---
title: John 10:39
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/john-10-39/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/john-10-39.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: John 10:39
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# John 10:39

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> At this, they tried again to seize Him, but He escaped their grasp.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "So they tried again to seize him, but he escaped from their reach."

## JW Usage

The renewed attempt to seize Jesus is read as ordinary opposition — evidence that Jesus had enemies, not evidence about what they thought he was claiming. The Watchtower frames Jesus's lesser-to-greater argument from Psalm 82 as a deflation of his own status (he is only "a god" like the judges) rather than as the qal wahomer escalation it actually is.

## Protestant Usage

Jesus has just argued from Psalm 82 — a rabbinic lesser-to-greater argument: if Scripture called those who merely received God's word "gods" (and they were condemned and sentenced to die like men), how much more is it appropriate for the One the Father sanctified and sent? The crowd's response in John 10:39 — another seizure attempt — shows they understood the argument exactly the way Jesus made it: as a claim to be more than the Psalm 82 figures, not less. Pair John 10:39 with John 10:38 ("the Father is in me, and I am in the Father") and John 5:18 (the Jews understood Jesus' Father-claim as a claim to equality with God). Three times the hostile witnesses reach for force, and three times Jesus declines to walk back the claim.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Gods Who Die and God to Pharaoh Don't Parallel Jesus](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/psalm82-exodus71-gods-parallel.md) — Psalm 82:6-7 / Exodus 7:1 / John 10:34-36 [Deity of Christ]