Matius 4:8-9

4:8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their grandeur. ¹  4:9 And he said to him, “I will give you all these things if you throw yourself to the ground and worship ²  me.”

Yohanes 12:31

12:31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world ³  will be driven out. ⁴ 

Yohanes 12:40

12:40 “He has blinded their eyes

and hardened their heart, ⁵ 

so that they would not see with their eyes

and understand with their heart, ⁶ 

and turn to me, ⁷  and I would heal them.” ⁸ 

Yohanes 14:30

14:30 I will not speak with you much longer, ⁹  for the ruler of this world is coming. ¹⁰  He has no power over me, ¹¹ 

Yohanes 16:11

16:11 and concerning judgment, ¹²  because ¹³  the ruler of this world ¹⁴  has been condemned. ¹⁵ 

Yohanes 16:1

16:1 “I have told you all these things so that you will not fall away. ¹⁶ 

Kolose 1:20

1:20 and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross – through him, ¹⁷  whether things on earth or things in heaven.

Efesus 2:2

2:2 in which ¹⁸  you formerly lived ¹⁹  according to this world’s present path, ²⁰  according to the ruler of the kingdom ²¹  of the air, the ruler of ²²  the spirit ²³  that is now energizing ²⁴  the sons of disobedience, ²⁵ 

Efesus 6:12

6:12 For our struggle ²⁶  is not against flesh and blood, ²⁷  but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, ²⁸  against the spiritual forces ²⁹  of evil in the heavens. ³⁰ 

Efesus 6:1

6:1 Children, ³¹  obey your parents in the Lord ³²  for this is right.

Yohanes 5:19

5:19 So Jesus answered them, ³³  “I tell you the solemn truth, ³⁴  the Son can do nothing on his own initiative, ³⁵  but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father ³⁶  does, the Son does likewise. ³⁷ 

Wahyu 20:2-3

20:2 He ³⁸  seized the dragon – the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan – and tied him up for a thousand years. 20:3 The angel ³⁹  then ⁴⁰  threw him into the abyss and locked ⁴¹  and sealed it so that he could not deceive the nations until the one thousand years were finished. (After these things he must be released for a brief period of time.)

[4:8]  ¹ tn Grk “glory.”

[4:9]  ² tn Grk “if, falling down, you will worship.” BDAG 815 s.v. πίπτω 1.b.α.ב has “fall down, throw oneself to the ground as a sign of devotion, before high-ranking persons or divine beings.”

[12:31]  ³ sn The ruler of this world is a reference to Satan.

[12:31]  ⁴ tn Or “will be thrown out.” This translation regards the future passive ἐκβληθήσεται (ekblhqhsetai) as referring to an event future to the time of speaking.

[12:31]  sn The phrase driven out must refer to Satan’s loss of authority over this world. This must be in principle rather than in immediate fact, since 1 John 5:19 states that the whole world (still) lies in the power of the evil one (a reference to Satan). In an absolute sense the reference is proleptic. The coming of Jesus’ hour (his crucifixion, death, resurrection, and exaltation to the Father) marks the end of Satan’s domain and brings about his defeat, even though that defeat has not been ultimately worked out in history yet and awaits the consummation of the age.

[12:40]  ⁵ tn Or “closed their mind.”

[12:40]  ⁶ tn Or “their mind.”

[12:40]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ sn A quotation from Isa 6:10.

[14:30]  ⁹ tn Grk “I will no longer speak many things with you.”

[14:30]  ¹⁰ sn The ruler of this world is a reference to Satan.

[14:30]  ¹¹ tn Grk “in me he has nothing.”

[16:11]  ¹² sn The world is proven wrong concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. Jesus’ righteousness before the Father, as proven by his return to the Father, his glorification, constitutes a judgment against Satan. This is parallel to the judgment of the world which Jesus provokes in 3:19-21: Jesus’ presence in the world as the Light of the world provokes the judgment of those in the world, because as they respond to the light (either coming to Jesus or rejecting him) so are they judged. That judgment is in a sense already realized. So it is here, where the judgment of Satan is already realized in Jesus’ glorification. This does not mean that Satan does not continue to be active in the world, and to exercise some power over it, just as in 3:19-21 the people in the world who have rejected Jesus and thus incurred judgment continue on in their opposition to Jesus for a time. In both cases the judgment is not immediately executed. But it is certain.

[16:11]  ¹³ tn Or “that.”

[16:11]  ¹⁴ sn The ruler of this world is a reference to Satan.

[16:11]  ¹⁵ tn Or “judged.”

[16:1]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “so that you will not be caused to stumble.”

[16:1]  sn In Johannine thought the verb σκανδαλίζω (skandalizw) means to trip up disciples and cause them to fall away from Jesus’ company (John 6:61, 1 John 2:10). Similar usage is found in Didache 16:5, an early Christian writing from around the beginning of the 2nd century a.d. An example of a disciple who falls away is Judas Iscariot. Here and again in 16:4 Jesus gives the purpose for his telling the disciples about coming persecution: He informs them so that when it happens, the disciples will not fall away, which in this context would refer to the confusion and doubt which they would certainly experience when such persecution began. There may have been a tendency for the disciples to expect immediately after Jesus’ victory over death the institution of the messianic kingdom, particularly in light of the turn of events recorded in the early chapters of Acts. Jesus here forestalls such disillusionment for the disciples by letting them know in advance that they will face persecution and even martyrdom as they seek to carry on his mission in the world after his departure. This material has parallels in the Olivet Discourse (Matt 24-25) and the synoptic parallels.

[1:20]  ¹⁷ tc The presence or absence of the second occurrence of the phrase δι᾿ αὐτοῦ (di’ autou, “through him”) is a difficult textual problem to solve. External evidence is fairly evenly divided. Many ancient and excellent witnesses lack the phrase (B D* F G I 0278 81 1175 1739 1881 2464 al latt sa), but equally important witnesses have it (Ì⁴⁶ א A C D¹ Ψ 048^vid 33 Ï). Both readings have strong Alexandrian support, which makes the problem difficult to decide on external evidence alone. Internal evidence points to the inclusion of the phrase as original. The word immediately preceding the phrase is the masculine pronoun αὐτοῦ (autou); thus the possibility of omission through homoioteleuton in various witnesses is likely. Scribes might have deleted the phrase because of perceived redundancy or awkwardness in the sense: The shorter reading is smoother and more elegant, so scribes would be prone to correct the text in that direction. As far as style is concerned, repetition of key words and phrases for emphasis is not foreign to the corpus Paulinum (see, e.g., Rom 8:23, Eph 1:13, 2 Cor 12:7). In short, it is easier to account for the shorter reading arising from the longer reading than vice versa, so the longer reading is more likely original.

[2:2]  ¹⁸ sn The relative pronoun which is feminine as is sins, indicating that sins is the antecedent.

[2:2]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “walked.”

[2:2]  sn The Greek verb translated lived (περιπατέω, peripatew) in the NT letters refers to the conduct of one’s life, not to physical walking.

[2:2]  ²⁰ tn Or possibly “Aeon.”

[2:2]  sn The word translated present path is the same as that which has been translated [this] age in 1:21 (αἰών, aiwn).

[2:2]  ²¹ tn Grk “domain, [place of] authority.”

[2:2]  ²² tn Grk “of” (but see the note on the word “spirit” later in this verse).

[2:2]  ²³ sn The ruler of the kingdom of the air is also the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience. Although several translations regard the ruler to be the same as the spirit, this is unlikely since the cases in Greek are different (ruler is accusative and spirit is genitive). To get around this, some have suggested that the genitive for spirit is a genitive of apposition. However, the semantics of the genitive of apposition are against such an interpretation (cf. ExSyn 100).

[2:2]  ²⁴ tn Grk “working in.”

[2:2]  ²⁵ sn Sons of disobedience is a Semitic idiom that means “people characterized by disobedience.” However, it also contains a subtle allusion to vv. 4-10: Some of those sons of disobedience have become sons of God.

[6:12]  ²⁶ tn BDAG 752 s.v. πάλη says, “struggle against…the opponent is introduced by πρός w. the acc.”

[6:12]  ²⁷ tn Grk “blood and flesh.”

[6:12]  ²⁸ tn BDAG 561 s.v. κοσμοκράτωρ suggests “the rulers of this sinful world” as a gloss.

[6:12]  sn The phrase world-rulers of this darkness does not refer to human rulers but the evil spirits that rule over the world. The phrase thus stands in apposition to what follows (the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens); see note on heavens at the end of this verse.

[6:12]  ²⁹ tn BDAG 837 s.v. πνευματικός 3 suggests “the spirit-forces of evil” in Ephesians 6:12.

[6:12]  ³⁰ sn The phrase spiritual forces of evil in the heavens serves to emphasize the nature of the forces which oppose believers as well as to indicate the locality from which they originate.

[6:1]  ³¹ tn The use of the article τά (ta) with τέκνα (tekna) functions in a generic way to distinguish this group from husbands, wives, fathers and slaves and is left, therefore, untranslated. The generic article is used with γύναῖκες (gunaikes) in 5:22, ἄνδρες (andres) in 5:25, δοῦλοι (douloi) in 6:5, and κύριοι (kurioi) in 6:9.

[6:1]  ³² tc B D* F G as well as a few versional and patristic representatives lack “in the Lord” (ἐν κυρίῳ, en kuriw), while the phrase is well represented in Ì⁴⁶ א A D¹ I^vid Ψ 0278 0285 33 1739 1881 Ï sy co. Scribes may have thought that the phrase could be regarded a qualifier on the kind of parents a child should obey (viz., only Christian parents), and would thus be tempted to delete the phrase to counter such an interpretation. It is unlikely that the phrase would have been added, since the form used to express such sentiment in this Haustafel is ὡς τῷ κυρίῳ/Χριστῷ (Jw" tw kuriw/Cristw, “as to the Lord/Christ”; see 5:22; 6:5). Even though the witnesses for the omission are impressive, it is more likely that the phrase was deleted than added by scribal activity.

[5:19]  ³³ tn Grk “answered and said to them.”

[5:19]  ³⁴ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[5:19]  ³⁵ tn Grk “nothing from himself.”

[5:19]  ³⁶ tn Grk “that one”; the referent (the Father) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[5:19]  ³⁷ sn What works does the Son do likewise? The same that the Father does – and the same that the rabbis recognized as legitimate works of God on the Sabbath (see note on working in v. 17). (1) Jesus grants life (just as the Father grants life) on the Sabbath. But as the Father gives physical life on the Sabbath, so the Son grants spiritual life (John 5:21; note the “greater things” mentioned in v. 20). (2) Jesus judges (determines the destiny of people) on the Sabbath, just as the Father judges those who die on the Sabbath, because the Father has granted authority to the Son to judge (John 5:22-23). But this is not all. Not only has this power been granted to Jesus in the present; it will be his in the future as well. In v. 28 there is a reference not to spiritually dead (only) but also physically dead. At their resurrection they respond to the Son as well.

[20:2]  ³⁸ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[20:3]  ³⁹ tn Grk “he”; the referent (the angel introduced in v. 1) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[20:3]  ⁴⁰ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the vision.

[20:3]  ⁴¹ tn Or “and shut.” While the lexical force of the term is closer to “shut,” it is acceptable to render the verb ἔκλεισεν (ekleisen) as “locked” here in view of the mention of the key in the previous verse.