Except for his feet is considered by New English Bible and Jerusalem Bible not to be part of the original Greek text. This phrase is placed in brackets in New American Bible, indicating its doubtful presence in the text. However, the manuscript evidence is in favor of its inclusion, and it is possible that the words were accidentally, or even deliberately, omitted from some manuscript because of the difficulty of reconciling them with the statement is completely clean. The UBS Committee on the Greek text includes the words and rates its decision a “B” choice.

Good News Translation restructures this verse slightly, introducing the phrase is completely clean after the word bath, whereas in the Greek text these words appear at the end of the sentence. Completely clean may be understood to mean either “in every respect” or “all over.” In other words, completely may be an intensive qualifier of “clean,” or it may mean that once a person has taken a bath, every part of his body is clean, and it is not necessary to bathe other parts of the body except the feet, which may get dirty in walking from one place to another. This fact becomes obvious when we consider that sandals were the common footwear of those times. There may seem to be a contradiction between is completely clean and does not have to wash himself. The latter expression must certainly not be understood in the sense of “having someone else wash him.” It may be necessary to translate does not have to wash himself as “does not have to wash himself again soon.” The final phrase, except for his feet, may be rendered “he only has to wash his feet.”

All of you are clean—all except one is literally “and you (plural) are clean—but not all (masculine plural).” New English Bible translates “and you are clean, though not every one of you.” New American Bible has “he is entirely cleansed, just as you are; though not all.” In English “you” may be singular or plural. But since Jesus is addressing Peter, it is more likely to be taken as singular by the English reader. Especially is this true because of the ambiguity of the phrase “not all,” which could mean “not all over” to a reader of English. For this reason Revised Standard Version has added the words “of you” (“and you are clean, but not all of you”).

All except one is often expressed as simply an adversative, for example, “but one of you is not clean.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .