Job 33:30

33:30 to turn back his life from the place of corruption,

that he may be enlightened with the light of life.

John 8:12

Jesus as the Light of the World

8:12 Then Jesus spoke out again, ¹  “I am the light of the world. ²  The one who follows me will never ³  walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

John 12:35-36

12:35 Jesus replied, ⁴  “The light is with you for a little while longer. ⁵  Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. ⁶  The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 12:36 While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become sons of light.” ⁷  When Jesus had said these things, he went away and hid himself from them.

Ephesians 5:8-14

5:8 for you were at one time darkness, but now you are ⁸  light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light – 5:9 for the fruit of the light ⁹  consists in ¹⁰  all goodness, righteousness, and truth – 5:10 trying to learn ¹¹  what is pleasing to the Lord. 5:11 Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but rather ¹²  expose them. ¹³  5:12 For the things they do ¹⁴  in secret are shameful even to mention. 5:13 But all things being exposed by the light are made evident. 5:14 For everything made evident is light, and for this reason it says: ¹⁵ 

“Awake, ¹⁶  O sleeper! ¹⁷ 

Rise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you!” ¹⁸ 

Revelation 21:23-24

21:23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God lights it up, and its lamp is the Lamb. 21:24 The nations ¹⁹  will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their grandeur ²⁰  into it.

[8:12]  ¹ tn Grk “Then again Jesus spoke to them saying.”

[8:12]  ² sn The theory proposed by F. J. A. Hort (The New Testament in the Original Greek, vol. 2, Introduction; Appendix, 87-88), that the backdrop of 8:12 is the lighting of the candelabra in the court of women, may offer a plausible setting to the proclamation by Jesus that he is the light of the world. The last time that Jesus spoke in the narrative (assuming 7:53-8:11 is not part of the original text, as the textual evidence suggests) is in 7:38, where he was speaking to a crowd of pilgrims in the temple area. This is where he is found in the present verse, and he may be addressing the crowd again. Jesus’ remark has to be seen in view of both the prologue (John 1:4, 5) and the end of the discourse with Nicodemus (John 3:19-21). The coming of Jesus into the world provokes judgment: A choosing up of sides becomes necessary. The one who comes to the light, that is, who follows Jesus, will not walk in the darkness. The one who refuses to come, will walk in the darkness. In this contrast, there are only two alternatives. So it is with a person’s decision about Jesus. Furthermore, this serves as in implicit indictment of Jesus’ opponents, who still walk in the darkness, because they refuse to come to him. This sets up the contrast in chap. 9 between the man born blind, who receives both physical and spiritual sight, and the Pharisees (John 9:13, 15, 16) who have physical sight but remain in spiritual darkness.

[8:12]  ³ tn The double negative οὐ μή (ou mh) is emphatic in 1st century Hellenistic Greek.

[12:35]  ⁴ tn Grk “Then Jesus said to them.”

[12:35]  ⁵ tn Grk “Yet a little while the light is with you.”

[12:35]  ⁶ sn The warning Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you operates on at least two different levels: (1) To the Jewish people in Jerusalem to whom Jesus spoke, the warning was a reminder that there was only a little time left for them to accept him as their Messiah. (2) To those later individuals to whom the Fourth Gospel was written, and to every person since, the words of Jesus are also a warning: There is a finite, limited time in which each individual has opportunity to respond to the Light of the world (i.e., Jesus); after that comes darkness. One’s response to the Light decisively determines one’s judgment for eternity.

[12:36]  ⁷ tn The idiom “sons of light” means essentially “people characterized by light,” that is, “people of God.”

[5:8]  ⁸ tn The verb “you are” is implied in the Greek text, but is supplied in the English translation to make it clear.

[5:9]  ⁹ tc Several mss (Ì⁴⁶ D² Ψ Ï) have πνεύματος (pneumatos, “Spirit”) instead of φωτός (fwtos, “light”). Although most today regard φωτός as obviously original (UBS⁴ gives it an “A” rating), a case could be made that πνεύματος is what the author wrote. First, although this is largely a Byzantine reading (D² often, if not normally, assimilates to the Byzantine text), Ì⁴⁶ gives the reading much greater credibility. Internally, the φωτός at the end of v. 8 could have lined up above the πνεύματος in v. 9 in a scribe’s exemplar, thus occasioning dittography. (It is interesting to note that in both Ì⁴⁹ and א the two instances of φωτός line up.) However, written in a contracted form, as a nomen sacrum (pMnMs) – a practice found even in the earliest mss – πνεύματος would not have been easily confused with fwtos (there being only the last letter to occasion homoioteleuton rather than the last three). Further, the external evidence for φωτός is quite compelling (Ì⁴⁹ א A B D* F G P 33 81 1739 1881 2464 pc latt co); it is rather doubtful that the early and widespread witnesses all mistook πνεύματος for φωτός. In addition, πνεύματος can be readily explained as harking back to Gal 5:22 (“the fruit of the Spirit”). Thus, on balance, φωτός appears to be original, giving rise to the reading πνεύματος.

[5:9]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “in.” The idea is that the fruit of the light is “expressed in” or “consists of.”

[5:10]  ¹¹ tn BDAG 255 s.v. δοκιμάζω 1 translates δοκιμάζοντες (dokimazonte") in Eph 5:10 as “try to learn.”

[5:11]  ¹² tn The Greek conjunction καὶ (kai) seems to be functioning here ascensively, (i.e., “even”), but is difficult to render in this context using good English. It may read something like: “but rather even expose them!”

[5:11]  ¹³ tn Grk “rather even expose.”

[5:12]  ¹⁴ tn The participle τὰ…γινόμενα (ta…ginomena) usually refers to “things happening” or “things which are,” but with the following genitive phrase ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν (Jup’ autwn), which indicates agency, the idea seems to be “things being done.” This passive construction was translated as an active one to simplify the English style.

[5:14]  ¹⁵ sn The following passage has been typeset as poetry because many scholars regard this passage as poetic or hymnic. These terms are used broadly to refer to the genre of writing, not to the content. There are two broad criteria for determining if a passage is poetic or hymnic: “(a) stylistic: a certain rhythmical lilt when the passages are read aloud, the presence of parallelismus membrorum (i.e., an arrangement into couplets), the semblance of some metre, and the presence of rhetorical devices such as alliteration, chiasmus, and antithesis; and (b) linguistic: an unusual vocabulary, particularly the presence of theological terms, which is different from the surrounding context” (P. T. O’Brien, Philippians [NIGTC], 188-89). Classifying a passage as hymnic or poetic is important because understanding this genre can provide keys to interpretation. However, not all scholars agree that the above criteria are present in this passage, so the decision to typeset it as poetry should be viewed as a tentative decision about its genre.

[5:14]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “Rise up.”

[5:14]  ¹⁷ tn The articular nominative participle ὁ καθεύδων (Jo kaqeudwn) is probably functioning as a nominative for vocative. Thus, it has been translated as “O sleeper.”

[5:14]  ¹⁸ sn A composite quotation, possibly from Isa 26:19, 51:17, 52:1, and 60:1.

[21:24]  ¹⁹ tn Or “the Gentiles” (the same Greek word may be translated “Gentiles” or “nations”).

[21:24]  ²⁰ tn Or “splendor”; Grk “glory.”