:''1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. 2 And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him, 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God.'' Using the Greek
syntax and theme perspective, evangelical scholar
D. A. Carson regards verse 1 as an introduction to the whole '
Farewell Discourse', while verses 2 and 3 show the first demonstration of the full extent of Christ's love. The narrative begins
before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour () had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, [when]
having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. The appointed hour, anticipated earlier in the gospel ( and ), had now arrived. Jesus had announced publicly in that "the hour when the Son of Man should be glorified" had now arrived, and he had declined, in , to ask his Father to "save [him] from this hour" ().
Heinrich Meyer notes, "How long before the feast, our passage does not state", but
Bengel's Gnomon which drew widely on Bengel, both associate this passage with the
Wednesday of the week leading to the Passover. The
New International Version translation says
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus' love for his own continued "to the end".
Henry Alford takes this to mean "even to the end of his life in the flesh", and
William D. Mounce refers to "the very end". However,
Baptist writer
Bob Utley notes that "this is the Greek word
telos, which means an accomplished purpose. This refers to Jesus' work of redemption for humanity on the cross." During or after supper, (,
deipnou genomenou) the narrative explains that "Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God" (). The
King James Version speaks of "supper being ended" (), whereas the
American Standard Version says "during supper" and the New International Version has "the evening meal was in progress". There was still food to be shared at , so the reading "after supper" sits less harmoniously with the passage as a whole. By this time,
the devil had "already put it into the heart of
Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son (,
Ioudas Simōnos Iskariōtou), to
betray Him". Alfred Plummer, in the
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges argues that "the true reading of τοῦ διαβόλου ἤδη βεβληκότος εἰς τὴν καρδίαν (
tou diabolou ēdē beblēkotos eis tēn kardian) gives us, "
The devil having now put it into the heart, that Judas, Simon's son, Iscariot should betray Him", and asks "whose heart?"
Grammatically, the meaning can be read as either "the heart of the devil" or "the heart of Judas", but the received reading (i.e. "the heart of Judas") is preferred and most
English translations follow this reading. The
Jerusalem Bible and
J B Phillips' version both have "the mind of Judas". == Jesus washes the disciples' feet (verses ) ==