Yohanes 3:10

3:10 Jesus answered, ¹  “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you don’t understand these things? ² 

Yohanes 17:15

17:15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but that you keep them safe ³  from the evil one. ⁴ 

Yohanes 21:5

21:5 So Jesus said to them, “Children, you don’t have any fish, ⁵  do you?” ⁶  They replied, ⁷  “No.”

[3:10]  ¹ tn Grk “Jesus answered and said to him.”

[3:10]  ² sn Jesus’ question “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you don’t understand these things?” implies that Nicodemus had enough information at his disposal from the OT scriptures to have understood Jesus’ statements about the necessity of being born from above by the regenerating work of the Spirit. Isa 44:3-5 and Ezek 37:9-10 are passages Nicodemus might have known which would have given him insight into Jesus’ words. Another significant passage which contains many of these concepts is Prov 30:4-5.

[17:15]  ³ tn Or “that you protect them”; Grk “that you keep them.”

[17:15]  ⁴ tn The phrase “the evil one” is a reference to Satan. The genitive noun τοῦ πονηροῦ (tou ponhrou) is ambiguous with regard to gender: It may represent the neuter τὸ πονηρόν (to ponhron), “that which is evil,” or the masculine ὁ πονηρός (Jo ponhro"), “the evil one,” i.e., Satan. In view of the frequent use of the masculine in 1 John 2:13-14, 3:12, and 5:18-19 it seems much more probable that the masculine is to be understood here, and that Jesus is praying for his disciples to be protected from Satan. Cf. BDAG 851 s.v. πονηρός 1.b.β and 1.b.γ.

[21:5]  ⁵ tn The word προσφάγιον (prosfagion) is unusual. According to BDAG 886 s.v. in Hellenistic Greek it described a side dish to be eaten with bread, and in some contexts was the equivalent of ὄψον (oyon), “fish.” Used in addressing a group of returning fishermen, however, it is quite clear that the speaker had fish in mind.

[21:5]  ⁶ tn Questions prefaced with μή (mh) in Greek anticipate a negative answer. This can sometimes be indicated by using a “tag” at the end in English (here the tag is “do you?”).

[21:5]  ⁷ tn Grk “They answered him.”