2 Raja-raja 2:21

2:21 He went out to the spring and threw the salt in. Then he said, “This is what the Lord says, ‘I have purified ¹  this water. It will no longer cause death or fail to produce crops.” ² 

2 Raja-raja 5:10

5:10 Elisha sent out a messenger who told him, “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan; your skin will be restored ³  and you will be healed.”

2 Raja-raja 6:6

6:6 The prophet ⁴  asked, “Where did it drop in?” When he showed him the spot, Elisha ⁵  cut off a branch, threw it in at that spot, and made the ax head float.

Keluaran 15:25

15:25 He cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him ⁶  a tree. ⁷  When Moses ⁸  threw it into the water, the water became safe to drink. There the Lord ⁹  made for them ¹⁰  a binding ordinance, ¹¹  and there he tested ¹²  them.

Yohanes 9:6

9:6 Having said this, ¹³  he spat on the ground and made some mud ¹⁴  with the saliva. He ¹⁵  smeared the mud on the blind man’s ¹⁶  eyes

Yohanes 9:1

Healing a Man Born Blind

9:1 Now as Jesus was passing by, ¹⁷  he saw a man who had been blind from birth.

Kolose 1:25

1:25 I became a servant of the church according to the stewardship ¹⁸  from God – given to me for you – in order to complete ¹⁹  the word of God,

[2:21]  ¹ tn Or “healed.”

[2:21]  ² tn Heb “there will no longer be from there death and miscarriage [or, ‘barrenness’].”

[5:10]  ³ tn Heb “will return to you.”

[6:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “man of God” (also in v. 9).

[6:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[15:25]  ⁶ tn The verb is וַיּוֹרֵהוּ (vayyorehu, “and he showed him”). It is the Hiphil preterite from יָרָה (yarah), which has a basic meaning of “to point, show, direct.” It then came to mean “to teach”; it is the verb behind the noun “Law” (תּוֹרָה, torah).

[15:25]  sn U. Cassuto notes that here is the clue to the direction of the narrative: Israel needed God’s instruction, the Law, if they were going to enjoy his provisions (Exodus, 184).

[15:25]  ⁷ tn Or “a [piece of] wood” (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV, TEV, CEV); NLT “a branch.”

[15:25]  sn S. R. Driver (Exodus, 143) follows some local legends in identifying this tree as one that is supposed to have – even to this day – the properties necessary for making bitter water sweet. B. Jacob (Exodus, 436) reports that no such tree has ever been found, but then he adds that this does not mean there was not such a bush in the earlier days. He believes that here God used a natural means (“showed, instructed”) to sweeten the water. He quotes Ben Sira as saying God had created these things with healing properties in them.

[15:25]  ⁸ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[15:25]  ⁹ tn Heb “there he”; the referent (the Lord) is supplied for clarity.

[15:25]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “for him” (referring to Israel as a whole).

[15:25]  ¹¹ tn This translation interprets the two nouns as a hendiadys: “a statute and an ordinance” becomes “a binding ordinance.”

[15:25]  ¹² tn The verb נִסָּהוּ (nissahu, “and he tested him [them]”) is from the root נָסָה (nasah). The use of this word in the Bible indicates that there is question, doubt, or uncertainty about the object being tested.

[15:25]  sn The whole episode was a test from God. He led them there through Moses and let them go hungry and thirsty. He wanted to see how great their faith was.

[9:6]  ¹³ tn Grk “said these things.”

[9:6]  ¹⁴ tn Or “clay” (moistened earth of a clay-like consistency). The textual variant preserved in the Syriac text of Ephraem’s commentary on the Diatessaron (“he made eyes from his clay”) probably arose from the interpretation given by Irenaeus in Against Heresies: “that which the Artificer, the Word, had omitted to form in the womb, he then supplied in public.” This involves taking the clay as an allusion to Gen 2:7, which is very unlikely.

[9:6]  ¹⁵ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) was replaced by a third person pronoun and a new sentence started here in the translation.

[9:6]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “on his.”

[9:1]  ¹⁷ tn Or “going along.” The opening words of chap. 9, καὶ παράγων (kai paragwn), convey only the vaguest indication of the circumstances.

[9:1]  sn Since there is no break with chap. 8, Jesus is presumably still in Jerusalem, and presumably not still in the temple area. The events of chap. 9 fall somewhere between the feast of Tabernacles (John 7:2) and the feast of the Dedication (John 10:22). But in the author’s narrative the connection exists – the incident recorded in chap. 9 (along with the ensuing debates with the Pharisees) serves as a real-life illustration of the claim Jesus made in 8:12, I am the light of the world. This is in fact the probable theological motivation behind the juxtaposition of these two incidents in the narrative. The second serves as an illustration of the first, and as a concrete example of the victory of light over darkness. One other thing which should be pointed out about the miracle recorded in chap. 9 is its messianic significance. In the OT it is God himself who is associated with the giving of sight to the blind (Exod 4:11, Ps 146:8). In a number of passages in Isa (29:18, 35:5, 42:7) it is considered to be a messianic activity.

[1:25]  ¹⁸ tn BDAG 697 s.v. οἰκονομία 1.b renders the term here as “divine office.”

[1:25]  ¹⁹ tn See BDAG 828 s.v. πληρόω 3. The idea here seems to be that the apostle wants to “complete the word of God” in that he wants to preach it to every person in the known world (cf. Rom 15:19). See P. T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon (WBC), 82.