What Does John 9:29 Mean?
We know that God spoke to Moses. But this man, we do not know where he is from.
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
We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.THE KEY
The same mouth can claim to know God’s voice in the past while refusing to see its work in the present.
THE MEANING
You can affirm that God spoke through Moses and still fail to perceive the witness standing before you. Inherited certainty can become a boundary that shuts out what is visible now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that certainty about God’s past speech guarantees recognition of God’s present work.
THE ROOT
οἴδαμεν
oidamen
GROWS FROM
εἴδω
eidō
To see or perceive; οἶδα (oida, “know”) carries the sense of having seen and so knowing.
The same verb is used twice: “we know” that God spoke to Moses, but “we know not” where this man is from. The contrast exposes how a claim of knowledge can affirm a recognized voice while closing itself to what is being seen now.
ALSO GROWS
oida: Know; have seen and so know.
οἶδα
This is the form behind both claims in the verse, showing that the speakers use one word for their certainty and their refusal to recognize the man’s origin.
eidon: Saw.
εἶδον
This form makes the root’s link between seeing and knowing plain, sharpening the gap between what the speakers claim and what they perceive.
eidos: Form, appearance.
εἶδος
This related word names what is seen or perceived, echoing the question of whether visible evidence can be recognized.
THE PATTERN
An inherited claim about God’s voice can coexist with resistance to the witness standing before you.
The LORD your God raises up for you a prophet from your midst, from your brothers, like me. To him you hear and respond.Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they stumbled at him.For if you had leaned your full weight on Moses, you would have leaned it on me, for he wrote about me.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 healed man uses the same verb of knowing, οἶδα (oida), but grounds it in what he has seen: he was blind, and now he sees. His certainty is tied to present experience, while the speakers in this verse claim certainty about Moses and deny knowing the man’s origin.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us