SIL Translator’s Notes on John 6:33

6:33a–b

For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world: The Greek pronoun that the Berean Standard Bible translates as He who can also be translated as “that which.” As a result, there are two ways to interpret 6:33a–b:

(1) Jesus was referring to himself. For example:

the bread that God gives is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world (Good News Translation)

(Berean Standard Bible, Good News Translation, New International Version (1984), King James Version, English Standard Version, NET Bible, God’s Word, New Living Translation (2004), Contemporary English Version, New Century Version)

(2) Jesus was referring to heavenly food in general. For example:

For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world. (New American Standard Bible)

(New American Standard Bible, Revised Standard Version, New Revised Standard Version, New International Version (2011))

It is recommended that you keep the reference ambiguous. That will help explain why those who heard Jesus did not understand that Jesus was referring to himself. Here is one way to keep this ambiguous:

The bread that God gives comes down from heaven and brings life to the world. (Revised English Bible)

Again, if bread is not an important food in your language area, you may need to use a general word instead of bread. For example:

Because the true food that God gives, it comes from heaven and can give life to all people.

© 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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