John 10:33
John 10:3333“We are not stoning You for any good work,” said the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because You, who are a man, declare Yourself to be God.”
Jehovah's Witnesses argue that the Jews in misunderstood Jesus. They were falsely accusing him of blasphemy when he was only claiming to be God's Son, not God himself. The NWT renders the charge as "you, although being a man, make yourself a god" (lowercase, indefinite), softening the claim. JWs use this to argue that Jesus never actually claimed to be God and that the Jews' hostile reaction was based on a misreading of his words.
records the hostile witnesses' understanding of Jesus' claim: "you, being a man, make yourself God." The critical point is that Jesus never corrects their understanding. In the verses that follow (vv. 34-38), he defends his claim through a lesser-to-greater argument from Psalm 82 and concludes with "the Father is in me, and I am in the Father" (v. 38) — doubling down rather than backing away. The audience reaction confirms they understood correctly: they tried to seize him again (v. 39). This pattern repeats throughout John's Gospel — states that calling God his own Father was "making himself equal with God," and records the Jews saying "he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God." The hostile witnesses understood Jesus' claim better than modern attempts to minimise it. Their stone-picking response proves they recognised a divine-identity claim, not a mere assertion of agency.