9:29a
We know that God spoke to Moses: The pronoun We is best translated as exclusive here. The Jewish leaders continued to contrast themselves with the man whom Jesus healed. It is true that the man also believed that God spoke to Moses, but the Jewish leaders ignored this. They emphasized that they themselves believed that Moses’ law was God’s message to them.
Here are other ways to translate this clause:
We are sure that God spoke to Moses. (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
We know that God gave his word/message to Moses.
-or-
We know this about Moses, that long ago God spoke to him ⌊giving him the law⌋ .
9:29b
but: The word but indicates a contrast. The contrast is between Moses, who they knew heard from God, and Jesus, who they knew little about.
we do not know where this man is from: The Jewish leaders certainly did not think that Jesus came from God. In spite of the miraculous signs that he had done, they did not believe that he was from God. So here they must have meant that they did not know what place on earth that he came from. Here is another way to translate this clause:
We do not know where this man comes from! (NET Bible Bible)
we: The pronoun we continues to be exclusive and refers to the Jewish leaders who were opposed to Jesus.
this man: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as this man is more literally “this one.” The Greek text emphasizes that word to contrast Jesus with Moses. They thought that Moses was far better than Jesus. The religious leaders did not honor Jesus but scorned him. Use an expression that implies the speakers did not respect the person they referred to. For example:
this fellow (New International Version)
-or-
this ⌊other⌋ person
© 2020 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.