8:45
But: The Greek conjunction that the Berean Standard Bible translates as But here introduces a contrast. The contrast is that they believe the devil, who is a liar, but they do not believe Jesus, who speaks truth.
because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me!: The word because here introduces the reason why those people did not believe Jesus: he told the truth. They had chosen to follow the devil, the liar, and so they would rather believe a lie. Here is another way to translate this logical connection:
I tell the truth, and that is why you do not believe me. (Good News Translation)
In some languages it may be natural to reverse the clauses. For example:
you don’t believe me because I tell the truth (God’s Word)
-or-
the reason you (plur.) do not believe me is that I speak truth
I speak the truth: The Greek text emphasizes the word I to contrast Jesus with the father of lies. For example:
But as for me, I tell you the truth
you do not believe Me!: Here the word believe refers to believing what Jesus said. Here is another way to translate this clause:
you do not believe what I say
© 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.

Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.