Discovery BoxMatthew 16:16-18 
Context16:16 Simon Peter answered, 1 “You are the Christ, 2 the Son of the living God.” 16:17 And Jesus answered him, 3 “You are blessed, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood 4 did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven! 16:18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades 5 will not overpower it.
1 tn Grk “And answering, Simon Peter said.”
2 tn Or “Messiah”; both “Christ” (Greek) and “Messiah” (Hebrew and Aramaic) mean “one who has been anointed.”
sn See the note on Christ in 1:16.
3 tn Grk “answering, Jesus said to him.” The participle ἀποκριθείς (apokriqeis) is redundant, but the syntax of this phrase has been modified for clarity.
4 tn The expression “flesh and blood” could refer to “any human being” (so TEV, NLT; cf. NIV “man”), but it could also refer to Peter himself (i.e., his own intuition; cf. CEV “You didn’t discover this on your own”). Because of the ambiguity of the referent, the phrase “flesh and blood” has been retained in the translation.
5 tn Or “and the power of death” (taking the reference to the gates of Hades as a metonymy).
sn In the OT, Hades was known as Sheol. It is the place where the unrighteous will reside (Matt 11:23; Luke 16:23; Rev 20:13-14). Some translations render this by its modern equivalent, “hell”; others see it as a reference to the power of death.
