” i.e., to destroy them.

[24:11]  ¹² tn The verb is חָזָה (khazah); it can mean “to see, perceive” or “see a vision” as the prophets did. The LXX safeguarded this by saying, “appeared in the place of God.” B. Jacob says they beheld – prophetically, religiously (Exodus, 746) – but the meaning of that is unclear. The fact that God did not lay a hand on them – to kill them – shows that they saw something that they never expected to see and live. Some Christian interpreters have taken this to refer to a glorious appearance of the preincarnate Christ, the second person of the Trinity. They saw the brilliance of this manifestation – but not the detail. Later, Moses will still ask to see God’s glory – the real presence behind the phenomena.

[24:11]  ¹³ sn This is the covenant meal, the peace offering, that they are eating there on the mountain. To eat from the sacrifice meant that they were at peace with God, in covenant with him. Likewise, in the new covenant believers draw near to God on the basis of sacrifice, and eat of the sacrifice because they are at peace with him, and in Christ they see the Godhead revealed.

[33:20]  ¹⁴ tn In view of the use of the verb “can, be able to” in the first clause, this imperfect tense is given a potential nuance.

[33:20]  ¹⁵ tn Gesenius notes that sometimes a negative statement takes the place of a conditional clause; here it is equal to “if a man sees me he does not live” (GKC 498 §159.gg). The other passages that teach this are Gen 32:30; Deut 4:33, 5:24, 26; Judg 6:22, 13:22, and Isa 6:5.

[1:21]  ¹⁶ tn Or “keep.”

[1:21]  ¹⁷ tn Or “waiting for.”

[1:21]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “unto eternal life.”

[1:23]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “and save.”

[1:23]  ²⁰ tn Grk “and have mercy.”

[1:23]  ²¹ tn Grk “with fear.” But as this contrasts with ἀφόβως (afobw") in v. 12 (without reverence), the posture of the false teachers, it most likely refers to reverence for God.

[1:23]  ²² sn The imagery here suggests that the things close to the sinners are contaminated by them, presumably during the process of sinning.

[1:23]  ²³ tn Grk “hating even the tunic spotted by the flesh.” The “flesh” in this instance could refer to the body or to the sin nature. It makes little difference in one sense: Jude is thinking primarily of sexual sins, which are borne of the sin nature and manifest themselves in inappropriate deeds done with the body. At the same time, he is not saying that the body is intrinsically bad, a view held by the opponents of Christianity. Hence, it is best to see “flesh” as referring to the sin nature here and the language as metaphorical.

[6:1]  ²⁴ sn That is, approximately 740 b.c.

[6:1]  ²⁵ tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here and in vv. 8, 11 is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

[6:2]  ²⁶ tn Hebrew שָׂרָף (saraf, “seraph”) literally means “burning one,” perhaps suggesting that these creatures had a fiery appearance (cf. TEV, CEV “flaming creatures”; NCV “heavenly creatures of fire”). Elsewhere in the OT the word “seraph” refers to poisonous snakes (Num 21:6; Deut 8:15; Isa 14:29; 30:6). Perhaps they were called “burning ones” because of their appearance or the effect of their venomous bites, which would cause a victim to burn up with fever. It is possible that the seraphs seen by Isaiah were at least partially serpentine in appearance. Though it might seem strange for a snake-like creature to have wings, two of the texts where “seraphs” are snakes describe them as “flying” (Isa 14:29; 30:6), perhaps referring to their darting movements. See the note at 14:29.

[6:2]  ²⁷ sn Some understand “feet” here as a euphemistic reference to the genitals.

[6:3]  ²⁸ tn Some have seen a reference to the Trinity in the seraphs’ threefold declaration, “holy, holy, holy.” This proposal has no linguistic or contextual basis and should be dismissed as allegorical. Hebrew sometimes uses repetition for emphasis. (See IBHS 233-34 §12.5a; and GKC 431-32 §133.k.) By repeating the word “holy,” the seraphs emphasize the degree of the Lord’s holiness. For another example of threefold repetition for emphasis, see Ezek 21:27 (Heb. v. 32). (Perhaps Jer 22:29 provides another example.)

[6:3]  ²⁹ tn Perhaps in this context, the title has a less militaristic connotation and pictures the Lord as the ruler of the heavenly assembly. See the note at 1:9.

[6:4]  ³⁰ tn On the phrase אַמּוֹת הַסִּפִּים (’ammot hassippim, “pivots of the frames”) see HALOT 763 s.v. סַף.

[6:5]  ³¹ tn Isaiah uses the suffixed (perfect) form of the verb for rhetorical purposes. In this way his destruction is described as occurring or as already completed. Rather than understanding the verb as derived from דָּמַה (damah, “be destroyed”), some take it from a proposed homonymic root דמה, which would mean “be silent.” In this case, one might translate, “I must be silent.”

[6:5]  ³² tn Heb “a man unclean of lips am I.” Isaiah is not qualified to praise the king. His lips (the instruments of praise) are “unclean” because he has been contaminated by sin.

[6:5]  ³³ tn Heb “and among a nation unclean of lips I live.”

[6:5]  ³⁴ tn Perhaps in this context, the title has a less militaristic connotation and pictures the Lord as the ruler of the heavenly assembly. See the note at 1:9.

[1:18]  ³⁵ tc The textual problem μονογενὴς θεός (monogenh" qeo", “the only God”) versus ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός (Jo monogenh" Juio", “the only son”) is a notoriously difficult one. Only one letter would have differentiated the readings in the mss, since both words would have been contracted as nomina sacra: thus qMs or uMs. Externally, there are several variants, but they can be grouped essentially by whether they read θεός or υἱός. The majority of mss, especially the later ones (A C³ Θ Ψ Ë^1,13 Ï lat), read ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός. Ì⁷⁵ א¹ 33 pc have ὁ μονογενὴς θεός, while the anarthrous μονογενὴς θεός is found in Ì⁶⁶ א* B C* L pc. The articular θεός is almost certainly a scribal emendation to the anarthrous θεός, for θεός without the article is a much harder reading. The external evidence thus strongly supports μονογενὴς θεός. Internally, although υἱός fits the immediate context more readily, θεός is much more difficult. As well, θεός also explains the origin of the other reading (υἱός), because it is difficult to see why a scribe who found υἱός in the text he was copying would alter it to θεός. Scribes would naturally change the wording to υἱός however, since μονογενὴς υἱός is a uniquely Johannine christological title (cf. John 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). But θεός as the older and more difficult reading is preferred. As for translation, it makes the most sense to see the word θεός as in apposition to μονογενής, and the participle ὁ ὤν (Jo wn) as in apposition to θεός, giving in effect three descriptions of Jesus rather than only two. (B. D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 81, suggests that it is nearly impossible and completely unattested in the NT for an adjective followed immediately by a noun that agrees in gender, number, and case, to be a substantival adjective: “when is an adjective ever used substantivally when it immediately precedes a noun of the same inflection?” This, however, is an overstatement. First, as Ehrman admits, μονογενής in John 1:14 is substantival. And since it is an established usage for the adjective in this context, one might well expect that the author would continue to use the adjective substantivally four verses later. Indeed, μονογενής is already moving toward a crystallized substantival adjective in the NT [cf. Luke 9:38; Heb 11:17]; in patristic Greek, the process continued [cf. PGL 881 s.v. 7]. Second, there are several instances in the NT in which a substantival adjective is followed by a noun with which it has complete concord: cf., e.g., Rom 1:30; Gal 3:9; 1 Tim 1:9; 2 Pet 2:5.) The modern translations which best express this are the NEB (margin) and TEV. Several things should be noted: μονογενής alone, without υἱός, can mean “only son,” “unique son,” “unique one,” etc. (see 1:14). Furthermore, θεός is anarthrous. As such it carries qualitative force much like it does in 1:1c, where θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (qeo" hn Jo logo") means “the Word was fully God” or “the Word was fully of the essence of deity.” Finally, ὁ ὤν occurs in Rev 1:4, 8; 4:8, 11:17; and 16:5, but even more significantly in the LXX of Exod 3:14. Putting all of this together leads to the translation given in the text.

[1:18]  ³⁶ tn Grk “in the bosom of” (an idiom for closeness or nearness; cf. L&N 34.18; BDAG 556 s.v. κόλπος 1).

[1:18]  ³⁷ tn Grk “him”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:18]  ³⁸ sn Has made God known. In this final verse of the prologue, the climactic and ultimate statement of the earthly career of the Logos, Jesus of Nazareth, is reached. The unique One (John 1:14), the One who has taken on human form and nature by becoming incarnate (became flesh, 1:14), who is himself fully God (the Word was God, 1:1c) and is to be identified with the ever-living One of the Old Testament revelation (Exod 3:14), who is in intimate relationship with the Father, this One and no other has fully revealed what God is like. As Jesus said to Philip in John 14:9, “The one who has seen me has seen the Father.”