John 8:43

8:43 Why don’t you understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot accept ¹  my teaching. ² 

John 8:45-47

8:45 But because I am telling you ³  the truth, you do not believe me. 8:46 Who among you can prove me guilty ⁴  of any sin? ⁵  If I am telling you ⁶  the truth, why don’t you believe me? 8:47 The one who belongs to ⁷  God listens and responds ⁸  to God’s words. You don’t listen and respond, ⁹  because you don’t belong to God.” ¹⁰ 

John 5:44

5:44 How can you believe, if you accept praise ¹¹  from one another and don’t seek the praise ¹²  that comes from the only God? ¹³ 

John 12:39-43

12:39 For this reason they could not believe, ¹⁴  because again Isaiah said,

12:40 “He has blinded their eyes

and hardened their heart, ¹⁵ 

so that they would not see with their eyes

and understand with their heart, ¹⁶ 

and turn to me, ¹⁷  and I would heal them.” ¹⁸ 

12:41 Isaiah said these things because he saw Christ’s ¹⁹  glory, and spoke about him.

12:42 Nevertheless, even among the rulers ²⁰  many believed in him, but because of the Pharisees ²¹  they would not confess Jesus to be the Christ, ²²  so that they would not be put out of ²³  the synagogue. ²⁴  12:43 For they loved praise ²⁵  from men more than praise ²⁶  from God.

Matthew 13:15

13:15 For the heart of this people has become dull;

they are hard of hearing,

and they have shut their eyes,

so that they would not see with their eyes

and hear with their ears

and understand with their hearts

and turn, and I would heal them.’ ²⁷ 

Matthew 13:19-22

13:19 When anyone hears the word about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one ²⁸  comes and snatches what was sown in his heart; ²⁹  this is the seed sown along the path. 13:20 The ³⁰  seed sown on rocky ground ³¹  is the person who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. 13:21 But he has no root in himself and does not endure; ³²  when ³³  trouble or persecution comes because of the word, immediately he falls away. 13:22 The ³⁴  seed sown among thorns is the person who hears the word, but worldly cares and the seductiveness of wealth ³⁵  choke the word, ³⁶  so it produces nothing.

Matthew 13:1

The Parable of the Sower

13:1 On that day after Jesus went out of the house, he sat by the lake.

Colossians 2:14

2:14 He has destroyed ³⁷  what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness ³⁸  expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.

[8:43]  ¹ tn Grk “you cannot hear,” but this is not a reference to deafness, but rather hearing in the sense of listening to something and responding to it.

[8:43]  ² tn Grk “my word.”

[8:45]  ³ tn Or “because I tell you.”

[8:46]  ⁴ tn Or “can convict me.”

[8:46]  ⁵ tn Or “of having sinned”; Grk “of sin.”

[8:46]  ⁶ tn Or “if I tell you.”

[8:47]  ⁷ tn Grk “who is of.”

[8:47]  ⁸ tn Grk “to God hears” (in the sense of listening to something and responding to it).

[8:47]  ⁹ tn Grk “you do not hear” (in the sense of listening to something and responding to it).

[8:47]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “you are not of God.”

[5:44]  ¹¹ tn Or “honor” (Grk “glory,” in the sense of respect or honor accorded to a person because of their status).

[5:44]  ¹² tn Or “honor” (Grk “glory,” in the sense of respect or honor accorded to a person because of their status).

[5:44]  ¹³ tc Several early and important witnesses (Ì^66,75 B W a b sa) lack θεοῦ (qeou, “God”) here, thus reading “the only one,” while most of the rest of the tradition, including some important mss, has the name ({א A D L Θ Ψ 33 Ï}). Internally, it could be argued that the name of God was not used here, in keeping with the NT practice of suppressing the name of God at times for rhetorical effect, drawing the reader inexorably to the conclusion that the one being spoken of is God himself. On the other hand, never is ὁ μόνος (Jo mono") used absolutely in the NT (i.e., without a noun or substantive with it), and always the subject of the adjunct is God (cf. Matt 24:36; John 17:3; 1 Tim 6:16). What then is to explain the shorter reading? In uncial script, with θεοῦ written as a nomen sacrum, envisioning accidental omission of the name by way of homoioteleuton requires little imagination, largely because of the succession of words ending in -ου: toumonouqMuou. It is thus preferable to retain the word in the text.

[12:39]  ¹⁴ sn The author explicitly states here that Jesus’ Jewish opponents could not believe, and quotes Isa 6:10 to show that God had in fact blinded their eyes and hardened their heart. This OT passage was used elsewhere in the NT to explain Jewish unbelief: Paul’s final words in Acts (28:26-27) are a quotation of this same passage, which he uses to explain why the Jewish people have not accepted the gospel he has preached. A similar passage (Isa 29:10) is quoted in a similar context in Rom 11:8.

[12:40]  ¹⁵ tn Or “closed their mind.”

[12:40]  ¹⁶ tn Or “their mind.”

[12:40]  ¹⁷ tn One could also translate στραφῶσιν (strafwsin) as “repent” or “change their ways,” but both of these terms would be subject to misinterpretation by the modern English reader. The idea is one of turning back to God, however. The words “to me” are not in the Greek text, but are implied.

[12:40]  ¹⁸ sn A quotation from Isa 6:10.

[12:41]  ¹⁹ 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).

[12:42]  ²⁰ sn The term rulers here denotes members of the Sanhedrin, the highest legal, legislative, and judicial body among the Jews. Note the same word (“ruler”) is used to describe Nicodemus in 3:1.

[12:42]  ²¹ sn See the note on Pharisees in 1:24.

[12:42]  ²² tn The words “Jesus to be the Christ” are not in the Greek text, but are implied (see 9:22). As is often the case in Greek, the direct object is omitted for the verb ὡμολόγουν (Jwmologoun). Some translators supply an ambiguous “it,” or derive the implied direct object from the previous clause “believed in him” so that the rulers would not confess “their faith” or “their belief.” However, when one compares John 9:22, which has many verbal parallels to this verse, it seems clear that the content of the confession would have been “Jesus is the Christ (i.e., Messiah).”

[12:42]  ²³ tn Or “be expelled from.”

[12:42]  ²⁴ sn Compare John 9:22. See the note on synagogue in 6:59.

[12:43]  ²⁵ tn Grk “the glory.”

[12:43]  ²⁶ tn Grk “the glory.”

[13:15]  ²⁷ sn A quotation from Isa 6:9-10. Thus parables both conceal or reveal depending on whether one is open to hearing what they teach.

[13:19]  ²⁸ sn Interestingly, the synoptic parallels each use a different word for Satan here: Mark 4:15 has “Satan,” while Luke 8:12 has “the devil.” This illustrates the fluidity of the gospel tradition in often using synonyms at the same point of the parallel tradition.

[13:19]  ²⁹ sn The word of Jesus has the potential to save if it germinates in a person’s heart, something the devil is very much against.

[13:20]  ³⁰ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[13:20]  ³¹ tn Grk “The one sown on rocky ground, this is the one.” The next two statements like this one have this same syntactical structure.

[13:21]  ³² tn Grk “is temporary.”

[13:21]  ³³ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[13:22]  ³⁴ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[13:22]  ³⁵ tn Grk “the deceitfulness of riches.” Cf. BDAG 99 s.v. ἀπάτη 1, “the seduction which comes from wealth.”

[13:22]  ³⁶ sn That is, their concern for spiritual things is crowded out by material things.

[2:14]  ³⁷ tn The participle ἐξαλείψας (exaleiyas) is a temporal adverbial participle of contemporaneous time related to the previous verb συνεζωοποίησεν (sunezwopoihsen), but has been translated as a finite verb because of the complexity of the Greek sentence and the tendency of contemporary English to use shorter sentences. For the meaning “destroy” see BDAG 344-45 s.v. ἐξαλείφω 2.

[2:14]  ³⁸ tn On the translation of χειρόγραφον (ceirografon), see BDAG 1083 s.v. which refers to it as “a certificate of indebtedness.”