Five-minute study · Day 5 · John 1
John 1:14
A word worth stopping on: dwelt σκηνόω skenoo
Fourteen verses in and John drops a sentence that would have offended everyone in the room. Greeks thought the divine taking on flesh was disgusting. Jews thought God's glory dwelling in a person was blasphemy. The real shock hides in a single Greek word your English Bible translates as 'dwelt.' The Greek says something more vivid, more physical, and more theologically loaded.
Word study: dwelt
- Greek
- σκηνόω
- Pronounced
- skenoo
- Strong's
- G4637
- Definition
- To pitch a tent. To tabernacle. To take up temporary residence in a portable dwelling.
John uses skenoo, which literally means 'pitched his tent.' This is a direct callback to the Old Testament Tabernacle, the portable tent where God's glory physically lived among Israel in the wilderness.
The Tabernacle was where heaven met earth. Where God's presence was tangible. Where priests came face to face with the living God. John is making a staggering claim: what that tent was for Israel, Jesus is for the entire world. The portable wilderness sanctuary has become a Person.
The Greek even sounds like the Hebrew. Skenoo echoes shekinah, the glory-presence of God. Whether John intended the wordplay or not, every Jewish reader in the first century would have heard it.
Historical context · 1400 BC to 90 AD
When God's Address Was a Tent
For roughly five hundred years, from the Exodus to Solomon, God's home address among Israel was a tent. Poles slid through rings, curtains folded, and the whole thing came apart for travel. God's presence moved with his people.
Solomon built a permanent Temple around 960 BC. By the time John wrote this Gospel around 90 AD, Rome had burned it to the ground twenty years earlier. Jewish identity was in free fall. If the Temple was where God lived, where was he now?
John's answer, written in the wreckage: the true tabernacle was a Person who pitched his tent among humanity. The glory that once filled the Holy of Holies had walked the roads of Galilee. For John's readers, still reeling from losing everything, this was either the most offensive thing they had ever read or the most hopeful.
For reflection
God chose a tent, not a fortress. Portable, accessible, close. Do you treat his presence as something you visit or something that travels with you?
Think about whether you approach God like he lives in a building or like he is already where you are.
Sources: Thayer's Lexicon; Carson, 'The Gospel According to John'; Homan, 'To Your Tents, O Israel!'