What Does John 9:21 Mean?
But how he now sees, we do not know. Or who has opened his eyes, we do not know. He is full-grown; ask him. He will speak for himself.
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
But by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself.THE KEY
The Greek verb behind “we know” carries the sense of having seen: the parents’ uncertainty marks the edge of their witness, not the edge of the man’s reality.
THE MEANING
A change in your life can be plain while people around you remain unable to explain how it happened. Their uncertainty does not cancel what is visible or take away your own voice; the one who lives the change can speak from it. The verse lets the cause remain unknown beside a clear present fact.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The change is real only if the people around me can explain it.
THE ROOT
οἴδαμεν
oidamen
GROWS FROM
ἰδ-
id-
See, perceive; the verb for “know” carries the sense of having seen.
The repeated “we know not” comes from a seeing stem, so the parents mark the limit of what they have witnessed. That limit does not erase the man’s visible change or prevent him from speaking about it himself.
ALSO GROWS
eidō: to see, perceive
εἴδω
This verb supplies the visual sense behind the word translated “we know”; knowledge carries the shade of what has been seen.
eidos: form, shape, appearance
εἶδος
The seen appearance belongs to the same seeing stem; the parents can identify what is visibly changed while admitting they cannot explain it.
ἤνοιξεν
ēnoixen
GROWS FROM
ἀνοίγω
anoigō
To open; to make an entrance or passage accessible.
The verb states that the eyes are opened without identifying the agent; the parents cannot name the opener, but the opening itself is certain. This verb family also opens eyes and Scripture elsewhere, joining changed sight with understanding.
ALSO GROWS
anoigō: to open
ἀνοίγω
The form in this verse belongs to this verb; the same verb recurs in John 9 as people ask how the man’s eyes were opened.
dianoigō: to open fully, open through; to explain
διανοίγω
In Luke 24:31 it describes eyes opening, and in Luke 24:32 it describes Scripture being opened, extending the image from sight to understanding.
THE PATTERN
A visible change can be real and witnessed even when its cause or process remains unexplained.
Such perceiving is too wonderful for me; it is high, and I cannot reach it.and he sleeps and wakes night and day, and the seed sprouts and stretches up, and he does not know how.For now we see through a mirror, in a riddle; but then face to face. Now I know in pieces; but then I shall know wholly, even as I was known.THE THREAD
And their eyes were thrown open, and they recognized him, and he became unseen to them.John’s parents name the opening but cannot account for it; Luke uses a compound from the same Greek verb family when the travelers’ eyes open and recognition follows. The shared root links opened sight with a new capacity to recognize what is present.
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