John 8:23

ἐκ τῶν κάτω ἐστέ. At first sight it might seem as if this meant ‘ye are from hell.’ Christ uses strong language later on (John 8:44), and this interpretation would make good sense with what precedes. ‘Ye suggest that I am going to hell by self-destruction: it is ye who come from thence.’ But what follows forbids this. The two halves of the verse are manifestly equivalent, and ‘ye are from beneath’ = ‘ye are of this world.’ They were σὰρξ ἐκ τῆς σαρκός (John 3:6) and judged κατὰ τ. σάρκα (John 8:15): He was ἐκ τοῦ οὐράνου (John 3:31). The pronouns throughout are emphatically opposed. The whole verse is a good instance of ‘the spirit of parallelism, the informing power of Hebrew poetry,’ which runs more or less through the whole Gospel. Comp. John 13:16; John 14:27.