I have seen a different rendering for the passage which is somewhat free, but appears to clear up the difficulty, “Suffer not thy mouth to subject thy body to punishment, (i.e. through the breach of thy vow), neither say thou to the priest, it was a mistake (I have made the vow inconsiderately and therefore have not kept it), wherefore should God be angry at my voice, and frustrate the undertakings, for the success of which my vow was made?” H. E.
Q. 428. Vol. 1. p. 139. The whole question appears to my mind to rest upon the application of the word “heaven.” That our blessed Lord refers to the immediate presence of God seems very clear from what precedes this verse. He had been discoursing to Nicodemus on the new birth, and the work of God the Holy Ghost, in fact of “heavenly things,” and heavenly in this particular that they had to do immediately with the Godhead. The connection is not broken but continued through verses 12 and 13. “And” continues our blessed Lord, no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.” As though He would have Nicodemus to see that no one but Himself could tell him of the “heavenly things” which He had just before unfolding to him, for no one had ascended up to the very presence of God and been permitted to look into the Eternal mind from which these “heavenly things” proceeded save He who came down from heaven, from “the bosom of the Father,” John 1:1818No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18), and who was in the counsels of Jehovah when man’s salvation was planned, and who even then, though manifested as “Son of man” on earth, was in heaven with the Father by virtue of His eternal Godhead. The difficulty respecting Enoch and Elijah disappears when the subject is viewed in this light, as no Bible Student would contend that they were taken up to the heaven of which to my mind our blessed Lord speaks in this passage. C. F.
Note. Are not the “heavenly things” in v. 12, those of which our Lord was about to speak, not those of which He had already spoken! Ed.