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NASB | John 1:49 Nathanael answered Him, "Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel." |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 1:49 Nathanael answered, "Rabbi (Teacher), You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel." |
Subject: What did Yeshua notice? |
Bible Note: parpar, Your answer is very well put. This story has fascinated me for years, and I never cease to marvel at it. It is remarkable that Jesus in this passage clearly identified Himself as the very “ladder” that Jacob had seen in his dream many hundreds of years before: Genesis 28:12-13 12 And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! 13 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. . . .” We can reasonably infer from Jesus’ words in v.51 that Nathanael was at least contemplating if not fervently desiring the coming of Messiah, of which Jacob’s dream was clearly a prophecy. In Jacob’s dream, the angels of God were “ascending and descending” on the ladder, which stood upon the earth and yet its top reached heaven. The symbolic reference here is plain: Messiah will walk on earth as a man, and yet He will also be God (v.13 “The LORD stood” at its top). Jesus said in v.51 they would see the angels of God “ascending and descending” on “the Son of Man”, a term that was a clear reference to Himself as Messiah. Nathanael had just exclaimed, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” when Jesus revealed that He had seen him under the fig tree. (Such an exclamation rivals the inspired words of Simon in Matt. 16:16 – “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!”) In the words of the illustrious apostle Paul in 1 Tim. 3:16 Amplified: “And great and important and weighty, we confess, is the hidden truth (the mystic secret) of godliness. He [God] was made visible in human flesh, justified and vindicated in the [Holy] Spirit, was seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, [and] taken up in glory.” In Christ, tdc |