John 13: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

On the evening before the Passover Feast, Jesus gets up from the meal and washes his disciples' feet, then tells them to do the same for one another. He says that one of them will betray him, identifies Judas by handing him a piece of dipped bread, and Judas leaves into the night. Jesus then speaks of being glorified, tells the disciples he is going where they cannot follow now, gives them a new command to love one another, and tells Peter he will deny him three times before the rooster crows.

Claim by Claim

1. 13:1
   • It was before the feast of the Passover.
   • Jesus knew that his hour had come.
   • Jesus knew that the hour was for him to depart out of this world to the Father.
   • Jesus had loved his own who were in the world.
   • He loved them to the end.
2. 13:2
   • A supper was taking place, and the King James says the supper had ended.
   • The devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus.
   • Judas Iscariot was the son of Simon.
3. 13:3
   • Jesus knew that the Father had given all things into his hands.
   • Jesus knew that he had come from God.
   • Jesus knew that he was going back to God.
4. 13:4
   • Jesus rose from the supper.
   • He laid aside his outer garments.
   • He took a towel.
   • He tied the towel around himself.
5. 13:5
   • He poured water into a basin.
   • He began to wash the disciples' feet.
   • He began to wipe their feet with the towel he was girded with.
6. 13:6
   • Jesus came to Simon Peter.
   • Peter asked him whether he was going to wash his feet.
   • Peter addressed him as Lord.
7. 13:7
   • Jesus answered Peter.
   • Jesus said Peter did not know now what he was doing.
   • Jesus said Peter would know afterward.
8. 13:8
   • Peter said Jesus would never wash his feet.
   • Jesus answered that unless he washed Peter, Peter had no part with him.
9. 13:9
   • Simon Peter addressed him as Lord.
   • Simon Peter asked for not his feet only but also his hands and his head.
10. 13:10
    • Jesus said that one who has been bathed needs only to wash his feet.
    • Jesus said such a person is entirely clean.
    • Jesus said the disciples were clean.
    • Jesus said not all of them were clean.
11. 13:11
    • Jesus knew who was going to betray him.
    • That is why he said they were not all clean.
12. 13:12
    • Jesus washed their feet.
    • He took his garments again.
    • He reclined at the table again.
    • He asked them whether they knew what he had done to them.
13. 13:13
    • Jesus said they called him Teacher and Lord.
    • Jesus said they spoke rightly in doing so.
    • Jesus said that he is Teacher and Lord.
14. 13:14
    • Jesus said that he, the Lord and the Teacher, had washed their feet.
    • Jesus said they too ought to wash one another's feet.
15. 13:15
    • Jesus said he had given them an example.
    • Jesus said the purpose was that they should do as he had done to them.
16. 13:16
    • Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you.
    • A servant is not greater than his master.
    • One who is sent is not greater than the one who sent him.
17. 13:17
    • If they know these things, they are blessed if they do them.
18. 13:18
    • Jesus said he was not speaking of all of them.
    • Jesus said he knew whom he had chosen.
    • Jesus said this happens so that the scripture may be fulfilled.
    • The scripture says that the one who eats bread with him has lifted up his heel against him.
19. 13:19
    • Jesus said he was telling them now, before it happened.
    • The purpose was that when it happened they would believe that he is he.
20. 13:20
    • Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you.
    • Whoever receives anyone Jesus sends receives Jesus.
    • Whoever receives Jesus receives the one who sent Jesus.
21. 13:21
    • Jesus had said these things.
    • Jesus was troubled in spirit.
    • Jesus testified.
    • Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you.
    • Jesus said that one of them would betray him.
22. 13:22
    • The disciples looked at one another.
    • The disciples were at a loss about whom he was speaking.
23. 13:23
    • One of his disciples was reclining at the table on Jesus' bosom.
    • Jesus loved that disciple.
24. 13:24
    • Simon Peter beckoned to that disciple.
    • Simon Peter told him to ask who it was of whom Jesus spoke.
25. 13:25
    • That disciple leaned back on Jesus' breast.
    • He asked Jesus who it was.
    • He addressed him as Lord.
26. 13:26
    • Jesus answered that it is the one to whom he would give the morsel after dipping it.
    • Jesus dipped the morsel.
    • Jesus gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
27. 13:27
    • After the morsel, Satan entered into Judas.
    • Jesus told Judas to do quickly what he was doing.
28. 13:28
    • No one reclining at the table knew why Jesus said this to Judas.
29. 13:29
    • Some of them thought something else.
    • Judas kept the money bag.
    • Some thought Jesus had told him to buy what they needed for the feast.
    • Some thought Jesus had told him to give something to the poor.
30. 13:30
    • Judas received the morsel.
    • He went out immediately.
    • It was night.
31. 13:31
    • Judas had gone out.
    • Jesus said the Son of man is now glorified.
    • Jesus said God is glorified in him.
32. 13:32
    • Jesus said that if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself.
    • Jesus said God will glorify him immediately.
33. 13:33
    • Jesus called them little children.
    • Jesus said he is with them only a little while longer.
    • Jesus said they will seek him.
    • Jesus said he had told the Jews that where he goes they cannot come.
    • Jesus said he now says the same to them.
34. 13:34
    • Jesus gives them a new commandment.
    • The commandment is that they love one another.
    • Jesus has loved them.
    • They are to love one another as he has loved them.
35. 13:35
    • All people will know that they are Jesus' disciples by this.
    • The sign is that they have love for one another.
36. 13:36
    • Simon Peter asked Jesus where he was going.
    • Simon Peter addressed him as Lord.
    • Jesus answered that Peter cannot follow him now where he is going.
    • Jesus said Peter will follow him later.
37. 13:37
    • Peter addressed him as Lord.
    • Peter asked why he could not follow Jesus now.
    • Peter said he would lay down his life for Jesus.
38. 13:38
    • Jesus asked whether Peter would lay down his life for him.
    • Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you.
    • Jesus said the cock will not crow until Peter has denied him three times.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

13:1

The Passover was the yearly Jewish festival marking Israel's escape from slavery in Egypt; it drew huge crowds to Jerusalem, and its meals and preparations ran across several days, which is why the feast can still be ahead here while a meal is already under way in the next verse. "His hour" translates a word John uses throughout the book for the one fixed moment of Jesus' death and return to the Father. The closing phrase is genuinely double in Greek: it can mean "to the very last moment" and "to the uttermost, completely," and the sentence does not choose between them.

13:2

"And supper being ended" is misleading in modern English: the Greek says the meal was in progress, not finished, which is why Jesus gets up from it in verse 4. The word translated "betray" means simply to hand a person over, the ordinary term for delivering someone to the authorities. "Iscariot" is most likely a place name, "man of Kerioth," a town in Judea, which would make Judas the only one of the twelve not from Galilee.

13:3

"Put everything in his hands" is an old way of saying God gave him power over everything.

13:4

Taking off the outer robe and tying a cloth around the waist was how a household slave dressed for work. The detail is about costume: Jesus is visibly putting on the working clothes of the lowest servant in the house.

13:5

Washing the guests' feet was the job of the most junior slave in a household. Roads were dirt, people walked in open sandals, and feet were filthy on arrival. Jewish teachers of the period treated the task as too demeaning to require of a Jewish slave, leaving it to foreign slaves, to women, or to children.

13:6

The Greek puts Peter's words in a jarring order, roughly "You, my feet?", with the two pronouns crashing together. He is not asking for information; he is objecting.

13:8

"No part with me" uses a word meaning a share or portion, the term used for a share in an inheritance or a stake in a business. Peter is being told he would have no place with Jesus at all, not merely that he would miss a benefit.

13:10

"Every whit" is old English for "every bit," completely. The picture behind the saying is an everyday one: guests bathed at home before going out to dinner, so on arrival only their feet needed washing. The words "save to wash his feet" are absent from several of the oldest manuscripts, so the sentence may originally have read simply "a person who has bathed is completely clean."

13:12

Diners at a formal meal did not sit on chairs. They lay on low couches around the table, propped on the left elbow with their feet pointing away, which is also what put their feet within easy reach in verse 5. The King James "was set down again" means he took his place at the table once more.

13:13

"Master" in 1611 English means teacher, the sense preserved in "schoolmaster." It does not mean owner. The Greek word is the ordinary one for a teacher, and "Rabbi" is its Hebrew equivalent.

13:16

"Verily, verily" renders "Amen, amen," a Hebrew word meaning "truly" or "this is reliable." Jesus characteristically uses it to open a statement rather than, as everyone else did, to close a prayer. "He that is sent" is the Greek word apostolos, a messenger or envoy sent with someone else's commission, the word behind "apostle."

13:17

"Happy" in the King James does not mean cheerful. It translates a word meaning fortunate or well placed, the same word rendered "blessed" elsewhere.

13:18

The quotation is from Psalm 41:9. In that culture sharing a meal created an obligation of loyalty, so eating a man's bread and then turning on him was a particularly grave breach. "Lifted up his heel" is a picture drawn either from an animal kicking or from a person turning away and showing the sole of the foot, an insulting gesture in that part of the world.

13:19

The Greek says only "I am"; there is no word for "he" after it, and translators supply one to make an English sentence. The phrase can be read plainly as "I am the one," but the same two words are how God names himself in the Greek Old Testament that John's first readers used, and John repeats the phrase often enough that both readings stay in play.

13:20

"Receive" here is the formal word for accepting someone as an accredited representative. Jewish practice worked with the idea of an agent whose acceptance or rejection counted legally as the acceptance or rejection of the person who sent him. That convention is the framework the sentence is built on.

13:21

"Testified" translates a word from the law court. He did not merely remark on it; he stated it formally and on the record.

13:23

Guests at a formal meal lay on their sides around a low table, each propped on his left elbow, so that a man's head came near the chest of the person reclining behind him. "Leaning on Jesus' bosom" describes the seating plan, not an embrace, and the place directly in front of the host was the position of honor. John never gives this disciple's name.

13:26

The "sop" is a piece of flatbread dipped into a shared bowl of sauce or broth, the normal way of eating at such a meal. For the host to dip a morsel and hand it to one particular guest was a gesture of honor, which is part of why no one at the table reads anything sinister into it. It also means Judas was reclining close enough for Jesus to reach him.

13:27

"Satan" is a Hebrew word meaning adversary or accuser, used here as a name. It refers to the same figure called "the devil" in verse 2, where the Greek word means slanderer.

13:29

"The bag" was the box or pouch holding the group's common money, and Judas kept it. "Against the feast" is old English for "in preparation for the feast." Giving to the poor was a customary act at Passover, which is why the second guess at the table is as natural as the first.

13:30

Passover-season evening meals ran well into the dark, so this is a plain statement of the hour. Night and darkness are also words John uses repeatedly through the book, so the short sentence carries weight beyond the clock.

13:31

"Son of man" is the phrase Jesus most often uses of himself. In ordinary Hebrew and Aramaic it can mean simply "a human being," but it is also the title of the figure who is given authority in Daniel chapter 7, and hearers of the time could take it either way. "Glorified" translates a word covering both honor itself and the public display of it: to be shown openly as who one is.

13:33

"Little children" renders an affectionate diminutive, closer to "my dear children" than to any comment about age. "The Jews" in John's Gospel usually means a particular group, the Jerusalem authorities who opposed Jesus, rather than Jewish people generally; Jesus, the twelve, and almost everyone in these scenes were themselves Jews.

13:34

"New" translates a word meaning new in kind or fresh, not merely recent. The command to love one's neighbor was already ancient in Israel's law; what the sentence attaches to it is a new measure, "as I have loved you."

13:36

"Whither" simply means where, in the sense of where to. The verb translated "follow" is the same one used for being someone's disciple, and Jesus' answer uses it in both senses at once: Peter cannot come along tonight, but he will come the same way later.

13:37

"Lay down my life" is an idiom for dying on someone's behalf. John uses the same phrase in chapter 10 for a shepherd dying to protect his sheep.

13:38

Roosters crow in the dark hours before dawn, so the saying fixes the time: before this night is over. "Deny" translates a word meaning to disown a person, to state publicly that you have no connection with him, which is stronger than simply telling a lie. "Thrice" is three times.