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This section tells how Jesus healed a man who had been blind all his life. His disciples asked Jesus who had sinned to make him blind, but Jesus said that he was blind to reveal God’s works. People disagreed about whether this man who could see was the same one who was blind.
Here are other possible section headings:
Jesus cured a man who had always been blind
Jesus caused a blind man to begin to see
A man who had never seen anything began to see
In Isaiah 42:6, 7 the Messiah is called “a light to the nations,” who will “open the eyes of the blind.” (The phrase “open the eyes of the blind” means “heal the eyes of the blind” or “enable someone to see.”) Here Jesus showed that he was the Messiah, the light of the world, by healing the blind man. People began to ask the man questions about this, and he told them honestly what happened.
“How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
So they asked him, “How then were your(sing) eyes healed?”
Then the people asked, “How can you(sing) see now?”
In Greek this verse begins with a conjunction that is usually translated as “therefore.” The man said that he used to be blind; therefore, the people asked how he was able to see. The conjunction introduces the people’s response to what the man said. Some English translations like the BSB do not explicitly translate it. You should introduce the people’s response in a way that is natural in your language. For example:
So (NET)
How then were your eyes opened?: This expression means “How did you become able to see?” It does not imply that earlier the man’s eyes were shut, but rather that he was blind. The verb in this expression is passive, and there are at least two ways to translate it:
Use a passive verb. For example:
how was your blindness cured? (JBP)
how…were you made to see? (NET)
Use an active verb. For example:
Who healed you? What happened? (NLT)
how can you see? (CEV)
How did you receive your sight? (GW)
What caused you to be able to see?
then: The Greek word that the BSB translates as then is more literally “therefore.” It is not certain that it was present in the earliest Greek manuscripts. In some languages it may be more natural to leave it implied, as some English translations have done. Or here is another way to translate this question:
If you are that man, how were your eyes healed?
they asked: The Greek verb that the BSB translates as they asked is in a tense that indicates that they asked more than once. In your translation, you may imply that they asked repeated questions. For example:
they were saying to him (NASB)
Note 1 topic: figures-of-speech / activepassive
πῶς ἠνεῴχθησάν σου οἱ ὀφθαλμοί?
(Some words not found in SR-GNT: ἔλεγον Οὖν αὐτῷ Πῶς ἠνεῴχθησαν σοῦ οἱ ὀφθαλμοί)
If your language does not use the passive form in this way, you could express the idea in active form or in another way that is natural in your language. Alternate translation: [How did your eyes become opened?]
Note 2 topic: figures-of-speech / metonymy
πῶς ἠνεῴχθησάν σου οἱ ὀφθαλμοί
(Some words not found in SR-GNT: ἔλεγον Οὖν αὐτῷ Πῶς ἠνεῴχθησαν σοῦ οἱ ὀφθαλμοί)
Here, eyes opened describes the ability to see by referring to something associated with vision coming into action, specifically, the eyes. If it would be more natural in your language, you could express the meaning plainly. Alternate translation: [How are you able to see?]
Note: The OET-RV is still only a first draft, and so far only a few words have been (mostly automatically) matched to the Hebrew or Greek words that they’re translated from.
Acknowledgements: The SR Greek text, lemmas, morphology, and VLT gloss are all thanks to the CNTR.