SIL Translator’s Notes on John 12:28

12:28a

Father: This word refers to God. Jesus was praying to God his Father.

glorify Your name: This phrase here means “reveal your glory/greatness” or “show people how great/wonderful you are.” The phrase Your name refers to God himself. His name represents who he is. Here are other ways to translate this phrase:

bring glory to yourself (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
honour your own name! (Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English)
-or-
reveal your greatness

Paragraph 12:28b–29

12:28b

Then: This word introduces what happened in response to Jesus’ prayer to God.

a voice came from heaven: This clause indicates that God spoke from heaven. In some languages it may not be natural to say that a voice came. It may be more natural to use a different verb to describe what a voice does. For example:

a voice spoke from heaven (Good News Translation)
-or-
A voice from heaven then said (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
these words were spoken in heaven

If your readers will not understand that this refers to God, it may be necessary to make this explicit. For example:

⌊God⌋ spoke from heaven

I have glorified it: The word I refers to God. He had already glorified his name (it refers to his name, which represents himself). That means that he revealed his greatness through the miracles Jesus did. People were already praising God for the wonderful things he was doing through Jesus. Here are other ways to translate this clause:

I have brought glory to it (Good News Translation)
-or-
I have already brought glory to myself (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
I have honoured it (Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English)
-or-
I have already revealed my glory/greatness

12:28c

I will glorify it again: This clause indicates that God would again reveal his greatness. This refers to the resurrection of Jesus, but you should not say this in your translation. Here are other ways to translate this clause:

and I will give it glory again (God’s Word)
-or-
and I will do it again (New Century Version)

it: This pronoun again refers to God’s name, representing God himself.

© 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.

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