John 3:7

3:7 Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all ¹  be born from above.’ ² 

John 9:32

9:32 Never before ³  has anyone heard of someone causing a man born blind to see. ⁴ 

John 3:4

3:4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time, can he?” ⁵ 

John 16:21

16:21 When a woman gives birth, she has distress ⁶  because her time ⁷  has come, but when her child is born, she no longer remembers the suffering because of her joy that a human being ⁸  has been born into the world. ⁹ 

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¹ tn “All” has been supplied to indicate the plural pronoun in the Greek text.

² tn Or “born again.” The same Greek word with the same double meaning occurs in v. 3.

³ tn Or “Never from the beginning of time,” Grk “From eternity.”

⁴ tn Grk “someone opening the eyes of a man born blind” (“opening the eyes” is an idiom referring to restoration of sight).

⁵ tn The grammatical structure of the question in Greek presupposes a negative reply.

⁶ sn The same word translated distress here has been translated sadness in the previous verse (a wordplay that is not exactly reproducible in English).

⁷ tn Grk “her hour.”

⁸ tn Grk “that a man” (but in a generic sense, referring to a human being).

⁹ sn Jesus now compares the situation of the disciples to a woman in childbirth. Just as the woman in the delivery of her child experiences real pain and anguish (has distress), so the disciples will also undergo real anguish at the crucifixion of Jesus. But once the child has been born, the mother’s anguish is turned into joy, and she forgets the past suffering. The same will be true of the disciples, who after Jesus’ resurrection and reappearance to them will forget the anguish they suffered at his death on account of their joy.