Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
John 5:39
Search the scriptures. The Greek form is both a command and a statement.
John 5:39, in every translation this tool compares.
You're reading. Read! In English those look different. Imagine one form that could be either, and only the sentence around it deciding.
Because the verse is quoted as an instruction to study the Bible and the form can equally be a description of what they are already doing, which reverses the sentence.
The King James reads search the scriptures as a command. Most modern versions read you search the scriptures as a statement.
ἐραυνάω eraunao · G2045
Eraunate is identical in form as a present indicative and a present imperative. Read as indicative, the sentence is you search the scriptures because you think you have life in them, and they testify of me, and you will not come to me. That reading fits the rebuke that follows.
English has different forms for a command and a statement, so the printing settles it and the reader never sees the choice.
Some Greek forms are identical across mood. When a version prints a command and another prints a statement, this is usually why.
The statement reading, you search the scriptures, is what most modern versions print; the King James reads it as a command instead.
- The identical indicative and imperative forms in the present active second plural
- The argument of John 5:39-47 as a rebuke
- Metzger and the standard commentaries discuss both readings
