What Does John 19:39 Mean in the King James?
And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The man who first approached Jesus by night now bears a hundred pounds of burial spices to his body: a hidden approach becomes bodily presence.
THE MEANING
This verse places Nicodemus beside the dead Jesus with a vast quantity of myrrh and aloes. The man once marked by a nighttime visit now returns carrying what burial requires; care takes material form even where it cannot undo death.
THE ROOT
ἤνεγκεν
ēnenken from pherō
GROWS FROM
φερ- / φορ-
To carry, bear, or bring.
“brought” in this verse is ēnenken from pherō. Nicodemus does not merely arrive; he brings a heavy mixture to Jesus’ body. The same Greek verb appears when a branch “brings forth” fruit, so this scene is a bearing-forth of care, though the verse does not call it fruit.
ALSO GROWS
pherei: brings, bears
φέρει
This form of the same verb makes the act one of carrying something into the scene.
karpon pherei: bears fruit
καρπὸν φέρει
John uses the same verb for a branch bearing fruit; here Nicodemus bears burial spices to a body.
Νικόδημος
Nikodēmos
GROWS FROM
νίκη + δῆμος (nikē + dēmos)
Victory of the people.
The name carries the sense “victory of the people.” Beside Jesus’ burial, it sets a striking tension between victory and visible death; the verse leaves that tension open rather than explaining Nicodemus’s motives.
ALSO GROWS
nikaō: conquer, prevail
νικάω
This is a related form of the name’s first element, carrying the sense of victory.
dēmos: people, populace
δῆμος
This is the name’s second element, joining “people” to the idea of victory.
THE PATTERN
Care remains physically expressible at the edge of death: bodies are prepared, anointed, and honored.
And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this.THE THREAD
The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.John identifies this as the same Nicodemus who first came to Jesus by night; now he returns carrying burial spices. The verse lets the earlier encounter continue in a visible act beside Jesus’ body, without telling us what Nicodemus feels or why he comes.
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