κόσμον. (kosmon) in John 1:9: Noun Accusative Singular Masculine
κόσμον. (kosmon) in John 1:9
Textual Witness
The witness reads "ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον," so the noun appears within a direction phrase attached to the coming one.
How The Form Affects Interpretation
The form strengthens a reading of destination and scope: the light shines as people come into the world, so the phrase frames human life as the setting of that illumination.
How To Communicate It
This form helps translators and teachers preserve the directional force of "into the world" and keep the phrase tied to the verse's statement about the light's activity.
What Not To Say
- Grammatical form should serve context, not override it.
- Accusative case here helps locate the noun in a prepositional phrase, but it does not by itself settle every theological implication.
- Do not turn grammatical gender into a gendered doctrinal claim, and do not make the form say more than the verse itself says.
What Does The Label Mean?
Noun: the word names a reality or sphere, here the realm described by the lemma "world."
Accusative: the form commonly marks the object of a preposition or the direct object in a clause, and here it fits the preposition "into."
Singular: the form is grammatically singular in this occurrence, referring to the world as one whole sphere in context.
Masculine: the noun belongs to the masculine grammatical class, which is a language feature and not a theological gender claim.
What The Form Does In This Verse
εἰς τὸν
The noun is governed by the preposition εἰς, which points to movement or direction toward a goal.
It functions as the object of the preposition and completes the phrase "into the world."
It is not the subject of the clause, and the accusative form by itself does not decide every interpretive nuance of "world."
How Much The Form Matters Here
High: The accusative noun completes the εἰς phrase that locates coming into the world in the true-light statement.
Accusative object of εἰς in a direction phrase. names the world as the realm entered in the phrase about coming. Attached to εἰς τὸν κόσμον. Governed by the preposition εἰς. The phrase gives direction or sphere; the surrounding true-light statement controls its meaning.
Into what realm does the phrase say one comes? The accusative noun names the world as the object of εἰς in the direction phrase.
Direct: The εἰς plus accusative construction directly supports rendering the phrase as 'into the world'.
The accusative with εἰς marks direction or sphere but does not define world in every Johannine use. The phrase must be read with the statement about the true light. The noun's grammatical gender should not be turned into a theological claim.
One accusative phrase fixes every use of world: The phrase gives local sentence function; each occurrence still needs its own context. grammatical gender carries a theological claim: The gender label describes Greek form class or agreement and should not be made into a separate doctrinal claim.
How The Interpretation Is Derived
The witness reads "ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον," so the noun appears within a direction phrase attached to the coming one.
The lemma κόσμος commonly means "world," and in this context it names the sphere entered, not a different lexical sense created by morphology.
Because εἰς takes the accusative, the form supports the idea of entry or arrival into a realm. The surrounding clause describes the light that enlightens every person who comes into the world.
The verse presents the true light as active toward all people, and the phrase "into the world" locates human arrival within the horizon of that light.
This use fits the wider Johannine concern with the world as the arena in which the light shines and to which Christ's work is addressed.
For readers, the grammar helps communicate that the statement concerns entry into human existence in the world, not a technical definition of the noun by itself.
Do not derive from the accusative form alone that "world" must mean one fixed theological category in every passage or that grammar overrides the immediate context.