John 14:18

14:18 “I will not abandon ¹  you as orphans, ²  I will come to you. ³ 

John 10:12

10:12 The hired hand, ⁴  who is not a shepherd and does not own sheep, sees the wolf coming and abandons ⁵  the sheep and runs away. ⁶  So the wolf attacks ⁷  the sheep and scatters them.

[14:18]  ¹ tn Or “leave.”

[14:18]  ² tn The entire phrase “abandon you as orphans” could be understood as an idiom meaning, “leave you helpless.”

[14:18]  ³ sn I will come to you. Jesus had spoken in 14:3 of going away and coming again to his disciples. There the reference was both to the parousia (the second coming of Christ) and to the postresurrection appearances of Jesus to the disciples. Here the postresurrection appearances are primarily in view, since Jesus speaks of the disciples “seeing” him after the world can “see” him no longer in the following verse. But many commentators have taken v. 18 as a reference to the coming of the Spirit, since this has been the topic of the preceding verses. Still, vv. 19-20 appear to contain references to Jesus’ appearances to the disciples after his resurrection. It may well be that another Johannine double meaning is found here, so that Jesus ‘returns’ to his disciples in one sense in his appearances to them after his resurrection, but in another sense he ‘returns’ in the person of the Holy Spirit to indwell them.

[10:12]  ⁴ sn Jesus contrasts the behavior of the shepherd with that of the hired hand. This is a worker who is simply paid to do a job; he has no other interest in the sheep and is certainly not about to risk his life for them. When they are threatened, he simply runs away.

[10:12]  ⁵ tn Grk “leaves.”

[10:12]  ⁶ tn Or “flees.”

[10:12]  ⁷ tn Or “seizes.” The more traditional rendering, “snatches,” has the idea of seizing something by force and carrying it off, which is certainly possible here. However, in the sequence in John 10:12, this action precedes the scattering of the flock of sheep, so “attacks” is preferable.