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Mew
Test. Stud.
15, pp. 265-77
G. B. CAIRD
THE GLORY
OF GOD IN THE
FOURTH GOSPEL:
AN
EXERCISE
IN BIBLICAL SEMANTICS
NOv 8oac0r| 6Y165
TOO
dvQpcbirou,KOCI6Geos i8o&cr0r|
kv
avrrcp. Now
the
Son of Ma n is glorified, and God is glorified in hi m ' (Joh n x iii. 31). M uch has
been written on the glory and the glorification of Christ in the F ou rth Gospel,
but grammars, dictionaries, commentaries,
and
monographs
are
strangely
inadequate,oreven silent,
on
the kindred them e of the glory
of
God. W hat
does the Johannine Jesus mean when
he
says tha t God
is
glorified
?I
raise
this question, slight as itappears atfirst glance to be, partly because
of
its
intrinsic impo rtance
to
the theology of the Gospel, but also because
it
cannot
be answered
at all
withou t providing
a
most elaborate paradigm
for the
application of linguistic principlestoNew Testament exegesis.
I. THE INGREDIENTS OF MEANING
One reason for
the
neglect ofthis inquiry becomes ap par ent when
we ask
wh at we understand
by
m eaning. The meaning of any wordor expressionis
compounded in varying proportions of five ingredients: (a) dictionary
definition;
(b)
con textual de termination ; (c) the refe rent; (
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26 6 G. B. CAIRD
referent; and both are integral
to
his m eaning. T hus,
if
we ask w hat J oh n
means when he says that the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in
him, one proper and accurate answer is that he means the Cross. The ' now'
of this verse
is
the hou r of
Jesus '
death, and John can use the aorist tense
because, with the departure of
Judas ,
all the actors in the drama, and Jesus
in particular,
are
comm itted
to
their courses
of
action, w hich make
the
Crucifixion virtually accomplished. Most commentaries provide some sort of
elaboration of
this
aspect of the verse's m ea nin g: the glorifying of God in the
Cross
is the
accomplishment
of
his saving purpose
of
love
for the
world
through the obedient self-surrender ofJesus, the process by which believers
are brought into unity with the Son and therefore also with the Father. But
no amount
of
elabo ration can alter the fact th at they are pointing
to the
referent of the word 'glorify ' without telling us any thing abo ut its sense. Th ey
are telling us (correctly) that John uses the verb 8o^6c3a0ai
to
denote the
Cross,
bu t no t wh at Jo hn wishes to say abo ut the Cross by the use of this verb .
My fourth and fifth ingredients are not commonly regarded as parts of a
word's meaning, though there
is
much
to
be gained by so regarding them .
How , for example, can we do justice to the statemen t tha t 'th er e are man y
dwelling-places in my Father's house', ifwehave not taken note of the links
of derivation and sound between the noun uovn. and the verb uivco, which is
one of Jo hn 's favourite w ords? A nd, when
the
RSV uses eight different
English words to render uvco,
in
pa rtial replace me nt of the one obsolescent
word 'abide ' , must
we not
admit that
the
resultant gain
in
clarity
and
modernity is offset by the greater loss of a cumulative and evocative appeal,
built
up by
the repetition of the one w ord
in
so many different contexts?
1
This point has an important application to the theme of our present discus-
sion. There are some utterances, e.g. ritual formulae,
in
which the emotive
and associative power of words is so much to the fore that
it
is
a
mistake
to
insist on defining their sense with precision, and
a
good example of this can
be seen in the doxologies of the Apocalypse. Conversely, solemn sonority and
evocative familiarity may lull us into thinking that we know what
a
word
means, when we ought
to be
prob ing more deeply into
the
history
of
its
usage.
2. CONTEXTUAL DETERMINATION
We began by asking what the Joh an nin e Jesus meant by saying tha t God was
glorified, and we must now rephrase the question: what sense does the word
'glorify' bear in this context, what semantic contribution does
it
make to the
sentence?
It
is
a
general lingu istic rule th at , ou t of a mu ltiplicity of possible
meanings, the meaning intended by the author or speaker is determined by
context. But what do we mean by context? No rmally we assume th at a word's
context is the sentence, the paragraph, or, in the last resort, the whole book
1
Th e words are : remain, stay, rest, abide, endure, continue, dwell.
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THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL 267
in wh ich it is used. But this is to overlook the existence of a num be r of hidden
contexts which constantly determine the meaning ofour everyday speech.
There is the situationinwhichaword is used:in alaw court,alaboratory,
a stadium, a concert hall, a factory, or
a
ban k. T here is the tradition in w hich
the user stands, together with all the unconscious presuppositions itentails.
And finally there is his whole cultural background; many English words, for
example, mean quite different things according
as
they
are
uttered
in
Lond on, in Glasgow, in New York, in C alcutta, or in Tah iti. Th e prob lem of
Jo hn 's cultural b ackground has been the subject of prolonged de ba te: was he a
Hellene w riting for
Hellenes,
or a son of the Synagogue wr iting for men familiar
with the translation Greek of the L X X or, as Hoskyns argued , neither Jew nor
Greek, bu t a C hristian writing ou t of sixty years or more of Christian trad ition ?
1
The difficulty is th at we seem to be involved inacircular argum ent. We need
to know Jo hn 's backg round ifweare to determ ine the m eaning of his words,
but we have only his words with whichtodetermine his backgrou nd.
In this dilemm a the Jo ha nn ine uses of 86|cc and 6o&3co are of p ara m ou nt
importance, since no parallel tothem can be cited from ClassicalorKoine
Greek, but only from the LXX and works demonstrably written underits
influence, the Commentaries of
Philo,
the Hermetic Corpus, and the Magical
Papyri.A6oc is derived from the verb BOKETV,'to seem ', and in extra-biblical
Greek
it
has only two meanings:
(a)
'what seems
to
m e ' ,
'm y
opinion ' ;
(b)' what I seem to ot h er s ', ' my reputation '.
2
Correspondingly, 80^6300 means
' to form or hold an op inio n' o r ' to hold someone in high regard or esteem '.It
was no t until these words were used in the L X X as rendering s for li a s and *ra3
that they acquired the wider range of meaning familiar to readers of the NT.
The Hebrew noun nias is derived from aroot meaning 'w eig ht ', butit is
always used metaphorically to connote the weightaperson carries, his status,
importance, worth, impressiveness, majesty.In asecondary senseitconnotes
the honour or esteem accorded to worth, human or divine.I tthus belongs to
a class
of
attitude-words, found
in
man y languages, which
are
capable
of
both objective andsubjective me anin g. In English 'ho no ur ' , 'wo nd er ' ,
'horror' may all express either the subjective response or its objective cause.
But not all attitude-words have this double reference. In English the words
'majesty' and 'worth' connote status
or
quality, bu t n ot the corresponding
response, whereas 'esteem', and'res pe ct' connote response, bu t not the
status or quality which evokes it. Outside the LXX 56cc had only the subjec-
tive sense; but, because to this extent it overlapped with 1133,theL X X
1
'T he workshop in which the Word of God was forged to take its natural place among the great
theological descriptions of Jesus and His work is a Christian workshop : the took are Christian tools.'
(TheFourth Gospel, pp. 162-3.)
2
On the grounds of its use as the name for
a
woman or
a
ship A. Deissmann
(Die
Hellenisierung,
p.
165) and J . Schneider (Doxa,p p. 20 ff.) argued that665amust have had in Koine Greek a concrete
meaning connected with the brightness oflight.H. Kittel
(Die Herrlichkeit Gottes,
p p. 23 ff.) was able
to refute this suggestion by a list of fourteen abstract nouns used as names for ships. As the name for a
ship A6a has its counterpart in the English 'R en ow n'.
8 2
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268 G.B. GAIRD
translators either assumed that it must already have the same double
reference as theHebrew term or, l ike Hu m pty Dum pty, decided topayit
extra andmake it work overtime. Now when a Hebrew word isregularly
rendered byaGreek one with whichitis not wholly synonym ous, one of two
things may happen: either the Greek sense will prevail, and thetranslated
sentence will convey a different meaning from that ofthe original; or the
Hebrew sense will prevail
and set up a
process
of
semantic change
in the
meaning ofthe Greek w ord. Socomplete was thesemantic chang e which
overtook 66cc and So^Ajco because of their use in the LXX, that they simply
assumedall themeanings andassociations ofthe Hebrew words theyhad
been used to translate.
It
is therefore to the L X X tha t we must go to discover
the sense they bear
in
the F ou rth Gospel. But, before we do th at, th ere
is a
point of Greek grammar which calls for our attention.
3 .
THE USES OF THE PASSIVE VOICE
In the verse we are investigating the verb SO^&JGOoccurs twice in the passive,
and most commentators have assumed without argument thatinboth cases
it isatrue passive. T he student of elementary Greek is told that an active ve rb
indicates an action done by the subject, andapassive verb indicates an action
done to the subject by another a gen t. He soon discovers that this
is
a grotesque
over-simplification. There are many passive forms which are not true passives
within the limits of this definition. There are deponents, of which noactive
form exists. But there are also many verbsinwhich bo th active a nd passive
indicate action doneby thesubject, thedifference being th at the one is
transitive and the other intransitive. 'Eyeipeiv means 'to raise' and yipEa0oci
'to rise'. 2x*3
Elv m e a n s
'
t 0
sp lit' (trans.) and oxfjeaOai 'tosplit ' (intrans.).
Moreover,
it
frequently happe ns th at
the
same passive form
can be
used
either as
a
true passive or as an int ran sitiv e. 3eCT0oci can mean ' to be sa ved ';
bu titcan also mean ' toreach safety', 'tocome safely throughanordealor
danger', 'to escape'^Though common enough in Classical Greek, such verbs
are more frequent
in the
L X X owing
to the
prevalence
of
Heb rew stative
verbs and denominatives,
2
and tothis po intI shall return later.
1
See e.g.
in the L X X
Gen. xix. 17, QO ,22: ElsT 6
6pos acjjjou...EKE
uto8^cropai...
tnrEuaov o5v
TOO
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THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL 269
Midway between
the
tru e passives
and the
intransitive passives
are the
permissiveorcausative passives,inwhich theaction isdone to the subject
by another agent, but permitted orcaused bythe subject. The passivesof
verbs of seeing, finding, an d knowing a re the most obvious exam ples. ' I
let
myself be found by those who were not looking for me' (Isa. lxv. 1). 'The
Lord has risen and appeared toSim on ' (Luke xxiv. 34). ' H e made himself
known tothem (eyvcoaOrj) when hebroke the br ea d' (Luke xxiv. 35). But
there are many others.
1
Asadesignation of a par ticula r g ram matical relationship ' passive vo ice '
is accu rate eno ugh, but as a morphological description it
is
grossly misleading ,
and we ought not toallow the ty ranny of wordsorthe inhe rited errorsof
early grammarian s to lead us to false conclusions. Th e fact th at w e have been
hab itua ted to call passive both wh at I have called true passive and the in transi-
tive so-called passive isno gro und for thinking that the one is more natu ral, mo re
normal, more idiomatic than the other,ortha t the oneis primary and the
other derivative. In particular, in Jo hn xiii.31thereisno gramm atical w arrant
for supposing that we are dealing w ith one kind of passive rath er th an ano ther,
or that both instances of the passive are necessarily of the same kind.
'Now the Son of Man is glorified.' In this first clause of the verse thereis
every reason to conclude that we havea true passive.Inthe Cross, reg arded
as already accomplished, God
is to
glorify Jesus
in
his role
as
Son
of
M a n .
This is put beyond reasonable doubt by the immediate sequel ('God will also
glorify him in himself and glorify himatonce') and by the opening words of
the p raye r of Jesus in xvii. 1 ('F ath er, glorify yo ur S o n ') . On the Cross Jesus
is to be invested withanew access of divine glory. But h ere we are presented
with a question which carriesus tothe most intimate depths of Joh an nin e
theology. Why does Jesus pray toGod forsomething healready possesses?
The glory
of
God
is
God 's own essential worth , g reatness, power, majesty,
everything in him which calls forth man's adoring reverence; and this glory
has been shared from all eternity by the Logos (xvii. 5).
In
the Incarnation
God has willed that the eternal glory of the Logos should be communicated
to the man
Jesus,
so that others might see
it
and draw from
it
the conclusion
that he was the unique Son of God (i.14). This glory Jesusissaid tohave
manifested in his signs (ii. 11). If
we
wish to know w ha t is the referent of the
word 86ccinsuch passages as these, we c an identify it by comparing them
with other passages which have to dowith the revelatory character ofthe
deeds of
J e su s . '
If I am not doing the works of my Father, do not believe me.
But if I am , believe the works, even if you do no t believe me, so that you may
recognize and know that the Father is in me, and I inthe Father ' (x. 37 -8;
cf. xiv. 11). If thenJesus,who is already one with the Father, prays for glory,
1
E.g . *y vlo6r|Ti' go thro ug h the ritu al of pu rific atio n' (Acts xxi. 24 ); T(.. . 6oypctrf 3E06E;' wh y do
yo u allow yours elves to be d ict ate d t o ? ' ( Co l. ii. 20 ). Cf. also:6SvE5oucnaj6iiEvosmoTi8^
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27 0 G. B. GA IRD
it cannot be forhimself.The only possibility is that he prays as Son of Man,
as the inclusive representative, who by being lifted up from the earth was to
draw all men into unity with himself (xii. 32). The Incarnation had made it
proper for him to claim that he and the Father were one. The Cross made it
proper for him to pray for his disciples 'that they may all be one, as you,
Fath er, are in me and I in yo u '; and to add ' the glory you have given to me
I have given to them, that they may be one, as we are one' (xvii. 21-2).
All this seems to me clear e nough, bu t it does not help us to decide wh at is
meant by the second clause, 'God is glorified in him'. To be sure the same
word So{j6ca6r| is there used for a second time, but it cannot be used in an
identical sense. T he glorification of Jesus on the Cross means his endowm ent
with a glory which, at least in his representative function as Son of Man, he
has not up to that point possessed; and God cannot be glorified in this sense.
1
But, if the two uses are not identical, there is no reason to suppose they are
even examples of the same type of passive.
We are now in a position to draw up a list of the four possible meanings of
our clause, and to see what there is to be said for or against them.
1. (Truepassive) 'Through him God is held in honour' sc .by men.
2. (Truepassive) 'God is honoured by him' sc .by his obedience.
3. Causative passive)
'God has won honour for himself in him.'
4. Intransitivepassive)
'God has revealed his glory in him.'
The first and third of these renderings come closest to Classical usage, but
have nothing else to be said in their favour. As we have seen, the reference of
this verse is to the Cross, the po int w here the w orld clearly proves that it has
hated both Jesus and the Father (xv. 24), the point where Jesus is left alone
in his fidelity to G od, w hile the rest of the world remains in darkness (xvi. 32) .
It is incredible th at Jo hn should have intended to say that, at the m om ent of
Jesus'
death, men were holding God in high esteem, or that God had won
from them the acknowledgement of his supreme majesty. That was to come
later, through the missionary efforts of the apostles and the interpretative
guidance of the Paraclete, without whose help not even the most intimate
friends of Jesus could u nderstan d wh at had happ ened on C alvary. These two
interpretations have the further disadvantage of giving to 80^6300 a meaning
unrelated to the dominant Christological sense which S6a has throughout
this Gospel. Jesus does indeed at an earlier period of his ministry contrast the
66oc (recognition) which men seek from one another, and which blinds them
to the reality of the true 86oc (oneness with God) which he himself is content
to receive as a gift at the hands of his Father (v. 41-4; cf. vii. 18; viii. 50);
but this distinction only serves to show that elsewhere John is giving 56oc a
deeper significance than it has in colloquial parlance.
1
The temptation to assume that two instances of the same word in a single context must be
exactly synonymous has been the ruin of much exegesis. Cf. for example the repeated use of
in Rom. i. 17-18.
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THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL 27
Th e second rend ering has mo re to be said for it. Jesus ca n say,'I glorified
you on earth, by completing the work you gave me
to
d o ' (xvii. 4).
If
th e
whole life of Jesus wasa glorification of God, how much more could thisbe
said of his de at h But this interp retatio n has one serious gram m atical objec-
tion to it, that it involves the use ofkvw ith the d ative to express the age nt of a
passive verb. John nowhere else uses
kv
with the da tive of a personal agen t,
and for the NT asawhole the construction is attested on ly byafew doubtful
cases,
most
of
which are better explained
in
other ways.
1
Joh n, moreover,
appears to have avoided theuse of the passive,
2
preferring always those
constructions which allowed him
to
use his verbs
in
the active; an d
in the
only place where he clearly expresses the agent witha passive verb he uses
the classical
0TT6
with the genitive (xiv. 21). The difficulty of this in terpreta -
tion of kv ecu-rep becomes more acute when we turn from xiii. 31to xiv. 13:
' W hatever you ask
in
my n ame, th at
I
will do, so that the Father may
be
glorified
in
the Son ' (fvcc So^ocaQrj 6 TTccrfip
kv
T Ylw). This sentence comes
at the close of a long arg um ent in wh ich Jesus has claimed that to see himis
to see the Father, because he is
in
the Father and the Father
in
him. 'Th e
words which I sayto you I do not speak from myself.It is the Father who
dwells in me do ing his own w ork s' (xiv. 10). W hen Jesus speaks and acts, it is
the Father speaking andacting in him. When he answers thedisciples'
prayers,
it
is the Fat he r w ho is being glorified in the Son. The whole context
demands that this lastkv,like the others, should be local. But in that case it is
highly probable that kvOCUTW in xiii. 31 is also to be construed as local. This
conclusion becomes inescapable when weexam ine that verse as a whole.
'Now
the
Son
of
M an
is
glorified,
and
God
is
glorified
in
h im;
if
God
is
glorified inhim , G od will also glorify him inhimself, and glorify himat
once. '
God is to glorify the Son of Man 'inhimself,in his own being, in a new
actofm utua l indwelling; and here the
kv
OCUTCO
is unmistakably local.Itis
surely impossible
to
avoid
the
inference that
it
must
be
local also
in the
previous clause. The Son
of
M an
is to be
glorified
in
God and God
in
th e
Son of Man.
Once it is established that kv
OCUTCO
denotes the locus of God's glorification
and not its agent, there is
a
strong presum ption tha t the agent is Godhimself,
tha t God is glorified by his own action in bestowing glory on the Son of M an .
But, if that is so, then we have aba ndo ned the atte m pt to trea t 8ocia6r) as
a
true passive, and have begun to treatit as an intransitive passive. We turn,
accordingly,
to
the fourth possible re nde ring of the verse: ' Now the Son of
Man has been endowed with glory, and God has revealed his glory in him.'
This interpretation avoids
all the
objections
to
which
the
other three
are
exposed.Itallows the preposition kvits natu ral local sense, anditallows the
1
'Ev
CCUTQ SKT(
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27 2 G. B. CA IR D
ve rb 6o&3&o its pro pe r links of sound and sense with the uses of the no un
86a throug hou t the G ospel. It is also thoroughly in keeping with Joha nn ine
theology. The theological argument of the Gospel falls into two almost equal
parts.
I n the first twelve chap ters Jo hn sets forth the p ublic ministry of Jesus
as a series of
signs,
which po int to the tr uth of the Inca rna tion , and he uses his
whole vocabulary of word-themes to produce a set of variations on this
subject. If men had the faith and insight to penetrate the meaning of the
signs, they would see in them evidence tha t in Jesus the etern al Logos had
assumed hum anity. They would see that God had bestowed on Jesus the
glory which the Logos had from the beginning (i. 14; ii. 11; xvii. 5), the
ability of the Logos to impart life to the world (i. 4; v. 26), the love with
which he had loved the Logos before the world began (iii. 35; v. 20 ; xvii. 24).
They would see that he was in the Fath er an d the Fath er in him (x. 38 ; xiv.
11).
They would see that, when he performed his works of mercy and life-
giving, it was the Father in him who was performing them: 'my Father is
working until now, and I am working' (v. 17); 'it is the Father who dwells in
me doing his own work' (xiv. 10). From this it follows that, if they see the
glory of
Jesus,
they will at the same time be seeing the glory of God. He who
sees the Son sees the Father also (xiv. 9); for in the sense in which John uses
'
see',
it is impossible to see the one w ithou t th e other. T he re is a good illustra-
tion of this in the story of Lazaru s. The story opens with a statem ent by Jesus
that the illness of La zaru s is 'for the glory ofGod,so that the Son of God may
be glorified by it' (xi. 4). Later Jesus says to Martha: 'Did I not tell you that
if you have faith you will see the glory of God ? ' (xi. 40 ). Jesus is said to be
glorified by this sign partly because it is the last of the series and leads
directly to his glorification on the Cross, partly because, like all the other
signs,
it is an occasion for his m anifesting of his glory. But th e glory of Jesu s is
the glory of Godhimself.W here Jesus is active, God is also at w ork, an d where
Jesus manifests his glory, the glory of God is also to be seen.
In the second half of the Gospel Jo hn is concerned to show th at the Cross is
the point w here the individual m anhood of Jesus, already taken up into
union with the Logos, becomes corporate and inclusive, so that in him
believers may enter into the same union. To this end he uses his complete set
of Christological terms afresh in a new setting. The glory, the life, the love,
the oneness with God, which were his by virtue of the Incarnation, are now
bestowed on him again, vicariously for the benefit of those who are to be
united with him by his passion. But the same principle still holds good that,
in endowing the Son of Man with glory, God is revealing his own glory.
There are two other verses which provide strong corroboration for this inter-
pretation of our text. 'Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, so that
the Father may be glorified in the Son' (xiv. 13). I have already argued that
the phrase
kvT
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THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL 273
isolated life with the F ather. H e is looking forward to the time when , throu gh
the Cross, disciples will abideinhim andhe inthem . T hey willbe 'in the
Son'. Jesus promises to answer any prayers made to him in accordance with
his known will, because
in
this way the F ath er will be able
to
continue the
manifestation ofhisglory in the corporate life of the church. An even clearer
statement of this them e is found in the following ch apte r. 'T h is is the way my
Father's glory is revealed, that you should bear much fruit and so prove to
be
my
disciples'
(xv.
8). Jesus
is not
asking
his
followers
of
their own
effort and initiative to glorify God by means of their Christian witness. On
the contrary he is warning them that only by abiding
in
him , like branches
in a vine, sothat thelife andglory ofGod canstream throug h him to
manifest themselves
in
them,
can
they ever h ope
to
engage
in
effective
missionary enterprise.
It cannot,I think, be denied that the interpretation I have tried to put on
the verb 6o&3ea0oci makes very good sense of the contexts in which that verb
is used with God as its subject. The only outstanding objection toitis th atI
have not yet shown that this isapossible meaning for the verb. If I can show
th at th e passive of So^djco regu larly has in the L X X the senseIam proposing,
I shall be able with some confidence torest my case.
4 . THEEVIDENCE OF THE LXX
Ou r starting-point must be the two Hebrew verbs
1333
('to be glorified') and
tlpi
('to be sanctified '). Both these w ords are niphals. According to
grammarians the niphal is the reflexive stem of the Hebrew verb, though
in
fact the vast majority of niphals inthe O T are simply passive. Th e niph al
exhibits much the same variety of meaning as we have already found
in
the
Greek passive. Both "T333andanj?J are capable of being used as true
passives;
but
mo re frequently, particu larly
in
Ezekiel, they
are
used
in a
fashion that might bedescribed either asreflexiveor asintransitive. God
speaks of the day when he will be glorified or sanctified, i.e. when he will act
in such a way as to demo nstrate his glory and san ctity. The R SV has correctly
interp reted this usage. ' I will manifest my holiness am ong you in the sight
of the nations' (xx. 41). 'Behold, I am against you, O Sidon, and I will
manifest my gloryinthe m idst of you. A nd they shall know th at I am the
Lord when I execute judgements inher , an d manifest my holiness in her'
(xxviii. 2 2 ). ' It will redou nd to their hono ur on the day th atIshow m y glory,
says the Lord God' (xxxix. 13).
1
These Hebrew niphals thus carry exactly
the senseIwish to attrib ute to Soa3ea0cu in Jo h n x iii. 31 , and the L X X uses
1
Cf. xxviii. 25 ; xxxvi.23;xxxviii. 16; xxxix. 27. In other books the RS V translators seem to have
suffered loss of nerve, since in one place they fall back on the less adequ ate rendering of the AV, and
in the other they produce
a
curious hybrid.
' I
will get glory over Pharaoh' (Exod. xiv. 4, 17, 18).
' I will show myself holy among those who are near me, and before all the peopleIwill be glorified
(Lev. x. 3). Both these passages are from the Priestly Code and dependent on the usage of Ezekiel.
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274
G
-
B
- CAIRD
6oa3a0cci and &yi&3a6cu to translate them. But it would be premature at
this stage to write
Quod eratdem onstrandum.
For not all LXX translations are
equally idiomatic Greek, and n ot all L X X innovations in Greek initiated th e
semantic change that would ensure their adoption as part of current speech,
even in the Synagogue. There were many solecisms, which were allowed to
stand in Scripture, but not imitated even by readers of Scripture. How then
can we be sure that the translators understood the Hebrew idiom in question,
or tha t their rendering was ever intended by them to convey wh at with all the
aids of modern linguistic scholarship we know to have been the sense of the
Hebrew? How do we know that they were not operating by rule of thumb,
assuming that a Hebrew niphal must always be translated by a Greek
passive, and allowing the sense to take care of itself? These are weighty and
proper questions, which require a far more detailed examination of LXX
evidence than can be given here. But I can at least illustrate the two types of
evidence which make me think that they are not fatal to my case. The first
poin t is th at these G reek passives, So^d^eoQai an d &yi&3ea0cci, are found from
time to time in com pany with other verbs which help to make their intended
meaning clear; and of this I shall give three examples.
{a)
KCCI UyccAuv6r|ao|jK3ci KOCI &yioca0r)aouca KOU vSoocCT0r|aonai KOU
yvGoadr)croiaoa EVOCVTIOV E0VCOV TTOXACOV, KCCIyvwaovTcu 6TI yci> elpi KOpios
'I shall reveal my greatness, my holiness, and my glory, and make myself
known in the presence of many nations; and they shall know that I am the
L ord ' (Ezek. xxxviii. 23). It is easy enough to justify this translation. Since the
passage describes a disastrous divine judgement, there can be no question of
God's being exalted, held in reverence, or honoured by men. The first four
verbs must denote a divine activity and revelation designed to bring about
the recognition expressed in the last clause. In the He brew , indeed , this inter-
pre tation is beyond do ub t. But in the G reek it is greatly eased by the presence
at the beginning and end of the list of verbs of nEyocAuv6i
)ao|jica and yvcoa9r|-
aouoci. For, although pieyccAuveaQcxi can be used as a true passive, meaning ' to
be exalted, pra ised', it
is
far more often used intransitively to mea n ' grow u p ' ,
'becom e gre at ' , 'acqu ire new status ', 'mak e a parade of greatness or po we r'.
And, although yivcboKEoflcu can also be a true passive, it is regularly used,
as we have already seen, as a causative, 'to make oneself known'.
(b ) KCCI uyco6r)aeToci Kupios Ecc(3occb0
EV
Kpfnorn,
KOCI6 0e6s 6 ccyios 6ooca0riaeTcu EV6iKaioauvr|.
'T h e Lord S abao th will show himself lofty in the dispensation of justice, and the
holy God will show himself glorious by seeing that rig ht is d on e' (Isa. v. 16).
Only rarely is uvyoOa0cci used as a true passive. Its regular meaning is 'to rise
to a great height', 'to grow to one's full stature', 'to display a lofty nature';
and its presence in the couplet is a guarantee that 8o&3a0cci is also being
used intransitively.
(c) NOv dcvcccrrricroncu, Aeyei Kupios, vuv Sooccr0r|o-onoa, vOv u^oo0r|aouai.
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THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL 75
vuv 6vyEcr6e, vuv ala6i
| create'Now I shall arise, says the Lord , now I shall
display my glory, now I shall reach to the full height of my power. Now you
shall see, now you shall perceive' (Isa. xxxiii. 10). Here 6oacr0T