Genesis 11:5

11:5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people ¹  had started ²  building.

Genesis 11:7

11:7 Come, let’s go down and confuse ³  their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” ⁴ 

Exodus 3:8

3:8 I have come down ⁵  to deliver them ⁶  from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a land that is both good and spacious, ⁷  to a land flowing with milk and honey, ⁸  to the region of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. ⁹ 

Exodus 33:5

33:5 For ¹⁰  the Lord had said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. If I went up among you for a moment, ¹¹  I might destroy you. Now take off your ornaments, ¹²  that I may know ¹³  what I should do to you.’” ¹⁴ 

Micah 1:3

1:3 Look, ¹⁵  the Lord is coming out of his dwelling place!

He will descend and march on the earth’s mountaintops! ¹⁶ 

John 6:38

6:38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.

John 6:1

The Feeding of the Five Thousand

6:1 After this ¹⁷  Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee (also called the Sea of Tiberias). ¹⁸ 

John 4:16

4:16 He ¹⁹  said to her, “Go call your husband and come back here.” ²⁰ 

[11:5]  ¹ tn Heb “the sons of man.” The phrase is intended in this polemic to portray the builders as mere mortals, not the lesser deities that the Babylonians claimed built the city.

[11:5]  ² tn The Hebrew text simply has בָּנוּ (banu), but since v. 8 says they left off building the city, an ingressive idea (“had started building”) should be understood here.

[11:7]  ³ tn The cohortatives mirror the cohortatives of the people. They build to ascend the heavens; God comes down to destroy their language. God speaks here to his angelic assembly. See the notes on the word “make” in 1:26 and “know” in 3:5, as well as Jub. 10:22-23, where an angel recounts this incident and says “And the Lord our God said to us…. And the Lord went down and we went down with him. And we saw the city and the tower which the sons of men built.” On the chiastic structure of the story, see G. J. Wenham, Genesis (WBC), 1:235.

[11:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “they will not hear, a man the lip of his neighbor.”

[3:8]  ⁵ sn God’s coming down is a frequent anthropomorphism in Genesis and Exodus. It expresses his direct involvement, often in the exercise of judgment.

[3:8]  ⁶ tn The Hiphil infinitive with the suffix is לְהַצִּילוֹ (lÿhatsilo, “to deliver them”). It expresses the purpose of God’s coming down. The verb itself is used for delivering or rescuing in the general sense, and snatching out of danger for the specific.

[3:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “to a land good and large”; NRSV “to a good and broad land.” In the translation the words “that is both” are supplied because in contemporary English “good and” combined with any additional descriptive term can be understood as elative (“good and large” = “very large”; “good and spacious” = “very spacious”; “good and ready” = “very ready”). The point made in the Hebrew text is that the land to which they are going is both good (in terms of quality) and large (in terms of size).

[3:8]  ⁸ tn This vibrant description of the promised land is a familiar one. Gesenius classifies “milk and honey” as epexegetical genitives because they provide more precise description following a verbal adjective in the construct state (GKC 418-19 §128.x). The land is modified by “flowing,” and “flowing” is explained by the genitives “milk and honey.” These two products will be in abundance in the land, and they therefore exemplify what a desirable land it is. The language is hyperbolic, as if the land were streaming with these products.

[3:8]  ⁹ tn Each people group is joined to the preceding by the vav conjunction, “and.” Each also has the definite article, as in other similar lists (3:17; 13:5; 34:11). To repeat the conjunction and article in the translation seems to put more weight on the list in English than is necessary to its function in identifying what land God was giving the Israelites.

[33:5]  ¹⁰ tn The verse simply begins “And Yahweh said.” But it is clearly meant to be explanatory for the preceding action of the people.

[33:5]  ¹¹ tn The construction is formed with a simple imperfect in the first half and a perfect tense with vav (ו) in the second half. Heb “[in] one moment I will go up in your midst and I will destroy you.” The verse is certainly not intended to say that God was about to destroy them. That, plus the fact that he has announced he will not go in their midst, leads most commentators to take this as a conditional clause: “If I were to do such and such, then….”

[33:5]  ¹² tn The Hebrew text also has “from on you.”

[33:5]  ¹³ tn The form is the cohortative with a vav (ו) following the imperative; it therefore expresses the purpose or result: “strip off…that I may know.” The call to remove the ornaments must have been perceived as a call to show true repentance for what had happened. If they repented, then God would know how to deal with them.

[33:5]  ¹⁴ tn This last clause begins with the interrogative “what,” but it is used here as an indirect interrogative. It introduces a noun clause, the object of the verb “know.”

[1:3]  ¹⁵ tn Or “For look.” The expression כִּי־הִנֵּה (ki-hinneh) may function as an explanatory introduction (“For look!”; Isa 26:21; 60:2; 65:17, 18: 66:15; Jer 1:15; 25:29; 30:10; 45:5; 46:27; 50:9; Ezek 30:9; 36:9; Zech 2:10; 3:8), or as an emphatic introduction (“Look!”; Jdgs 3:15; Isa 3:1; Jer 8:17; 30:3; 49:15; Hos 9:6; Joel 3:1 [HT 4:1]; Amos 4:2, 13; 6:11, 14; 9:9; Hab 1:6; Zech 2:9 [HT 2:13]; Zech 3:9; 11:16).

[1:3]  ¹⁶ tn Or “high places” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[6:1]  ¹⁷ tn Again, μετὰ ταῦτα (meta tauta) is a vague temporal reference. How Jesus got from Jerusalem to Galilee is not explained, which has led many scholars (e.g., Bernard, Bultmann, and Schnackenburg) to posit either editorial redaction or some sort of rearrangement or dislocation of material (such as reversing the order of chaps. 5 and 6, for example). Such a rearrangement of the material would give a simple and consistent connection of events, but in the absence of all external evidence it does not seem to be supportable. R. E. Brown (John [AB], 1:236) says that such an arrangement is attractive in some ways but not compelling, and that no rearrangement can solve all the geographical and chronological problems in John.

[6:1]  ¹⁸ sn This is a parenthetical note by the author. Only John in the New Testament refers to the Sea of Galilee by the name Sea of Tiberias (see also John 21:1), but this is correct local usage. In the mid-20’s Herod completed the building of the town of Tiberias on the southwestern shore of the lake; after this time the name came into use for the lake itself.

[4:16]  ¹⁹ tc Most witnesses have “Jesus” here, either with the article (א^c C² D L W^s Ψ 086 Ï lat) or without (א* A Θ Ë^1,13 al), while several important and early witnesses lack the name (Ì^66,75 B C* 33^vid pc). It is unlikely that scribes would have deliberately expunged the name of Jesus from the text here, especially since it aids the reader with the flow of the dialogue. Further, that the name occurs both anarthrously and with the article suggests that it was a later addition. (For similar arguments, see the tc note on “woman” in 4:11).

[4:16]  ²⁰ tn Grk “come here” (“back” is implied).