Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - John 3:8 - 3:8
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The wind (to pneuma). In Greek pneuma means either wind or spirit as spiritus does in Latin (so also in Hebrew and Syriac). Wycliff follows the Latin and keeps spirit here and Marcus Dods argues for it. The word pneuma occurs 370 times in the N.T. and never means wind elsewhere except in a quotation from the O.T. (Heb 1:7 from Psa 104:4), though common in the lxx. On the other hand pneō (bloweth, pnei) occurs five times elsewhere in the N.T. and always of the wind (like Joh 6:18). So phōnē can be either sound (as of wind) or voice (as of the Spirit). In simple truth either sense of pneuma can be taken here as one wills. Tholuck thinks that the night-wind swept through the narrow street as Jesus spoke. In either case the etymology of pneuma is “wind” from pneō, to blow. The Spirit is the use of pneuma as metaphor. Certainly the conclusion “of the Spirit” is a direct reference to the Holy Spirit who works his own way beyond our comprehension even as men even yet do not know the law of the wind.