John 15:18-19

The World’s Hatred

15:18 “If the world hates you, be aware ¹  that it hated me first. ²  15:19 If you belonged to the world, ³  the world would love you as its own. ⁴  However, because you do not belong to the world, ⁵  but I chose you out of the world, for this reason ⁶  the world hates you. ⁷ 

John 15:23-25

15:23 The one who hates me hates my Father too. 15:24 If I had not performed ⁸  among them the miraculous deeds ⁹  that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. ¹⁰  But now they have seen the deeds ¹¹  and have hated both me and my Father. ¹²  15:25 Now this happened ¹³  to fulfill the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without reason.’ ¹⁴ 

John 17:14

17:14 I have given them your word, ¹⁵  and the world has hated them, because they do not belong to the world, ¹⁶  just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁷ 

Proverbs 8:36

8:36 But the one who does not find me ¹⁸  brings harm ¹⁹  to himself; ²⁰ 

all who hate me ²¹  love death.”

Isaiah 49:7

49:7 This is what the Lord,

the protector ²²  of Israel, their Holy One, ²³  says

to the one who is despised ²⁴  and rejected ²⁵  by nations, ²⁶ 

a servant of rulers:

“Kings will see and rise in respect, ²⁷ 

princes will bow down,

because of the faithful Lord,

the Holy One of Israel who has chosen you.”

Zechariah 11:8

11:8 Next I eradicated the three shepherds in one month, ²⁸  for I ran out of patience with them and, indeed, they detested me as well.

Romans 8:7

8:7 because the outlook of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so.

Romans 8:1

The Believer’s Relationship to the Holy Spirit

8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ 

Romans 3:12-13

3:12 All have turned away,

together they have become worthless;

there is no one who shows kindness, not even one.” ³⁰ 

3:13 “Their throats are open graves, ³¹ 

they deceive with their tongues,

the poison of asps is under their lips.” ³² 

[15:18]  ¹ tn Grk “know.”

[15:18]  ² tn Grk “it hated me before you.”

[15:19]  ³ tn Grk “if you were of the world.”

[15:19]  ⁴ tn The words “you as” are not in the original but are supplied for clarity.

[15:19]  ⁵ tn Grk “because you are not of the world.”

[15:19]  ⁶ tn Or “world, therefore.”

[15:19]  ⁷ sn I chose you out of the world…the world hates you. Two themes are brought together here. In 8:23 Jesus had distinguished himself from the world in addressing his Jewish opponents: “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” In 15:16 Jesus told the disciples “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you.” Now Jesus has united these two ideas as he informs the disciples that he has chosen them out of the world. While the disciples will still be “in” the world after Jesus has departed, they will not belong to it, and Jesus prays later in John 17:15-16 to the Father, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The same theme also occurs in 1 John 4:5-6: “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.” Thus the basic reason why the world hates the disciples (as it hated Jesus before them) is because they are not of the world. They are born from above, and are not of the world. For this reason the world hates them.

[15:24]  ⁸ tn Or “If I had not done.”

[15:24]  ⁹ tn Grk “the works.”

[15:24]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “they would not have sin” (an idiom).

[15:24]  ¹¹ tn The words “the deeds” are supplied to clarify from context what was seen. Direct objects in Greek were often omitted when clear from the context.

[15:24]  ¹² tn Or “But now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father.” It is possible to understand both the “seeing” and the “hating” to refer to both Jesus and the Father, but this has the world “seeing” the Father, which seems alien to the Johannine Jesus. (Some point out John 14:9 as an example, but this is addressed to the disciples, not to the world.) It is more likely that the “seeing” refers to the miraculous deeds mentioned in the first half of the verse. Such an understanding of the first “both – and” construction is apparently supported by BDF §444.3.

[15:25]  ¹³ tn The words “this happened” are not in the Greek text but are supplied to complete an ellipsis.

[15:25]  ¹⁴ sn A quotation from Ps 35:19 and Ps 69:4. As a technical term law (νόμος, nomos) is usually restricted to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the OT), but here it must have a broader reference, since the quotation is from Ps 35:19 or Ps 69:4. The latter is the more likely source for the quoted words, since it is cited elsewhere in John’s Gospel (2:17 and 19:29, in both instances in contexts associated with Jesus’ suffering and death).

[17:14]  ¹⁵ tn Or “your message.”

[17:14]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “because they are not of the world.”

[17:14]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “just as I am not of the world.”

[8:36]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the one sinning [against] me.” The verb חָטָא (khata’, “to sin”) forms a contrast with “find” in the previous verse, and so has its basic meaning of “failing to find, miss.” So it is talking about the one who misses wisdom, as opposed to the one who finds it.

[8:36]  ¹⁹ tn The Qal active participle functions verbally here. The word stresses both social and physical harm and violence.

[8:36]  ²⁰ tn Heb “his soul.”

[8:36]  ²¹ tn The basic idea of the verb שָׂנֵא (sane’, “to hate”) is that of rejection. Its antonym is also used in the line, “love,” which has the idea of choosing. So not choosing (i.e., hating) wisdom amounts to choosing (i.e., loving) death.

[49:7]  ²² tn Heb “redeemer.” See the note at 41:14.

[49:7]  ²³ sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.

[49:7]  ²⁴ tc The Hebrew text reads literally “to [one who] despises life.” It is preferable to read with the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a לבזוי, which should be vocalized as a passive participle, לִבְזוּי (livzuy, “to the one despised with respect to life” [נֶפֶשׁ is a genitive of specification]). The consonantal sequence וי was probably misread as ה in the MT tradition. The contextual argument favors the 1QIsa^a reading. As J. N. Oswalt (Isaiah [NICOT], 2:294) points out, the three terse phrases “convey a picture of lowliness, worthlessness, and helplessness.”

[49:7]  ²⁵ tn MT’s Piel participle (“to the one who rejects”) does not fit contextually. The form should be revocalized as a Pual, “to the one rejected.”

[49:7]  ²⁶ tn Parallelism (see “rulers,” “kings,” “princes”) suggests that the singular גּוֹי (goy) be emended to a plural or understood in a collective sense (see 55:5).

[49:7]  ²⁷ tn For this sense of קוּם (qum), see Gen 19:1; 23:7; 33:10; Lev 19:32; 1 Sam 20:41; 25:41; 1 Kgs 2:19; Job 29:8.

[11:8]  ²⁸ sn Zechariah is only dramatizing what God had done historically (see the note on the word “cedars” in 11:1). The “one month” probably means just any short period of time in which three kings ruled in succession. Likely candidates are Elah, Zimri, Tibni (1 Kgs 16:8-20); Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem (2 Kgs 15:8-16); or Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah (2 Kgs 24:1–25:7).

[8:1]  ²⁹ tc The earliest and best witnesses of the Alexandrian and Western texts, as well as a few others (א* B D* F G 6 1506 1739 1881 pc co), have no additional words for v. 1. Later scribes (A D¹ Ψ 81 365 629 pc vg) added the words μὴ κατὰ σάρκα περιπατοῦσιν (mh kata sarka peripatousin, “who do not walk according to the flesh”), while even later ones (א² D² 33^vid Ï) added ἀλλὰ κατὰ πνεῦμα (alla kata pneuma, “but [who do walk] according to the Spirit”). Both the external evidence and the internal evidence are compelling for the shortest reading. The scribes were evidently motivated to add such qualifications (interpolated from v. 4) to insulate Paul’s gospel from charges that it was characterized too much by grace. The KJV follows the longest reading found in Ï.

[3:12]  ³⁰ sn Verses 10-12 are a quotation from Ps 14:1-3.

[3:13]  ³¹ tn Grk “their throat is an opened grave.”

[3:13]  ³² sn A quotation from Pss 5:9; 140:3.