John 7:23

7:23 But if a male child ¹  is circumcised ²  on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken, ³  why are you angry with me because I made a man completely well ⁴  on the Sabbath?

John 16:21

16:21 When a woman gives birth, she has distress ⁵  because her time ⁶  has come, but when her child is born, she no longer remembers the suffering because of her joy that a human being ⁷  has been born into the world. ⁸ 

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¹ tn Grk “a man.” See the note on “male child” in the previous verse.

² tn Grk “receives circumcision.”

³ sn If a male child is circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken. The Rabbis counted 248 parts to a man’s body. In the Talmud (b. Yoma 85b) R. Eleazar ben Azariah (ca. a.d. 100) states: “If circumcision, which attaches to one only of the 248 members of the human body, suspends the Sabbath, how much more shall the saving of the whole body suspend the Sabbath?” So absolutely binding did rabbinic Judaism regard the command of Lev 12:3 to circumcise on the eighth day, that in the Mishnah m. Shabbat 18.3; 19.1, 2; and m. Nedarim 3.11 all hold that the command to circumcise overrides the command to observe the Sabbath.

⁴ tn Or “made an entire man well.”

⁵ sn The same word translated distress here has been translated sadness in the previous verse (a wordplay that is not exactly reproducible in English).

⁶ tn Grk “her hour.”

⁷ tn Grk “that a man” (but in a generic sense, referring to a human being).

⁸ 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.