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Verse of the day Light

A small clay oil lamp burns on a stone step at night, its flame bent sideways by the draft from an open doorway onto a dark courtyard.
This image was made for EmberKeeper. It is an imagined scene, not a photograph of a biblical place, person or event.

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:5 Berean Standard Bible

John's darkness is not an empty room; it reaches for the light and cannot get hold of it.

John begins before anything began, with the Word who was with God and was God. Everything was made through him. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. Then comes a sentence with two tenses in it. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Shines is present. It is still going on as John writes, and as you read. Has not overcome looks back on something already settled.

The Greek verb behind overcome deserves a moment. It is a word for getting hold of something: seizing it, overtaking it, and by extension grasping it with the mind. The King James chose that last sense, and the darkness comprehended it not. The Berean Standard Bible, with most modern versions, reads overcome, and John himself supports that reading later, when Jesus tells the crowd to walk while they have the light, so that darkness will not overtake them. It is the same verb.

So in John’s picture the darkness is not merely the absence of light. It reaches. It tries to take hold of the light and put it out, and the rest of the Gospel shows it trying: the world that does not recognize him, his own who do not receive him, the night Judas walks out into, and finally the cross.

And still the sentence stands. The darkness has not overcome it. John writes that knowing how things went on the Friday, and knowing how they went on the Sunday.

There are long stretches of life in which the darkness appears to be doing very well. John does not ask you to pretend otherwise. He simply tells you which of his two verbs is in the present tense.

Why this passage

Context checked: John 1:1-5 moves from the Word who was with God in the beginning, through creation, to life that is the light of men. "Shines" is present tense; "has not overcome" renders a Greek aorist of katalambano, a verb that can mean to seize or overtake, and also to grasp with the mind. English versions divide: the King James has "comprehended it not," while the BSB and most modern versions read "overcome." John uses the same verb in 12:35, where darkness "overtakes" those who walk without the light, and many commentators think a double sense is possible in 1:5. Verses 10-11 say the world did not recognize him and his own did not receive him; 13:30 notes that Judas went out into the night.

Scripture in English is from the Berean Standard Bible, which its publisher placed in the public domain on 30 April 2023.