What Does John 9:20 Mean?
His parents answered and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind.
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
His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind:THE KEY
The Greek word for “know” carries the trace of “having seen,” grounding the parents’ certainty in what they have witnessed of their son.
THE MEANING
Their certainty is specific: this is their son, and he has been blind from birth. They speak from what they know firsthand, while the question of how he now sees remains beyond this sentence.
THE ROOT
οἴδαμεν
oidamen
GROWS FROM
εἴδω (ἰδ-)
To see or perceive; οἶδα, “know,” is the perfect form, carrying the sense of having seen and thus knowing.
The parents’ “we know” is more than a bare assertion: the word preserves a link between seeing and knowing. Their testimony rests on the life they have witnessed, even as the verse leaves the meaning of his new sight to unfold.
ALSO GROWS
oida: To know, be aware
οἶδα
As a perfect form related to εἴδω, it shows how perceived experience becomes knowledge.
eidon: I saw
εἶδον
This form keeps direct seeing visible in the same verbal family as the parents’ word for knowing.
THE PATTERN
Witness names what is directly seen and heard, grounding testimony in what is known.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.For we cannot keep from speaking what we have perceived and heard.That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have perceived with our eyes, which we have gazed upon, and our hands have touched, concerning the word of life.THE THREAD
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 man uses the same Greek verb for “know” that his parents use here. Their knowledge names his identity and former blindness; his testimony joins knowing directly to what he now sees.
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