What Does John 7:50 Mean?
Nicodemus, who had come to him by night, being one of them, said to them.
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
Nicodemus saith unto them, (he that came to Jesus by night, being one of them,)THE KEY
The verse makes the nighttime seeker and the present speaker the same man, so concealment is a beginning rather than an identity.
THE MEANING
A hidden beginning and a present voice can belong to the same person. What first approaches under cover can later speak from within the circle where it once stayed quiet.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that a concealed beginning permanently disqualifies a person from speaking openly.
THE ROOT
νυκτός
nyktos
GROWS FROM
νυκτ-
nykt-
Night; νυκτός is the genitive form of νύξ, meaning “night.”
John uses the same word for night when Nicodemus first approaches Jesus (John 3:2), marking the hidden beginning of this connection. Here that beginning is named as Nicodemus speaks among his own circle, holding his concealment and his voice within one identity.
ALSO GROWS
nyx: Night.
νύξ
This is the base form of the word John uses to recall Nicodemus’s first, hidden approach.
nykterinos: Of or belonging to the night; nocturnal.
νυκτερινός
This related form keeps the same night-root visible in words describing what takes place in darkness.
THE PATTERN
An encounter that begins in private can become visible speech or action.
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."Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and grasped that they were unlettered and ordinary men, they marveled, and they knew them, that they had been with Jesus.Joseph of Arimathea, a council member of good bearing, who also himself waited for the governance of God, came, and gathered himself and went in to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.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 repeats the phrase “came to Jesus by night,” so the earlier scene is carried into this one through the same Greek word for night. The hidden beginning remains part of Nicodemus’s story, but now the verse shows him speaking among his own circle.
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