TO SEARCH, examine closely — a contract verb whose 2nd-person-plural present form is identical for the indicative ('you search') and the imperative ('Search!'), a genuine ambiguity no punctuation in the earliest manuscripts could resolve. John 5:39 sits exactly on that fork: KJV and RV60 read it as a command ('Search the scriptures'); ASV, NIV, ESV and NVI all read it as a statement of what the hearers are already doing. The verse that follows (v40, 'you are not willing to come to me') reads more naturally as the second half of a diagnosis than as an unrelated second command, which is the reading this translation follows. → first discussed at John 5:39