| 17. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with eipan {εἶπαν | eî-pan}, a speech-introducing verb that frames the disciples’ reaction as reported dialogue. The inferential oun {οὖν | oûn} ties their confusion to Jesus’s prior statement, so the verse reads as a response rather than an isolated question. The phrase ek tōn mathētōn autou {ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ | ek tôn ma-thē-tôn au-toû} is partitive, marking only some members of the larger disciple group, and pros allēlous {πρὸς ἀλλήλους | pros al-lḗ-lous} shows that they are talking internally rather than addressing Jesus directly.
The central question Ti estin touto {τί ἐστιν τοῦτο | tí estin toû-to} pushes the demonstrative touto {τοῦτο | toû-to} forward so that “this” refers to the saying that follows, while the relative clause ho legei hēmin {ὃ λέγει ἡμῖν | ho lé-gei hē-mîn} identifies the content of their confusion as Jesus’s own words “to us.” The quoted material is arranged in a strong rhythmic parallelism: mikron ... kai ... mikron ... kai ... , with the repeated temporal phrase creating a compact “little while” pattern that intensifies the sense of delay.
The contrast between theōreite {θεωρεῖτέ | the-ō-reî-te} and opseisthe {ὄψεσθέ | óp-se-sthe} marks a movement from non-seeing to seeing, and the English rendering smooths the Greek present/future sequence into natural predictive speech. The final kai hoti hypagō pros ton patera {καί Ὅτι ὑπάγω πρὸς τὸν πατέρα | kaí Hó-ti hy-pá-gō pros ton pa-té-ra} is best taken as continuing the quoted content: the hoti clause explains why the temporary absence matters, and pros ton patera specifies the Father as the destination of Jesus’s movement. The repeated kai produces a piling-up effect that mirrors the disciples’ puzzled attempt to hold the fragments of Jesus’s statement together. |