The Word Became Flesh

John starts his gospel with the profound statement: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God." There is some confusion about how to translate the clause "the Word was God." The Jehovah Witness Bible, the New World Translation, has "the Word was a god" since there is no article "the" in front of the word "God" as is usual in Greek. Others have rendered the clause as "the Word was divine" for the same reason. But these are misunderstandings of the Greek text. In the Greek, the word order puts the word "God" first to emphasize it. But there is a Greek grammar rule which says that if both the subject and the predicate nominative have articles and the predicate nominative comes first to emphasize it, the predicate nominative will lose its article. If it didn't lose the article, the clause would be understood as "God was the Word." The word "God" here refers the same as before even though it has lost the article that appears before the word "God" in other places.

But the clause order is reversed not only to emphasize the word "God" but also because there is a poetic arrangement of the words. The passage contains a chiastic structure (a kind of sandwich structure that can be written A-B-B-A that repeats words in reverse order) enclosed in a parallel structure. To illustrate, the Greek word order is as follows:

In beginning was the Word
And the Word was with the God
And God was the Word
This [one] was in beginning with the God

In the fourteenth verse, John goes on to write, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." The Greek word for "dwelt" is the word for living in a tent. One might translate, "and encamped among us." His dwelling on earth among people was only temporary. He was here for only a while. But he was here on earth long enough to teach us how to live and provide an example, to die for our sins and save us, and to rise again, giving us the hope of rising from the grave ourselves when he comes again. Praise God for his brief encampment among us.