³ tn According to BDB 1074 s.v. תִּפְלָּה this word means “unseemly, unsavory.” The related adjective is used in Job 6:6 of the tastelessness of something that is unseasoned.

⁶ tn The Poel participle מְתֹפְפֹת (mÿtofÿfot, “beating continuously”) is from תָפַף (“to beat”; HALOT 1037-38 s.v. תֹּף; BDB 1074 s.v. תָּפַף). Elsewhere it is used of beating timbrels (Ps 68:26; 1 Sam 21:14). The participle describes a circumstance accompanying the main action (“her maidservants moan”) and functions in a continual, repetitive manner (see IBHS 625-26 §37.6; R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 43, §221).

² sn Here the author makes two further points about the catch of fish: (1) there were one hundred fifty-three large fish in the net, and (2) even with so many, the net was not torn. Many symbolic interpretations have been proposed for both points (unity, especially, in the case of the second), but the reader is given no explicit clarification in the text itself. It seems better not to speculate here, but to see these details as indicative of an eyewitness account. Both are the sort of thing that would remain in the mind of a person who had witnessed them firsthand. For a summary of the symbolic interpretations proposed for the number of fish in the net, see R. E. Brown (John [AB], 2:1074-75), where a number are discussed at length. Perhaps the reader is simply to understand this as the abundance which results from obedience to Jesus, much as with the amount of wine generated in the water jars in Cana at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry (2:6).