The Word Became Flesh

1 aIn the beginning was bthe Word, and cthe Word was with God, and dthe Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 eAll things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 fIn him was life,1 and gthe life was the light of men. 5 hThe light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

6 There was a man isent from God, whose name was jJohn. 7He came as a kwitness, to bear witness about the light, lthat all might believe through him. 8 mHe was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

9 nThe true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet othe world did not know him. 11 He came to phis own,2 and qhis own people3 rdid not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, swho believed in his name, the gave the right uto become vchildren of God, 13 who wwere born, xnot of blood ynor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And zthe Word abecame flesh and bdwelt among us, cand we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son4 from the Father, full of dgrace and etruth. 15 (fJohn bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, g‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) 16 For from hhis fullness we have all received, igrace upon grace.5 17 For jthe law was given through Moses; kgrace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 lNo one has ever seen God; mthe only God,6 who is at the Father’s side,7 nhe has made him known.

The Testimony of John the Baptist

19 And this is the otestimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, p“Who are you?” 20 qHe confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? rAre you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you sthe Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am tthe voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight8 the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

24 (Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) 25 They asked him, u“Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 26 John answered them, v“I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, 27 even whe who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” 28 These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

Behold, the Lamb of God

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, xthe Lamb of God, who ytakes away the sin zof the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, a‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but bfor this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John cbore witness: d“I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and eit remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but fhe who sent me to baptize gwith water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, hthis is he who baptizes gwith the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son9 of God.”

Jesus Calls the First Disciples

35 The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, ithe Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, j“What are you seeking?” And they said to him, k“Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.10 40 lOne of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus11 was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found mthe Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of nJohn. You shall be called oCephas” (which means pPeter12).

Jesus Calls Philip and Nathanael

43 qThe next day Jesus decided rto go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now sPhilip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found tNathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom uMoses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus vof Nazareth, wthe son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, x“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, yan Israelite indeed, zin whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael said to him, “How ado you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered him, b“Rabbi, cyou are the Son of God! You are the dKing of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you,13 you will see eheaven opened, and fthe angels of God ascending and descending on gthe Son of Man.”

Rephaiah, Son of Tola (רְפָיָה, rephayah). A descendant of Issachar and son of Tola; known as a mighty warrior (1 Chr 7:2).

Rephaim (רְפָאִים, repha'im). A Hebrew word often simply transliterated in modern English Bible versions (e.g., Gen 14:5 ESV, LEB). When the term is translated, it is rendered “giants” (1 Chr 20:4 ESV), “shades” (i.e., spirits of the dead; Isa 26:14 ESV), or simply “the dead” (Job 26:5 ESV). These translation choices point to the interpretive problem associated with the term: It is difficult to identify whether the Rephaim were humans (living or dead), quasi-divine figures, or disembodied spirits. Old Testament usage associates the term with all these possibilities, while external Semitic source texts in which the term is found (Ugaritic, Phoenician) do not describe the Rephaim as giants. Identification is further complicated by uncertainty regarding the term’s etymology and how it is translated in the Septuagint.

Etymology

Scholars believe the most likely Semitic root for repha’im is רפא (rp'). This is the consensus despite the transparent links between the term and Hebrew רפה (rph). For example, in 2 Sam 21:16–22 Goliath is linked to other giants, other “descendants of the giants” (ESV; the latter term in Hebrew being הָרָפָה, haraphah). However, in the parallel account in 1 Chr 20:6–8, the term rendered “giants” is הָרָפָא (harapha'). This makes clear that, at least for these biblical writers, רפא (rp') and רפה (rph) were alternate spellings of the same root. Of the two, words formed with rp’ are far more frequent in the Hebrew Bible, and the spelling of the plural repha’im features the aleph as the third consonant in the root. Brown notes that there is an etymological relationship between plural repha’im and the Ugaritic plural rpʾum (Brown, “I Am the Lord, Your Healer,” 175; see discussion below for the Ugaritic term).

The verbal root r-p-’ means “to heal” in the vast majority of instances where it is used in the Hebrew Bible. According to Brown, the root “occurs 67 times in verbal conjugations … and 19 times in derived nominal forms” (Brown, “I Am the Lord, Your Healer,” 37). While most scholars accept this root as underlying repha’im, it offers little help in ascertaining the meaning of the biblical Rephaim. The biblical Rephaim are never cast as “healers” in context.

The situation is the same concerning Ugaritic rpʾum. The Ugaritic material yields no example portraying the rpʾum as healers. In fact, for many years it was doubted the Ugaritic corpus contained a single instance of the root r-p-ʾ that supported a meaning of “heal.” Brown asks the question directly: “Is there any context in which the Ugaritic root rpʾ clearly means ‘to mend, heal, repair’ or ‘make whole’?” (Brown, “I Am the Lord, Your Healer,” 116). He is skeptical about the existence of any clear example (Brown, “I Am the Lord, Your Healer,” 118–20). However, more recent work in re-editing the Ugaritic tablets has provided clarity on the reading of one text (KTU 1.114:28) whose context supports this meaning for a verb form (third-person feminine singular): “when she [either Athtart or Anat] would heal [trpʾ] him [El] …” (Bordreuil and Pardee, Manual of Ugaritic, vii, 195; compare del Olmo Lete and Sanmartín, Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language, 742). Wyatt, another Ugaritic scholar, takes the verb form as a plural: “Athtart and Anat [returned].… And they brought back meat.… When they had cured [trpʾ] him [El], he awoke” (Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit, 412).

Despite this paucity of supporting material, scholars have continued to presume the underlying meaning of “heal” for Ugaritic rpʾum (Rouillard, “Rephaim,” 692). But this lone instance cannot adequately inform the meaning of the plural rpʾum in Ugaritic material. The one Ugaritic tablet that witnesses a verb form from r-p-ʾ with a meaning “heal” is not about the Ugaritic rpʾum. They appear nowhere in the context. There are therefore no instances where the rpʾum are cast as healers (Brown, “I Am the Lord, Your Healer,” 124–27). The fact that the Septuagint twice renders repha’im with ἰατροὶ (iatroi, “healers”; Psa 88:10 [87:11 LXX]; Isa 26:14) does not clarify the situation since the Septuagint renders Hebrew repha’im inconsistently (see below). That is, ἰατροὶ (iatroi) may be a purely interpretive or speculative translation.

For these reasons, appealing to Ugaritic material to conclude that the Hebrew r-p-ʾ (“heal”) is the source of repha’im is quite tenuous. Consequently, scholars have sought a Semitic homograph, within or without the Hebrew Bible, for clarity on the root of repha’im and its meaning.

Johnson offers one of the more coherent discussions of the alternative roots for repha’im (Johnson, Vitality of the Individual, 89). While noting the uncertainty of the Ugaritic material, Johnson first discusses biblical Hebrew rph as an option. Among the glosses offered in the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament [HALOT] for the verb רפה (rph) are “to grow slack,” “wither, collapse,” and “to slacken, let loose” (HALOT, 1277). Other sources include “sink down” as a possible gloss (TWOT, 858). Since ancient Israel, along with other surrounding cultures, considered the dead inhabitants of the underworld to still be experiencing some sort of subterrestrial life, the rationale for this root as the basis for repha’im is that the term denotes “weakness or loss of energy” (Johnson Vitality of the Individual, 89). This would aptly describe the cadaverous existence of life in the underworld; passages like Job 26:5 describe the dead (repha’im) beneath the surface of the cosmic waters under the earth, sinking listlessly in the realm of the dead.

While it is certain that the Hebrew Bible portrays the dead in Sheol as alive, yet comparably speaking, in a considerably weaker state than the living (Isa 14:9; 26:14; Prov 21:16), Johnson rejects rph as the proper root, preferring instead to understand Ugaritic r-p-ʾ as meaning “to join.” His conceptual argument is that this lemma “is to be explained in a passive sense as originally denoting those who are ‘joined’ or ‘massed’ together in the community of the dead” (Johnson, The Vitality of the Individual, 90). Proverbs 21:16 resonates with this perspective (“One who wanders from the way of good sense will rest in the assembly of the dead [קְהַל רְפָאִים, qehal repha'im]”). Johnson follows the work of H. L. Ginsburg in this regard, who noted that r-p-ʾ in the Ugaritic Keret Epic occurred in parallel to q-b-ṣ, which means “to gather” (KTU 1.15.iii:3–4, reconstructed on the basis of lines 1.15.iii:14–15). Ginsburg writes, “The meaning of r-p-ʾi is revealed by its parallelism to qbṣ, the root of which means ‘to collect’ in Hebrew.… Evidently rpʾ meant originally ‘to join.’ From this it is but a step to the Heb. and Arab. sense ‘to mend’ and to the Hebrew sense ‘to heal.’ The idea of joining or gathering seems to underlie all the uses of the root rpʾ in the Rephaim (Rp) texts.… The Heb. (and Phoen.) rĕpāʾı̂m ‘shades’ presumably also means literally ‘those gathered’ (compare Prov. 21:16)” (Ginsburg, “Legend of King Keret,” 41).

Though speculative, the proposal of Ginsburg and Johnson has considerable appeal. The lone Ugaritic verbal occurrence of r-p-ʾ (KTU 1.114:28) could be translated to say that Athtart and Anat “joined” El after they brought him meat, and provides a semantic rationale for understanding both Ugaritic rpʾum and Hebrew repha’im as a “gathered” collective of underworld inhabitants. This understanding (potentially) avoids the incongruence of a relationship of the term to healing.