Five-minute study · Day 302 · John 5
John 5:39
A word worth stopping on: search ἐρευνάω ereunao
'Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.' The Greek verb is ereunao. To search, to investigate, to track down. Thayer defines it as exploring thoroughly, the way a hunter follows an animal through undergrowth. The word carries sweat and focus. Jesus spoke this to the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem who were accusing him of breaking the Sabbath and making himself equal with God. They had the scrolls. They had memorized large portions. They debated minutiae of the text in the academies. And Jesus told them to search those same scrolls more carefully, because the scrolls were pointing at him and they kept missing it. The verb is a present imperative: keep searching. The command has no end point. Ereunao is ongoing work.
Word study: search
- Greek
- ἐρευνάω
- Pronounced
- ereunao
- Strong's
- G2045
- Definition
- To search, to examine, to investigate thoroughly. To trace out by careful inquiry. Used for diligent, sustained investigation of a subject or source.
Ereunao appears 6 times in the New Testament. BDAG defines it as 'to make a careful search for something, to search, to examine.' Thayer adds the sense of tracking, tracing, investigating. The word carries the image of sustained, deliberate inquiry. In John 5:39, Jesus uses it for the study of Scripture. In John 7:52, the Pharisees challenge Nicodemus: 'Search (ereuneson) and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.' In Romans 8:27, God is the one who searches hearts. In 1 Corinthians 2:10, the Spirit searches (ereuna) all things, even the deep things of God. In 1 Peter 1:11, the prophets searched (ereunontes) to discover what time and circumstances the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating.
BDAG notes the grammatical debate over John 5:39. The form eraunate can be read as either an indicative ('you search the Scriptures') or an imperative ('search the Scriptures'). If indicative, Jesus is stating a fact: you do search, and yet you miss me. If imperative, Jesus is issuing a command: keep searching, because the Scriptures testify about me. The KJV translates it as imperative. Many modern scholars, including Carson in 'The Gospel According to John' (Pillar commentary), favor the indicative reading, which sharpens the irony: the very Scriptures you study so diligently are pointing at the person standing in front of you.
Carson observes that the Jewish leaders' approach to Scripture was encyclopedic and reverent. They counted letters. They debated the meaning of individual particles. They built interpretive traditions that spanned generations. Their failure was directional: they searched the text for legal rulings, for theological systems, for debate material, and the text was trying to show them a person. Jesus did not tell them to stop studying. He told them their study had a destination they kept walking past. The present tense of ereunao, whether indicative or imperative, implies continuity. Scripture study is ongoing, cumulative, progressive. The text does not yield its deepest content to a single reading.
Historical context · 1st century AD, Jerusalem
Scripture Study in Second Temple Judaism
By the time of Jesus, the study of Scripture in Jewish life had become highly organized and institutionally embedded. The Torah (the five books of Moses) held supreme authority. The Prophets (Nevi'im) and the Writings (Ketuvim) were also revered, though debates about the precise boundaries of the canon continued into the late first century. Study took place in multiple settings: the synagogue, where Scripture was read publicly every Sabbath in a lectionary cycle; the bet midrash (house of study), where students gathered around a rabbi to analyze texts; and the Temple courts, where scribes and teachers debated interpretation.
The Pharisees, the group most often in dialogue with Jesus in the Gospels, were devoted to the application of Torah to daily life. They developed an extensive oral tradition (later codified in the Mishnah around 200 AD) that sought to build a 'fence around the Torah,' protecting the written commands by adding layers of interpretive guidance. The Sadducees, who controlled the Temple priesthood, accepted only the Torah as authoritative and rejected the Pharisaic oral tradition. The scribes (grammateis in Greek, soferim in Hebrew) were professional copiers and interpreters of the text.
John 5 places Jesus in Jerusalem during a feast (5:1). The confrontation escalates from a Sabbath healing (5:1-18) to a sustained discourse on Jesus's authority (5:19-47). When Jesus says 'search the Scriptures,' he addresses people for whom Scripture was a life's work. The irony was that their expertise had become a barrier. They knew the text so well that they had constructed interpretive frameworks that filtered out the very person the text anticipated. Jesus claimed the Torah itself, Moses's own writing, testified about him (5:46). This claim was either the most audacious statement in the history of biblical interpretation or the key that unlocked the entire library.
For reflection
Write down one passage you have read dozens of times. Open it now and read it as if it were trying to show you something about Jesus you have never noticed. What do you see?
Let the familiar text become unfamiliar for three minutes.
Sources: Thayer; BDAG; Carson, 'The Gospel According to John' (Pillar)