What Does John 19:39 Mean?
And Nicodemus also came, the one who at first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds in weight.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.THE KEY
The man who first approached Jesus by night now bears a hundred pounds of burial spices to his body: a hidden approach becomes bodily presence.
THE MEANING
This verse places Nicodemus beside the dead Jesus with a vast quantity of myrrh and aloes. The man once marked by a nighttime visit now returns carrying what burial requires; care takes material form even where it cannot undo death.
THE ROOT
ἤνεγκεν
ēnenken from pherō
GROWS FROM
φερ- / φορ-
To carry, bear, or bring.
“brought” in this verse is ēnenken from pherō. Nicodemus does not merely arrive; he brings a heavy mixture to Jesus’ body. The same Greek verb appears when a branch “brings forth” fruit, so this scene is a bearing-forth of care, though the verse does not call it fruit.
ALSO GROWS
pherei: brings, bears
φέρει
This form of the same verb makes the act one of carrying something into the scene.
karpon pherei: bears fruit
καρπὸν φέρει
John uses the same verb for a branch bearing fruit; here Nicodemus bears burial spices to a body.
Νικόδημος
Nikodēmos
GROWS FROM
νίκη + δῆμος (nikē + dēmos)
Victory of the people.
The name carries the sense “victory of the people.” Beside Jesus’ burial, it sets a striking tension between victory and visible death; the verse leaves that tension open rather than explaining Nicodemus’s motives.
ALSO GROWS
nikaō: conquer, prevail
νικάω
This is a related form of the name’s first element, carrying the sense of victory.
dēmos: people, populace
δῆμος
This is the name’s second element, joining “people” to the idea of victory.
THE PATTERN
Care remains physically expressible at the edge of death: bodies are prepared, anointed, and honored.
And Joseph commanded his servants, the healers, to spice his father, and the healers spiced Israel.She has done what she had. She has reached ahead to anoint my body for the burial.Then Jesus said, Let her go, so that she might guard this for the day of my burial.THE THREAD
He came to Jesus in the night and said to him, "Teacher, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him."John identifies this as the same Nicodemus who first came to Jesus by night; now he returns carrying burial spices. The verse lets the earlier encounter continue in a visible act beside Jesus’ body, without telling us what Nicodemus feels or why he comes.
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