Discovery BoxLuke 12:2-5 
Context12:2 Nothing is hidden 1 that will not be revealed, 2 and nothing is secret that will not be made known. 12:3 So then 3 whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered 4 in private rooms 5 will be proclaimed from the housetops. 6
12:4 “I 7 tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, 8 and after that have nothing more they can do. 12:5 But I will warn 9 you whom you should fear: Fear the one who, after the killing, 10 has authority to throw you 11 into hell. 12 Yes, I tell you, fear him!
1 tn Or “concealed.”
2 sn I.e., be revealed by God. The passive voice verbs here (“be revealed,” be made known”) see the revelation as coming from God. The text is both a warning about bad things being revealed and an encouragement that good things will be made known, though the stress with the images of darkness and what is hidden in vv. 2-3 is on the attempt to conceal.
3 tn Or “because.” Understanding this verse as a result of v. 2 is a slightly better reading of the context. Knowing what is coming should impact our behavior now.
4 tn Grk “spoken in the ear,” an idiom. The contemporary expression is “whispered.”
5 sn The term translated private rooms refers to the inner room of a house, normally without any windows opening outside, the most private location possible (BDAG 988 s.v. ταμεῖον 2).
6 tn The expression “proclaimed from the housetops” is an idiom for proclaiming something publicly (L&N 7.51). Roofs of many first century Jewish houses in Judea and Galilee were flat and had access either from outside or from within the house. Something shouted from atop a house would be heard by everyone in the street below.
7 tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.
8 sn Judaism had a similar exhortation in 4 Macc 13:14-15.
9 tn Grk “will show,” but in this reflective context such a demonstration is a warning or exhortation.
10 sn The actual performer of the killing is not here specified. It could be understood to be God (so NASB, NRSV) but it could simply emphasize that, after a killing has taken place, it is God who casts the person into hell.
11 tn The direct object (“you”) is understood.
12 sn The word translated hell is “Gehenna” (γέεννα, geenna), a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom (“Valley of Hinnom”). This was the valley along the south side of Jerusalem. In OT times it was used for human sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (cf. Jer 7:31; 19:5-6; 32:35), and it came to be used as a place where human excrement and rubbish were disposed of and burned. In the intertestamental period, it came to be used symbolically as the place of divine punishment (cf. 1 En. 27:2, 90:26; 4 Ezra 7:36).
