Yohanes 4:9

4:9 So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you – a Jew ¹  – ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water ²  to drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common ³  with Samaritans.) ⁴ 

Yohanes 16:21

16:21 When a woman gives birth, she has distress ⁵  because her time ⁶  has come, but when her child is born, she no longer remembers the suffering because of her joy that a human being ⁷  has been born into the world. ⁸ 

[4:9]  ¹ tn Or “a Judean.” Here BDAG 478 s.v. ᾿Ιουδαίος 2.a states, “Judean (with respect to birth, nationality, or cult).” The same term occurs in the plural later in this verse. In one sense “Judean” would work very well in the translation here, since the contrast is between residents of the two geographical regions. However, since in the context of this chapter the discussion soon becomes a religious rather than a territorial one (cf. vv. 19-26), the translation “Jew” has been retained here and in v. 22.

[4:9]  ² tn “Water” is supplied as the understood direct object of the infinitive πεῖν (pein).

[4:9]  ³ tn D. Daube (“Jesus and the Samaritan Woman: the Meaning of συγχράομαι [Jn 4:7ff],” JBL 69 [1950]: 137-47) suggests this meaning.

[4:9]  sn The background to the statement use nothing in common is the general assumption among Jews that the Samaritans were ritually impure or unclean. Thus a Jew who used a drinking vessel after a Samaritan had touched it would become ceremonially unclean.

[4:9]  ⁴ sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.

[16:21]  ⁵ sn The same word translated distress here has been translated sadness in the previous verse (a wordplay that is not exactly reproducible in English).

[16:21]  ⁶ tn Grk “her hour.”

[16:21]  ⁷ tn Grk “that a man” (but in a generic sense, referring to a human being).

[16:21]  ⁸ sn Jesus now compares the situation of the disciples to a woman in childbirth. Just as the woman in the delivery of her child experiences real pain and anguish (has distress), so the disciples will also undergo real anguish at the crucifixion of Jesus. But once the child has been born, the mother’s anguish is turned into joy, and she forgets the past suffering. The same will be true of the disciples, who after Jesus’ resurrection and reappearance to them will forget the anguish they suffered at his death on account of their joy.