What Does John 3:4 Mean?

(4) **How can a man be born . . .?**—Nicodemus understands the words “born again” in the sense given above. The thought is not wholly strange to him. The Rabbis were accustomed to speak of proselytes as children, and the term “new creature” (comp. 2Corinthians 5:17) was in frequent use to express the call of Abraham. But he is himself a child of Abraham, a member of the theocratic kingdom, and is expecting the glory of Messiah’s reign. He is a teacher of the Law, a ruler of the chosen people. He is not as a heathen who can be born into the holy nation. The ordinary spiritual sense of the words cannot hold in his case. What can they mean? He does not wilfully misinterpret, for this is opposed to the whole character of the man, nor does he really suppose the physical meaning is intended; but after the method of Rabbinic dialogue, he presses the impossible meaning of the words in order to exclude it, and to draw forth the true meaning. “You cannot mean that a man is to enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born. What is it, then, that you do mean?” **When he is old** does not necessarily apply to Nicodemus himself. It is the most difficult special case coming under the general term, “a man.” In Philo’s artificial division of the lifetime, based on that of Hippocrates, the “old man” (γέρων) is one more than fifty-six years (*De Mund. Opif.* § 36). If we understand this of Nicodemus personally, it will make the identification with Nak’dimon (Note on John 3:1) barely possible. (4) The proper meaning of the word rendered “sound” (φωνή) is articulate “voice.” It is used in fifteen passages in this Gospel only, and everywhere translated “voice” except here. Let the reader substitute the one meaning for the other in any of these passages, *e.g.,* John 1:23; John 3:29; John 5:25; John 5:28; John 10:3-5; John 10:16, and he will find that they are not interchangeable.