What Does John 3:4 Mean in the King James?
Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
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
Nicodemus turns “from above” into “a second time,” so a new source of life sounds like an impossible replay of the body’s first beginning.
THE MEANING
The possibility of a new beginning can be heard as a demand to repeat the old one. This question makes the image physical: a grown person cannot return to the womb. Its impossibility exposes how different a new birth’s source must be from the body’s first arrival.
THE ROOT
γεννηθῆναι
gennēthēnai
GROWS FROM
γεννάω (gennaō), γενν-
To beget or bring forth; γεννηθῆναι means “to be born.”
“born” in this verse is gennēthēnai. The Greek word belongs to a family that links birth with origin, offspring, and generation. The preceding word ἄνωθεν (anōthen, “from above” or “again”) supplies the hinge: Nicodemus hears a repeat, while the question of the verse is where this birth comes from.
ALSO GROWS
genesis: Birth, origin, beginning
γένεσις
It links being born with the source or beginning from which life comes.
genos: Kind, offspring, family
γένος
Birth brings someone into a kind or family, so it names belonging as well as an event.
genea: Generation, lineage
γενεά
The same word family connects one birth to a continuing line of life.
THE PATTERN
New birth names a new origin of life, not a second performance of the body’s first birth.
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.THE THREAD
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.Both verses use forms of γεννάω (gennaō, “beget” or “bring forth”). The word ἄνωθεν (anōthen, “from above” or “again”) in this verse’s preceding line opens two senses, and Nicodemus’s “second time” shows how the bodily reading takes hold.
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