SIL Translator’s Notes on Luke 2:40

2:40a

grew and became strong:
The word strong here refers to physical strength. As Jesus grew, he became physically strong.

2:40b

He was filled with wisdom: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates literally as filled with wisdom is an idiom. It means that Jesus became very wise. Consider whether you also have an idiom in your language to express this.

The word wisdom here refers to understanding and insight, especially understanding of spiritual things. It does not refer only to intelligence or to knowledge that is learned from studying.

Another way to translate this is:

He became very wise
-or-
He gained great insight/ understanding

2:40c

the grace of God was upon Him: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the grace of God was upon Him is an idiom. It indicates here that God continually favored and blessed Jesus. Jesus received the ongoing benefits of God’s favor during the years that he was maturing.

The word grace refers here to God’s kindness, favor, or blessing. He showed this kindness to Jesus in special ways. Some other ways to translate the grace of God was upon Him are:

God placed his special favor upon him. (New Living Translation (1996))
-or-
God continually blessed him.

See grace, Meaning 1, in the Glossary.

© 2009, 2010, 2013 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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