Judges 13:22-23

13:22 Manoah said to his wife, “We will certainly die, because we have seen a supernatural being!” ¹  13:23 But his wife said to him, “If the Lord wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us. ²  He would not have shown us all these things, or have spoken to us like this just now.”

Genesis 16:13

16:13 So Hagar named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are the God who sees me,” ³  for she said, “Here I have seen one who sees me!” ⁴ 

Genesis 32:30

32:30 So Jacob named the place Peniel, ⁵  explaining, ⁶  “Certainly ⁷  I have seen God face to face ⁸  and have survived.” ⁹ 

Exodus 33:20

33:20 But he added, “You cannot see my face, for no one can ¹⁰  see me and live.” ¹¹ 

Deuteronomy 5:5

5:5 (I was standing between the Lord and you at that time to reveal to you the message ¹²  of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and would not go up the mountain.) He said:

Deuteronomy 5:24

5:24 You said, “The Lord our God has shown us his great glory ¹³  and we have heard him speak from the middle of the fire. It is now clear to us ¹⁴  that God can speak to human beings and they can keep on living.

Deuteronomy 5:26

5:26 Who is there from the entire human race ¹⁵  who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the middle of the fire as we have, and has lived?

Isaiah 6:5-8

6:5 I said, “Too bad for me! I am destroyed, ¹⁶  for my lips are contaminated by sin, ¹⁷  and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. ¹⁸  My eyes have seen the king, the Lord who commands armies.” ¹⁹  6:6 But then one of the seraphs flew toward me. In his hand was a hot coal he had taken from the altar with tongs. 6:7 He touched my mouth with it and said, “Look, this coal has touched your lips. Your evil is removed; your sin is forgiven.” ²⁰  6:8 I heard the voice of the sovereign master say, “Whom will I send? Who will go on our behalf?” ²¹  I answered, “Here I am, send me!”

John 1:18

1:18 No one has ever seen God. The only one, ²²  himself God, who is in closest fellowship with ²³  the Father, has made God ²⁴  known. ²⁵ 

John 12:41

12:41 Isaiah said these things because he saw Christ’s ²⁶  glory, and spoke about him.

[13:22]  ¹ tn Or “seen God.” Some take the Hebrew term אֱלֹהִים (’elohim) as the divine name (“God”) here, but this seems unlikely since v. 21 informs us that Manoah realized this was the Lord’s messenger, not God himself. Of course, he may be exaggerating for the sake of emphasis. Another option, the one followed in the translation, understands Manoah to be referring to a lesser deity. The term אֱלֹהִים (’elohim) is sometimes used of an individual deity other than the Lord (see BDB 43 s.v. 2.a). One cannot assume that Manoah was a theologically sophisticated monotheist.

[13:23]  ² tn Heb “our hand.”

[16:13]  ³ tn Heb “God of my seeing.” The pronominal suffix may be understood either as objective (“who sees me,” as in the translation) or subjective (“whom I see”).

[16:13]  ⁴ tn Heb “after one who sees me.”

[32:30]  ⁵ sn The name Peniel means “face of God.” Since Jacob saw God face to face here, the name is appropriate.

[32:30]  ⁶ tn The word “explaining” is supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[32:30]  ⁷ tn Or “because.”

[32:30]  ⁸ sn I have seen God face to face. See the note on the name “Peniel” earlier in the verse.

[32:30]  ⁹ tn Heb “and my soul [= life] has been preserved.”

[33:20]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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.

[5:5]  ¹² tn Or “word” (so KJV, NASB, NIV); NRSV “words.”

[5:24]  ¹³ tn Heb “his glory and his greatness.”

[5:24]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “this day we have seen.”

[5:26]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “who is there of all flesh.”

[6:5]  ¹⁶ 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]  ¹⁷ 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]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and among a nation unclean of lips I live.”

[6:5]  ¹⁹ 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.

[6:7]  ²⁰ tn Or “ritually cleansed,” or “atoned for” (NIV).

[6:8]  ²¹ tn Heb “for us.” The plural pronoun refers to the Lord, the seraphs, and the rest of the heavenly assembly.

[1:18]  ²² 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]  ²³ 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]  ²⁴ tn Grk “him”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:18]  ²⁵ 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.”

[12:41]  ²⁶ tn Grk “his”; the referent (Christ) has been specified in the translation for clarity. The referent supplied here is “Christ” rather than “Jesus” because it involves what Isaiah saw. It is clear that the author presents Isaiah as having seen the preincarnate glory of Christ, which was the very revelation of the Father (see John 1:18; John 14:9).