What Does John 9:19 Mean?
And they asked them, Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? How then does he now see?
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 they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see?THE KEY
The man remains the son they recognize, but the condition they attach to his beginning cannot explain the sight plainly present now.
THE MEANING
Others may hold you inside the condition they first knew, then question the change standing in front of them. This verse holds both truths together: your beginning is real, and it does not contain everything that is real about you now. A demand for explanation does not undo what has become visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A condition present from birth must define a person’s capacity forever.
THE ROOT
βλέπει
blépei
GROWS FROM
βλεπ-
blep-
To see or look.
English renders the question as a simple “see,” but this Greek stem appears in compounds for sight regained and for a gaze fixed on someone. The question concerns a present capacity that stands against the man’s remembered beginning.
ALSO GROWS
anablepō: Look up; regain sight.
ἀναβλέπω
In John 9:11, this compound describes the man receiving sight, connecting the question here to the change he has already testified to.
emblepō: Look at intently; fix one’s gaze upon.
ἐμβλέπω
This compound shows the same seeing-root can describe directed looking as well as the ability to see.
THE PATTERN
A condition can mark someone’s beginning without defining what becomes visible in the present.
Then the eyes of the blind open, and the ears of the deaf open.Jesus said to him, Go on your way; your full weight leaning has delivered you. At once he looked up again and followed Jesus on the way.He answered, Whether he misses the mark or not, I do not know. One thing I know, that I was blind, and now I see.THE THREAD
He answered, A man called Jesus made clay and smeared my eyes, and said to me, Go to the pool of Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and I received sight.The man’s “received sight” in verse 11 translates ἀναβλέπω (anablepō, regain sight), a compound in the same βλέπω (blepō, see) word family as “see” in verse 19. The question asks how the very change he has already described can be true.
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