John 7 - The New International Commentary
1 The new chapter begins, like the two preceding ones (see 5:1 and 6:1), with the phrase “after these things.”* This time, in contrast to the two preceding occurrences, the phrase marks a turn in the narrative, but not a change of scene, at least not immediately.* The notice that Jesus “chose not to walk in Judea”* makes it clear that Jesus’ itinerary, and indeed his life, is in his own hands (see 1:43, 5:21, 17:24, and 21:22, where the same verb is used).* The variant reading, “had no authority” (see n.
If “chose not to” was what the author of John’s Gospel wrote, we are left with two possibilities. The first is that the variant reading, “had no authority,” was introduced later as a theological refinement, making the point that all Jesus’ “choices” were in the Father’s hand. The second, and more likely, explanation is that the variant reading was actually earlier than the “original” reading: that is, that the author of the Gospel himself found the words “had no authority” in a source he was using (whether written or oral), and because they raised more questions than they answered changed them editorially to “chose not to.” This he might well have done in light of his consistent assumption that all of Jesus’ “choices” were in keeping with the Father’s will, and based on the “authority” the Father had given him.*
Those who were “seeking to kill” Jesus are called “the Jews” (as in 5:18), which could also be translated “Judeans” because of the preceding phrase “in Judea,” so we have rendered it as “the Jews there” (that is, in Judea). That there were “Jews” in Galilee as well is evident from chapter 6. Here as in chapter 5, however, “the Jews” in view are the religious authorities in Jerusalem (the author could have written “Jerusalem” instead of Judea, but he prefers the play on words). Despite mounting hostility, and despite the imagery of violent death (see 6:52–58), Jesus’ life seems not to have been in danger in Galilee. Now, however, to return to Judea, where he was wanted for “abolishing the Sabbath” and “making himself equal to God” (5:18), is to risk arrest and execution at the hands of the authorities.
I. To Jerusalem, or Not? (7:1–13)
And after these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for he chose not to walk in Judea because the Jews there were seeking to kill him. But the Tent festival of the Jews was near. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here, and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the works you are doing. For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be in the public eye. As long as you are doing these things, reveal yourself to the world.” For his brothers did not believe in him. So Jesus said to them, “My time is not yet here, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go ahead to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time is not yet fulfilled.” And having said these things, he remained in Galilee. But as his brothers went up to the festival, then he too went up, not openly but as it were in secret. So the Jews were seeking him at the festival, and said, “Where is that man?” And there was great murmuring about him among the crowds. Some said that “He is good,” but others said, “No, but he deceives the crowd.” No one would speak about him publicly, though, for fear of the Jews.
Jesus continues “walking in Galilee,” and we may assume that “the Twelve” (6:70) are still with him, in contrast to those who “turned back and would no longer walk with him” (6:66). Yet they are nowhere to be seen. Instead, his interaction is with his brothers, of whom we have heard nothing since 2:12, when we glimpsed his disciples, his brothers, and his mother all together with him for a time in Capernaum. We may assume that he is still in Capernaum, where he has just spoken at some length in the synagogue (see 6:59). There too he confronted “the Jews,” who “murmured about him” (6:41) and “quarreled with each other” (6:52), but threatened him with no bodily harm. Now we are reminded that earlier “the Jews” in Jerusalem “began pursuing” him and were “seeking all the more to kill him” (5:16, 18). A note of danger is now sounded, as the whole section (7:1–13) is framed by notices that in Judea “the Jews there were seeking to kill him” (v. 1), and that when Jesus arrived in Judea for the Tent festival “No one would speak about him publicly … for fear of the Jews” (v. 13). The question is whether or not he will attend the festival and so put his life in danger. His brothers, apparently ignorant of the danger, urge him to go, and “reveal yourself to the world” (vv. 3–4). He refuses, urging them to go on ahead, but when they had gone “he too went up, not openly but as it were in secret” (v. 10).
Superficially, this scene involving family members recalls Jesus’ interaction with his mother at the Cana wedding, where he first seemed to refuse her implied request (2:4), but then went ahead and did what she wanted him to do (2:7–8). Yet the differences far outweigh the parallels. First, the brothers’ request is not implicit but very explicit; second, Jesus’ refusal is equally explicit—nothing so mysterious as “What is that to me or to you?” (2:4); third, the author tells us in no uncertain terms that his brothers did not believe in him, while his mother’s confidence in what he would do (2:5) suggests that she did in fact believe. Even the superficial parallel between “My hour has not yet come” (2:4) and “My time is not yet here” (7:6) breaks down, as we will see, for Jesus immediately adds, “your time is always ready.” All the two stories have in common is that Jesus acts on his own initiative, yet in obedience to the Father’s will. No one, friend or enemy, believer or unbeliever, stranger or family member can force his hand. And when he arrives in Jerusalem, those who are seeking his life are waiting for him, and the crowds, like those in Galilee, are divided (7:11–13).
2 A notice that “the Tent festival of the Jews was near” (v. 2) signals that Jesus’ resolve not to go to Jerusalem is about to be tested,* for the Jewish festivals were times when devout Jews were expected to be in Jerusalem if possible.* It was tested once before, when we were similarly told, “the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near” (6:4). Evidently Jesus’ determination to avoid Jerusalem was already in effect then, for he did not go to Jerusalem for the festival even though his practice elsewhere in the Gospel is to do so (see 2:13, 5:1, 10:22, and 11:55). The festivals are said to be “of the Jews,” probably because the readers are presumed to be largely Gentile Christians unfamiliar with Jewish customs (see also 2:6, “the purification rituals of the Jews”). “Of the Jews” (rather than “of the Judeans”) is appropriate here because the festivals were intended for all Jews everywhere, not just those who lived in Judea.
“The Tent festival” (literally, “the tent-pitching festival”),* or “Feast of Tabernacles” (NIV), or “festival of Booths” (NRSV), was an autumn festival six months after the Passover,* celebrating the harvest (see Lev 23:33–36, 39–43; Deut 16:13–17). It was a time when the people of Israel were told, “Live in booths for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in booths, so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the
3 Jesus’ brothers, last seen with him at Capernaum with his mother and his disciples (2:12), now abruptly make an appearance—probably still at Capernaum.* “Leave here, and go to Judea,” they urge Jesus, “so that your disciples may see the works you are doing” (v. 3). The reference to “your disciples” is odd because, as far as we know, Jesus’ “disciples” were with him in Galilee (see 6:3, 5–13, 16–21), and twelve at least are still “walking” with him there (6:60–71). While Jesus was said to have “made disciples” in Judea (see 3:22; 4:1), if they were meant the reader would have expected the brothers to say “your disciples there,” or something to that effect.* Perhaps a better explanation is that “your disciples” does not refer to a fixed group but simply means “those who hear you” (as perhaps in 6:60), that is, potential rather than actual disciples. The mention of being “in the public eye” and of showing oneself to “the world” (v. 4) suggests that what Jesus’ brothers have in mind is not a disclosure to a small group of dedicated followers, but a public appearance at a very public religious festival.* When they speak of “the works that you do,” it cannot be assumed that they are asking Jesus to perform miracles—or at least that they are asking only for miracles. Just as Jesus’ “signs” are not limited to miracles but attribute revelatory significance to everything he did (see 12:37; 20:30), so his “works” are not limited to miracles but identify everything he did as that which the Father sent him to do (see 4:34; 5:17, 20, 36).*
4 Jesus’ brothers now go on to make their case: “For no one does anything in secret* when he himself seeks to be in the public eye.* As long as you are doing these things, reveal yourself* to the world” (v. 4). The accent on “he himself” is odd, and seemed odd to later scribes,* but the point is probably the contrast between things done and the person doing them: that is, a person who wants to be “in the public eye” should do things that bring this about.*
This appears to be simply his brothers’ version of something Jesus himself said four chapters earlier: “Whoever does the truth comes to the Light, so that his works will be revealed as works wrought in God” (3:21). It also echoes certain pronouncements of Jesus in the other Gospels, above all “Let your light so shine before the people that they might see your good works and glorify your Father in the heavens” (Mt 5:16; also 5:14–15; Mk 4:21–22; Lk 8:16–17; 11:33). There is nothing wrong with asking him to “reveal yourself to the world,” for this was clearly his purpose from the start (see, for example, 1:9–10; 3:16–17), and it is exactly what he will do as the chapter moves along.*
5 If this is the case, why does the Gospel writer intervene in such a way as to imply that the brothers’ request was somehow misguided or wrong-headed, with the comment, “For his brothers did not believe in him” (v. 5)?* The purpose of the narrative aside is not so much to call into question the validity of their request as to explain and justify Jesus’ answer (vv. 6–8). There is no reason to doubt their good brotherly intentions—no implication, for example, that they wanted him to go to Judea so that he would be arrested and killed.* Still, this is the only explicit statement in any of the Gospels that Jesus’ brothers or sisters did not believe in him during his ministry. It is hard to tell whether the Gospel writer has independent knowledge that this was the case, or whether it is simply an inference from such stories in the Gospel tradition as Mark 3:31–35, or such sayings as Mark 6:4 (“A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his kindred, and in his family”). If the author was indeed “the disciple whom Jesus loved” who took Jesus’ mother to his own home (see 19:25–27; 21:24), and obviously if he was himself one of Jesus’ brothers (see
6–7 What he said was “My time is not yet here, but your time is always ready” (v. 6), and then “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil” (v. 7). The second pronouncements does seem to imply that Jesus’ brothers are in fact unbelievers. Here for the first time in the Gospel, Jesus speaks of “the world”* not as the object of God’s love and salvation (as in 3:16, 17; 4:42; 6:33, 51), but as God’s enemy. Finally, the principle articulated at the outset that “the world did not know him” (1:10) comes to expression on Jesus’ own lips. Later, he will tell his disciples, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated me first. If you were from the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not from the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you” (15:18–19; see also 17:14, “I have given them your word, and the world hated them, because they are not of the world even as I am not of the world”). If Jesus’ brothers were also believers or disciples, the world would hate them too, but it does not. In contrast to the Twelve he has “chosen” (see 6:70), they belong to “the world” and not to God.
The first pronouncement, “My time is not yet here, but your time is always ready” (v. 6), does not have quite the same impact. For some interpreters, it recalls an earlier scene in which Jesus told his mother, “My hour has not yet come” (2:4). The two situations have often been compared. In both instances there is a request, explicit or implicit, from one or more relatives of Jesus. Both times he at first seems to refuse because his time has not come, but then accedes to the request. Yet Jesus’ mother did not explicitly ask for anything, but only pointed out, “They have no wine” (2:3). Nor did Jesus unambiguously refuse to act, saying only “What is that to me or to you, woman?” (2:4). Nor is his mother said to be an unbeliever. Her actions indicate the contrary as she instructs the servants, “Do whatever he tells you” (2:5). Even the parallel between “My hour has not yet come” (2:4) and “My time is not yet here” (7:6) is not quite what it seems. Jesus’ “hour,” as we have seen, at least hinted at his death on the cross, while “time,” or “the right time,”* does not. What it does imply is that all Jesus’ movements, all his comings and goings, are in the hands of the Father, because the Father has sent him into the world (see 3:17, 34; 5:36, 38; 6:57). This is not true of his brothers, because they are not similarly “sent.” Instead, they are part of “the world” to which Jesus was sent. In the language of today, they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. While the only uses of kairos in John’s Gospel are here and in verse 8, Jesus makes clear in other situations that his itinerary is in God’s hands, not his own. This was evident in his abrupt decision to abandon a fruitful baptizing ministry in Judea and return to Galilee (4:1–3), and will be evident again in his haste to heal at once a man blind since birth, even though it was the Sabbath (see 9:4, 14), and his decision to wait two days until his friend Lazarus died, and then to go quickly despite the danger of arrest and stoning (11:6–10).* Such choices are not “logical” in any human terms, but to Jesus they are necessary and inevitable. The timing of his actions matters because he belongs to God. The timing of his brothers’ actions does not matter; their “right time” is any time because they have no mission from God but still belong to “the world.”
Jesus goes on to explain why the world hates him: “because I testify about it that its works are evil” (v. 7). His response echoes the vocabulary of his brothers’ request. They had asked him to let those in Judea “see your works” (v. 3), and to reveal himself “to the world” (v. 4), using “world” in a morally neutral sense. Jesus picks up both words, characterizing both “the world” and its “works” (in contrast to his own) as evil. Only against the background of that negative testimony can he grant their request to “reveal yourself to the world” (v. 4). He will reveal himself in due course, but in his own way and his own time.
8–9 “You go ahead to the festival,” Jesus continues. “I am not going up to this festival, because my time is not yet fulfilled” (italics added).* He understands “go to Judea” (v. 3) to mean “go up to Jerusalem” (as in 2:13; 5:1; 11:55), that is, as a worshiper at the festival (see also 12:20). This he declines to do, and the Gospel writer is quick to tell us that he kept his word and “remained in Galilee” (v. 9), continuing his fixed policy of avoiding Judea and Jerusalem (see v. 1). If the categorical statement, “I am not going up to this festival,” is original, it creates an odd situation in which Jesus says one thing (v. 8) and does another (v. 10).
It is difficult to say just how long Jesus “remained in Galilee” (v. 9). That obviously depends on how “near” the Tent festival was (v. 2). To the Gospel writer it is an interval at least worth mentioning, possibly corresponding to other such intervals when Jesus “remained” somewhere outside Jerusalem for a short time, usually with his disciples.* In any event, it stands as a buffer between “I am not going up to this festival” (v. 8), and “then he too went up” (v. 10). The writer wants us to understand that Jesus stood by his promise, at least for a brief time! One way of clearing Jesus of the charge of duplicity has been the suggestion that when he says, “I am not going up to this festival,” he is using the verb “go up”* in the same loaded sense as in 3:13 and 6:62: that is, “I am not ascending [to heaven] at this festival.”* But this does not work, for Jesus would still be misleading his brothers into thinking that he was not “going up” to Jerusalem in the idiomatic sense of making a trip there to participate in the Tent festival.* One customarily “went up” to Jerusalem, not only because it was situated at a higher elevation than most (though not all) places in Judea and Galilee, but because it was the seat of the temple, where the people drew near to heaven and to God. Jesus gives no hint that his “ascent” to the holy place would be any different from that of his brothers. Instead, he states clearly his reason for not going: “because my time is not yet fulfilled” (v. 9).* Here it is even more tempting than in verse 6 to interpret his “time” as the “hour” of his death, but the temptation should be resisted. He is not saying to his brothers (or even to the reader) that if he goes to the festival he will die. The reader will soon learn that he did go to the festival and yet did not die (see 7:30; 8:20, 59). His point is the same as before (v. 6), that his “times” are in the Father’s hands, not his own, and certainly not in the hands of his Galilean brothers. He will “go up to Jerusalem” only if, and only when, the Father dictates.
10 After an unspecified interval during which he “remained in Galilee” (v. 9), we are told that “he too went up, not openly but as it were in secret” (v. 10). What triggers his change of plan is that “his brothers went up to the festival,” just as he had urged them to (see v. 8). He and they, and possibly his disciples, had been together in Galilee, just as they were earlier, after the miracle at Cana (see 2:12), but now he intentionally distances himself from them, evidently because they belong to “the world” (v. 7). He was not so much refusing to go up to the Tent festival as refusing to go up with them. Whether he goes alone or with his disciples is uncertain. If his disciples accompany him, it is as silent partners, not as participants in what transpires. But what does it mean to go to the festival “not openly,”* but “as it were in secret”?* “As it were” offers a subtle qualification of the secrecy of Jesus’ visit, inviting the question: In what sense was it “in secret”?* Would Jesus go to Jerusalem but not attend the festival? Would he attend the festival but make no public appearance? Would he make an appearance but not be recognized? Such questions go unanswered for now, but will be answered later on. All the reader knows at this point is that in going up to the festival Jesus is still not acceding to his brothers’ request (vv. 3–4). They wanted him to “reveal” himself to the world (v. 4), but he goes to the festival “not openly.” They did not want him to act “in secret” (v. 4), but he goes “as it were in secret.” The reader wonders, Did he conceal his very presence at Jerusalem, or did he simply conceal his identity? We are not yet told.
11 There is more to Jesus’ secrecy than defiance of his brothers. It is still true that Judea is dangerous territory because “the Jews there were seeking to kill him” (v. 1), and secrecy (however understood) will help Jesus avoid arrest and execution. Lest we forget, the Gospel writer reminds us that “the Jews were seeking him at the festival, and said, ‘Where is that man?’ ”* The pursuit of Jesus that began at his last visit to Jerusalem (5:18) continues. The danger mounts and the drama builds as we are given almost simultaneous glimpses of Jesus going up to the festival “in secret,” and the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem looking for him there with evil intent.
12–13 In the preceding chapter, we saw that “the Jews” (6:41, 52) replaced “the crowd” (6:22, 24) as Jesus’ interlocutors. Here by contrast, in Jesus’ absence, both are in the picture at the same time. “The Jews” are united in their desire to arrest Jesus and take his life, while “the crowds,”* like “the Jews” in the preceding chapter, are divided. Their “great murmuring” recalls the murmuring among “the Jews” in the preceding chapter (6:41, 43). Some were on Jesus’ side, saying, “He is good,”* while others disagreed, saying, “No, but he deceives the crowd.”* This difference of opinion about Jesus anticipates three sharper divisions later, whether among “the crowd,” as here (vv. 40–44), or among “the Pharisees” (9:16), or among “the Jews” (10:19–21). The clear implication is that the crowds knew that Jesus was a marked man as far as the ruling authorities were concerned.* Even those who saw him as a deceiver seem to have been reluctant to get involved. The notice that they would not speak of him “publicly”* suggests that they were speaking to each other “in secret,” just as Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem “in secret” (v. 10).* The double dose, as it were, of “secrecy” sets the stage for Jesus’ “public” appearance at the Tent festival in the section to follow (see v. 26, “And look, he is speaking publicly”). The question of what is “public” and what is “in secret” will be an ongoing one, as we will see.
14–15 The notice that Jesus arrived in Jerusalem late (“Already at the middle of the festival”) comes as no surprise, in view of his late, and “secret,” departure from Galilee (see vv. 9–10).* He went immediately to the temple and “began teaching.”* This begins yet another chapter in Jesus’ ongoing debate with “the Jews,” that is, the Jewish ruling authorities (see 2:18–21; 5:19–47; 6:41–58). Surprisingly, it is only the second reference to Jesus “teaching” in John’s Gospel, the first being 6:59, “These things he said teaching in synagogue in Capernaum.” What exactly did he teach? “These things” according to 6:59, that is, the preceding discourse on the Bread of life, but what is he teaching now, in the temple? We are not told,* for no words of his have been quoted, and two verses later, when he is quoted, he is not so much “teaching” as talking about his teaching: “My teaching is not mine, but belongs to him who sent me. If anyone chooses to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak on my own” (vv. 16–17).
The pronouncement calls to mind Rudolf Bultmann’s classic dictum that in John’s Gospel “Jesus as the Revealer of God reveals nothing but that he is the Revealer.”* Jesus’ “teaching” seems to have no content other than the claim that it comes from God. But is this in fact the case? The immediate response of “the Jews” (v. 15) suggests that it is not the case, and that there is more here than mere self-reference. Amazed,* they ask, “How does this man know letters, being uninstructed?” The term “letters”* (without the definite article) refers to written words in general,* not necessarily the Jewish Scriptures in particular, yet it is difficult to imagine what “written words” Jesus would have been reading or quoting other than the Scriptures (see 5:46–47, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his written words, how will you believe my spoken words?”).* The response of “the Jews” suggests that Jesus’ “teaching” included, even if it was not limited to, exposition of the Jewish Scriptures. This was the case in the synagogue at Capernaum (see 6:59), where he expounded the text, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat” (6:31), and there is every reason to believe that it is also the case here at the temple, even though no text has been announced.
Why do the religious authorities consider Jesus “uninstructed”?* Their reaction evokes for a modern reader the notice in the book of Acts that the Jewish “chief priests and elders and scribes” in Jerusalem (Acts 4:5) were similarly “amazed” when they saw that Peter and John, who preached to them so eloquently, were “unlettered and ordinary men” (4:13). Is the Gospel writer telling us this in order to highlight a parallel between the ways Jesus and his postresurrection followers were perceived by the religious establishment? Probably not, for John’s Gospel shows little evidence elsewhere of acquaintance with the narratives in Acts. The notion that Jesus was “uninstructed” either in reading and writing, or more specifically in the Jewish Scriptures, is very odd, considering the title “Rabbi” given him repeatedly throughout the Gospel. It is true that the title is used only by his disciples (1:38, 49; 4:31; 9:2; 11:8) or by potential disciples (see 3:2; 6:25), yet one of those “potential disciples” (if the phrase is applicable) was Nicodemus, introduced explicitly as “a ruler of the Jews” (3:1). Why then do these Jewish leaders not recognize Jesus as a “Rabbi” of some sort?
Two possible answers present themselves. The first is that their apparent lack of respect is a deliberate slight, fully consistent with their behavior toward Jesus all throughout the narrative to this point. Only once, briefly, have “the Jews” even deigned to face him head-on and address him personally as “you” (see 2:18, 20). Ever since that early confrontation in the temple, they have either tried to arrest him without speaking to him (5:16, 18), or have murmured to each other about him (sometimes even in his presence!), referring to him as “this man” (6:41–42, 52) or “that man” (7:11). Here again they avoid direct contact, but merely comment about “this man” and his lack of education. The problem is that their puzzled words, “How does this man know letters, being uninstructed?” (v. 15), carry with them a note of grudging admiration not altogether consistent with their determination to arrest and kill him (see 5:18; 7:1).* Moreover, the question persists, How do they know he is “uninstructed”? Do they have a personal knowledge of his background, like “the Jews” in Galilee who knew him as “Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know” (6:42)? Or are they concluding on the basis of appearances, whether a Galilean accent (see Mk 14:70; Lk 22:59; Acts 2:7; 4:13), or perhaps his manner of dress, that he is not one of them, but rather one belonging to what they will later characterize as “this crowd that does not know the Law; they are accursed” (v. 49)?
If the latter is the case, a second possibility presents itself, that is, that these “Jews” in Jerusalem simply do not know who Jesus is. Not that they do not know he is “the Son of God,” or “the Word,” or “the Messiah.” That goes without saying. The point is rather that they do not recognize the man who abruptly “began teaching” in the temple midway through the Tent festival as “Jesus, the son of Joseph” (6:42). More important, they do not recognize him as the fugitive they are looking for, who healed the sick man at the pool of Bethesda, told him to break the Sabbath, and then claimed to be God’s own Son (see 5:1–18). In short, Jesus’ identity is concealed in some way, a notion fully consistent with the author’s comment that when he went up to the festival, he did so “not openly but as it were in secret” (v. 10). Yet the Gospel writer shows no interest in how Jesus might have concealed his identity, whether supernaturally (as in the postresurrection encounters in 20:14 and 21:4) or by a disguise of some kind. The whole notion, in fact, would seem rather farfetched, except for the natural question, If they knew that this man now teaching in the temple was Jesus, why did they not arrest him on the spot? (see v. 1, where they “were seeking to kill him,” and v. 11, where they “were seeking him at the festival and said, ‘Where is that man?’ ”).*
In short, the reader cannot be sure at this point whether or not the Jewish authorities knew with whom they were dealing. But the reader does know: they are dealing with Jesus, and the notion that Jesus was “uninstructed,” or somehow unqualified to teach, seems intended to strike the reader as highly ironic, if not laughable. The very first word addressed to Jesus in this Gospel was “Rabbi,” interpreted immediately as “teacher” (1:38). Jesus himself had even shared with “the Jews”—the Galilean ones at least—his vision from the Jewish Scriptures (Isa 54:13) that no one would be left “uninstructed,” but that “they all will be taught of God.” Those who have “learned” from God, he added (God being understood as “the Father”), would come to Jesus in faith (6:45). Therefore the comment that he himself was “uninstructed” only betrays the ignorance of the Jerusalem authorities.
J. Jesus in the Temple (7:14–36)
Already at the middle of the festival, Jesus went up to the temple and began teaching. The Jews then were amazed, saying, “How does this man know letters, being uninstructed?”
So Jesus answered them and said, “My teaching is not mine, but belongs to the One who sent me. If anyone chooses to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak on my own. He who speaks on his own seeks his own glory, but he who seeks the glory of the One who sent him is true, and nothing false is in him. Has Moses not given you the law? And none of you does the law? Why are you seeking to kill me?”
The crowd answered, “You have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you?”
Jesus answered and said to them. “One work I did, and you all were amazed. That is why Moses gave you circumcision—not that it is from Moses; no, it is from the fathers—and on the Sabbath you circumcise a man. If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses not be abolished, you are angry at me because I made a whole man well on the Sabbath? Don’t judge by appearance, but judge the right judgment!”
So some of the Jerusalemites said, “Is not this the one they are seeking to kill? And look, he is speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to him. Do the rulers truly know that he is the Christ? No, we know where this man is from, but the Christ, when he comes, no one knows where he is from.”
So Jesus cried out teaching in the temple, and said, “You know me, and you know where I am from, and I have not come on my own, but the One who sent me is True, whom you do not know. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”
So they sought to arrest him, and no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. And many from the crowd believed in him, and were saying, “The Christ, when he comes, will he do more signs than this man did?” The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him. So Jesus said, “Yet a short time I am with you, and I am going to the One who sent me. You will seek me and you will not find, and where I am you cannot come.” So the Jews said to themselves, “Where will this man go, that we will not find him? Will he go to the dispersion of the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What is this word that he said, ‘You will seek me and you will not find, and where I am you cannot come’?”
When Jesus reaches Jerusalem and the temple, a temple ministry begins, extending all the way from 7:14 to 8:59. While the temporal setting of this extended discourse is the “Tent festival” (see above, on 7:2, 8, 10–11), it is also the Gospel of John’s “temple discourse”* par excellence, defined as much (or more) by its location as by its timing in the Jewish calendar. The discourse takes place either in two days or three, depending on whether 7:53–8:11 is read as part of John’s Gospel. The first day (7:14–36) is “at the middle of the festival,” when “Jesus went up to the temple and began teaching” (v. 14, my italics), and the narrative then jumps from there to “the last great day of the festival” (7:37). If 7:53–8:11 is viewed as part of John’s Gospel, that “last” day comes to an end at 8:1, and another day of teaching follows (8:2–59), after the Tent festival is over. But if, as most textual scholars believe, 7:53–8:11 does not belong to this Gospel, then the discourse on “the last great day of the festival” extends all the way from 7:37 to 8:59, when Jesus “was hidden and went out of the temple” (my italics). Within this final day of teaching, there are two other noticeable breaks, one when the Gospel writer pauses to remind us again of the location: “These words he spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple” (8:20), and the other when we are told that “many believed in him” (8:30) and Jesus goes on to deal at some length with these “Jews who believed him” (8:31–59).
While the two-day scenario is almost certainly the intention of the author, this commentary will attempt to trace the narrative flow of chapters 7 and 8 both with and without the intriguing story of the woman caught in adultery that for centuries has separated the two chapters. Either way, the account is punctuated by explicit references to Jesus’ presence in the temple at Jerusalem (see also 8:2, “In the morning he went again to the temple”; my italics). If the synoptic Gospels have placed Jesus’ “temple discourse” at the season of Passover within the last week of his ministry (see, for example, Mt 21:23–24:1; Mk 11:27–13:1; Lk 20:1–21:4, 21:37–38), the Gospel of John seems to have placed it at a different festival, and close to the very center of the story. Jesus has been in the temple before (2:14–20; 5:14), and will be there again (10:23–39), but nowhere else in the Gospel do we find anything like the sustained ministry there that dominates this chapter and the next.
16–17 Even though “the Jews” had not spoken to him directly, Jesus “answered” them at some length (vv. 16–19).* His answer takes up several themes first introduced in his long discourse to them in 5:19–47: that “the Son can do nothing on his own, except what he sees the Father doing” (5:19), that “I can do nothing on my own” (5:30), that “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true” (5:31), that “I do not accept glory from humans” (5:41) while “you receive glory from each other, but do not seek the glory that comes from the Only God” (5:44), and that “Your accuser is Moses, in whom you have set your hope” (5:45).* Echoing the first three of these earlier pronouncements, Jesus tells them (paradoxically) that “My teaching* is not mine, but belongs to the One who sent me” (v. 16).* But he then adds something he had not said in chapter 5: “If anyone chooses to do his will,* he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak on my own” (v. 17).
What does Jesus mean by “to do his will” (that is, the will of “the One who sent me”)? We know what it means for Jesus to do “the will of the One who sent me” (see 4:34; 5:30; 6:38–39), but what does it mean for “anyone” to do so? Only twice in John’s Gospel do we read of those other than Jesus who “do the will of God”: here and in 9:31, where the man born blind will remind “the Jews” that “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is god-fearing and does his will, this one he hears” (see also 1 Jn 2:17; 5:14). To “do the will of God” is simply to be “god-fearing”* and not a “sinner.” While the former blind man has Jesus in mind as the prime example of such godliness, he is making a generalization, not a pronouncement about Jesus in particular. Similarly here, “doing the will of God” is to be defined first of all within the framework of Jewish piety, not in the distinctly Johannine sense of believing in Jesus.* To “do the will of God” is to live within God’s covenant and according to God’s law as a devout Jew.* It is virtually indistinguishable from “doing the truth” (3:21) or “doing good things” (5:29). The Gospel writer is not here presupposing a distinctly Johannine understanding of “doing the will of God,” but is rather starting with the common Jewish understanding of “the will of God” as something revealed and embodied in the Jewish Scriptures, and then equating that with the new imperative he brings of accepting him as God’s unique messenger and agent.* He is not so much assuming as deliberately introducing a new understanding of what “the will of God” means for his hearers.
In short, Jesus is repeating with different words what he said to them two chapters earlier, that “if you believed Moses, you would believe me” (5:46), reinforcing the notion that his unspecified “teaching” that first led the Jewish authorities to question his qualifications (v. 14) may in fact have been an exposition of Jewish Scriptures. At the same time, his reference to “doing the will of God” (v. 17) suggests that this may also have been a central theme in his unrecorded discourse.* Having spoken generally of “the will of God” as the standard of righteousness, Jesus now adds that doing God’s will is the key to knowing “about the teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak on my own” (v. 17). Although John’s Gospel is customarily remembered as the one stressing faith or knowledge over action, Jesus’ words here demonstrate that the two must never be set over against each other. As we have seen, those who “do the truth” are those who “come to the light” (3:21), and those who have “done good things” are those who “go out to a resurrection of life” (5:29). Later, Jesus will tell his disciples that “I have given you an example, that you might do just as I have done for you” (13:15), and “Now that you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (13:17, my italics throughout). There is a circularity in this Gospel than cannot be overlooked: if it is true that a person must “know” in order to “do,” it is just as true that one must “do” in order to “know.” The latter is the point made here. If Jesus’ hearers had faithfully done as their own lawgiver and their own prophets commanded, they would know the truth about Jesus and believe in him. As it is, they do not; consequently they are unable to understand or accept what Jesus is saying (see v. 19). At the same time, his pronouncement holds the door open for the readers of the Gospel. If they do the will of God, they will know whether Jesus’ teaching comes from God or whether he speaks on his own authority. These are obviously not two equally plausible alternatives that must be carefully weighed in the balance. What they are expected to know (in light of v. 16, and of 5:19–47) is that Jesus’ teaching does in fact come from God and God alone, and that he is not speaking on his own authority.
18 Jesus’ next words have the sound of a narrative aside from the pen of the Gospel writer, explaining Jesus’ reference to speaking “on my own”* (v. 17; see also 5:30). Yet just as in a number of similar cases where the Gospel writer’s thoughts are placed in the mouth of the speaker, whoever it might be,* the words must be read as Jesus’ words, offering his own explanation of what he has just said. “He who speaks on his own” (v. 18), he continues, “seeks his own glory, but he who seeks the glory of the One who sent him is true, and nothing false is in him.” The first of these participial expressions is a generalization (that is, “Whoever speaks on his own”), while the second looks like a more specific reference to Jesus himself and his message from God. That was the case in 5:43, for example, where Jesus said, “I have come in my Father’s name,” in contrast to an indefinite “another” who “comes in his own name.” But does the expression “he who seeks the glory of the One who sent him” have to refer exclusively to Jesus? Probably not.* The whole verse draws a stark contrast in an almost chiastic fashion:
a. He who speaks on his own
b. seeks his own glory
b′. but he who seeks the glory of the One who sent him
a′. is true, and nothing false is in him.
The middle terms (b and b′) contrast a messenger’s own “glory” with that of the Sender,* while the first and last terms (a and a′) characterize a messenger (any messenger) who “speaks by himself” as the very opposite of “true.”* By this standard, Jesus is a “true” messenger of God, and “nothing false is in him,”* but so is John, who “testified to the truth” (5:33),* and so, we will learn later, is “the Advocate,” the very “Spirit of truth,” who will not speak “on his own” (16:13). So too are Jesus’ disciples, who are “sent” as he is sent (17:18; 20:21) and whom he prays might be “consecrated in the truth” (17:17, 19). Still, the primary focus in the present context is on Jesus, on his self-revelation and his truth claims here in the temple at Jerusalem “at the middle of the festival” (v. 14). But the question persists: Do his hearers recognize him as the same man who came to Jerusalem twice before—first driving money changers from the temple area (2:13–22), and then healing a sick man by a pool on the Sabbath (5:1–9)? Or do they see him simply as an eloquent but anonymous and “uninstructed” stranger?
19 Jesus now introduces Moses into the discussion, which is not surprising if his teaching so far has consisted at least in part of biblical exposition. “Has Moses not given you the law?” he asks, “And none of you does the law? Why are you seeking to kill me?” (v. 19). The first of the three questions—if it is a question—is rhetorical. It was a commonplace among Jews that Moses was the lawgiver.* Yet the form of the question matches exactly an indicative statement found in the preceding chapter, that “it is not Moses who has given you that bread from heaven” (6:32). In English, the two sentences do not appear to be parallel:
“It is not Moses who has given you that bread from heaven” (6:32).
“Has Moses not given you the law?” (7:19).
In Greek, however, the parallel is striking.* It seems odd to translate the first as a statement and the second as a question. The reader is tempted to read the second as a statement more or less parallel to the first: “It is not Moses who has given you the law.”* While this flies in the face of the common Jewish belief (or at least terminology), it is consistent with the notion that the messenger (whether Jesus or Moses) does not speak “on his own” (
In short, Jesus is not at the moment thinking theologically of God as the ultimate Source of the law, but historically of Moses as the Jewish lawgiver. With Jewish tradition generally, he has no interest in pitting the one against the other.* For all these reasons, it is best to stay with the common punctuation, “Has Moses not given you the law?” The reader must next decide whether the following clause, “And none of you does the law,” should also be punctuated as a question (with the KJV, ASV, NASV, Douay, and Confraternity) or as a statement (with the Nestle text and most English translations, including RSV, NRSV, NIV, and NAB). This time the difference is small, but the traditional punctuation as a question is slightly to be preferred.* The three closely linked rhetorical questions convey admirably Jesus’ mounting exasperation; the first heightens the irony of the second, reinforcing the earlier charge that “Your accuser is Moses, in whom you have set your hope” (5:45), while the third explains how Jesus knows that “none of you does the law.” He claims they have broken the law at one specific point, in “seeking to kill me” (see Exod 20:13, “You shall not murder”).* He is still talking to “the Jews” (see v. 15), and his accusation comes as no surprise to the reader, for they were indeed seeking his life (see 5:18; 7:1 and 11).*
20 While the reader is not surprised, Jesus’ hearers are both surprised and angered, yet the indignant reply to the accusation comes not from the accused (that is, “the Jews”), but from “the crowd” (v. 20). The abrupt change of interlocutors is not as odd as it appears, for it has happened twice before in the preceding chapter. There, as we have seen, “the crowd” in Galilee (6:22, 24) gave way to “the Jews” (6:41, 52), who were then abruptly replaced by “many of his disciples” (6:60, 66). Although not quite interchangeable, the three groups respond to Jesus in similar ways. “The crowd” challenges him to perform a sign, just as “the Jews” had done earlier (6:30–31; compare 2:18), while both “the Jews” and the so-called “disciples” refuse genuine discipleship as they “murmur” against him (6:41, 43, 61). In the present chapter, “the Jews” in Jerusalem are (still) seeking to kill Jesus (7:1, 11), and the Jerusalem “crowds” take up the “murmuring” (7:12), some defending Jesus and some accusing him. Unlike “the Jews,” they are divided in their opinions, yet “the Jews” too “quarreled with each other” earlier (6:52), and will themselves later be torn by “division” over who Jesus is (10:19–21; see also 11:45–46). Now, abruptly, “the crowd” speaks again, this time with one voice: “You have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you?” (v. 20).
The question for the reader is, How significant is the change of interlocutors? How sharply is “the crowd” to be distinguished from “the Jews”? Very sharply, according to many interpreters. Rudolf Bultmann, for example, comments that the crowd is to be distinguished from the Jews “and is ignorant of the latter’s intention.”* This view is difficult to sustain in view of the vehemence with which the crowd speaks. While “You have a demon” is probably not so much a serious charge of demon possession (as, for example, in Mk 3:22, 30), as simply a way of saying “You’re crazy,”* the hostility in the words is quite characteristic of “the Jews” in two other passages (see 8:48; 10:20).* More important, the notion that “the crowd” was ignorant of “the Jews’ ” intention to kill Jesus is implausible in light of verses 11–13, where “the Jews were seeking him at the festival, and said, ‘Where is that man?’ ” (v. 11), while those in “the crowd,” no matter what their opinion of Jesus, would not “speak about him publicly … for fear of the Jews” (v. 13, my italics). Why the fear, unless they knew that Jesus was a wanted man? Another possibility is that “the crowd” is simply “playing dumb,” pretending to be ignorant of the plan, precisely “for fear of the Jews.”* But that is not probable either, for it makes the vehemence of the crowd’s reply even harder to understand.
The most satisfactory explanation is the one hinted at before: that is, that the crowd is honestly puzzled and offended by Jesus’ accusation because they do not realize that the one speaking is Jesus, the healer and accused Sabbath breaker of chapter 5!* They truly have no idea why the authorities would be seeking to kill this anonymous stranger who had come late to the festival. The disclaimer, “Who is seeking to kill you?” comes from the crowd, but the reader has reason to suspect that it could just as easily have come from “the Jews.”* They are indeed seeking to kill Jesus, but they have no clue that this “uninstructed” pilgrim at the festival is in fact Jesus. If, as we have been told (v. 10), Jesus is present at the festival “not openly, but as it were in secret,” their ignorance is not surprising.
21–23 Jesus now risks major trouble by dropping a very broad hint: “One work I did, and you all were amazed” (v. 21), explaining shortly that the single “work” he has in mind was that “I made a whole man well on the Sabbath” (v. 23). This gives away his identity as nothing else could have done. He is indeed Jesus, the wanted man who had healed on the Sabbath (see 5:1–9).* In almost the same breath, without waiting for the crowd’s reaction, he defends his behavior in having done so. Having offered a purely christological defense before (5:17, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working”), one that only aggravated the situation (see 5:18), he now argues from traditional Jewish practice: “That is why* Moses gave you circumcision—not that it is from Moses; no, it is from the fathers—and on the Sabbath you circumcise a man. If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses not be abolished,* you are angry at me because I made a whole man well on the Sabbath?” (vv. 22–23). The parenthetical correction (“not that it is from Moses; no, it is from the fathers”) recalls a similar correction earlier by the Gospel writer (4:2, “although Jesus himself was not baptizing, his disciples were”), but here it comes within words attributed to Jesus. The reader can only conclude that it is to be read as Jesus correcting himself. While circumcision is indeed part of the legal system that “Moses gave you” (see Lev 12:3), it goes back finally to Abraham (Gen 17:10–13, 23), Ishmael (17:23–27), and Isaac (Gen 21:4). Just as in the earlier instance the narrative aside did not change the fact that in effect Jesus was baptizing (see 3:22, 26), so here the notice obviously does not prevent the writer from immediately referring to circumcision as “the law of Moses” (v. 23). What looks on the surface like a contradiction is in fact only a technicality.*
Jesus is here using the common Jewish argument that some things take precedence over the Sabbath, in this case circumcision. The circumcision of a male child took place on the eighth day after birth (see Lk 2:21), and if the eighth day fell on the Sabbath, the child was circumcised anyway.* This sounds more like Jesus in the synoptic Gospels than in the Gospel of John. In Matthew, for example, he makes a similar point regarding the Sabbath in relation to temple worship: “Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple defile the Sabbath and are blameless?” (Mt 12:5).* When Sabbath law clashed with other laws, sometimes the other laws took precedence. At the same time, Jesus’ argument also involves the principle known in Judaism as “light to heavy” (
Here the familiar synoptic-like contrast leads Jesus to ask his hearers to explain why “you are angry at me* because I made a whole man well on the Sabbath” (v. 23). The implication is that they have no reason to be angry because Jesus has done a good thing on the Sabbath, something at least as good as circumcision which “the law of Moses” commanded, and not something to be criticized, much less punished.* But to whom is he speaking, and to what “anger” is he referring? Is he addressing “the crowd” who had just said, “You have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you?” (v. 20), or is he addressing “the Jews” (vv. 1, 11, 15), who, as the reader well knows, have been all along seeking to kill him? He had hinted at anger just before when he said, “One work I did, and you all were amazed” (v. 21), and as we have seen, “amazement” was both the implied reaction of “the Jews” in Jerusalem two chapters earlier (see 5:20, 28) and their explicit reaction here (v. 15). This suggests that he may still have them in mind, for “amazement” easily turns into “stumbling” or taking offense (see 6:61), and finally into anger. Beyond this, the stubborn fact that “the Jews” were seeking to kill Jesus (5:18; 7:1) speaks for itself. As for “the crowd,” they were annoyed at what they saw as his paranoia (v. 20), and from a rhetorical standpoint the “all” (v. 21) seems to include them. Still, they have given no evidence of any awareness—much less anger—that he has healed on the Sabbath. Therefore, even if Jesus is in some sense answering the crowd, it must be added that at the same time he is talking right past them and continuing to address “the Jews” (as in vv. 16–19), once more unmasking their intentions. It is his indirect way of announcing to them, “I am the One you are looking for,” just as he will later announce himself to the band of soldiers gathered to arrest him in the garden across the Kidron valley (18:5).
24 “Don’t judge by appearance,” Jesus concludes, “but judge the right judgment!”* The cognate accusative, “judge the right judgment,” echoes Hebrew style, and on the surface the pronouncement sounds like a Hebrew prophet’s plea for simple justice.* But the phrase “by appearance”* is striking. A reader familiar with the Old Testament will recall Isaiah 11:3, where it is said of the “stump of Jesse” (apparently a messianic figure) that “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth” (NRSV, my italics).* Jesus asks nothing more or less than that they judge with simple fairness, without partiality or favoritism, as he himself judges (see 5:30, “Just as I hear I judge, and my judgment is right, because I am not seeking my will but the will of the One who sent me”). This they have not done and will not do.* In one sense, “by appearance” is simply equivalent to “according to the flesh” (see 8:15).
Yet at this crucial point in the narrative, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the pronouncement also has something to do with Jesus’ own “appearance,” or “face,” as he confronts these “Jews” in Jerusalem. “Don’t judge by appearance, but judge the right judgment!” sounds like a plea to recognize Jesus for who he is, not an anonymous uneducated stranger, but a marked man, wanted by the authorities because he “made a whole man well on the Sabbath” (v. 23). In a very different situation near the end of the Gospel, Mary Magdalene judged “by appearance” and concluded that Jesus was the gardener (20:15). Only when he spoke her name did she know who he was (20:16). Elsewhere he is known to his disciples after the crucifixion by the wounds in his hands and side (see 20:20, 27–28). In another Gospel, he is known to them “in the breaking of bread” (Lk 24:31, 35; see also Jn 21:4–7, 12–13). In the present narrative, the issue of recognizing Jesus as the Sabbath healer who has returned to Jerusalem “as it were in secret” (v. 10) sets the stage for the deeper question, “Who is he really?”*
The odd thing about this encounter at the temple, and especially about Jesus’ brief speech defending himself against the charge of Sabbath breaking (vv. 21–23), is that even though the plan to kill Jesus has been front and center (see vv. 1, 11–13, 19–20), nothing has been said about the real reason the authorities were seeking his life. The reason was not merely that he broke the Sabbath, but that he “was claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God” (5:18). Here at the Tent festival two chapters later, Jesus has said nothing about his “Father” (and will not do so until 8:16). Instead, he has spoken only (and rather mysteriously) of “the One who sent me.” Christology is not yet an issue in this confrontation, even though the reader knows that it has been before (see 5:19–47), and that it will inevitably come up again.
By this time the writer has made it clear that the key to understanding Jesus’ identity is “doing the will of God.” In this verse, to “judge the right judgment” is the exact opposite of judging “by appearance,” and Jesus has already defined “right judgment” as “not seeking my will but the will of the One who sent me” (5:30). He has also claimed that the way to “know about the teaching, whether it is from God or whether I speak by myself,” is to “choose to do his will” (7:17). The invitation to “judge the right judgment” (v. 24) now simply reiterates that invitation to “do the will” of God (v. 17). It involves not only recognizing who Jesus is, but acknowledging that his teaching is not his own, but belongs to “the One who sent him” (see vv. 16, 18). The latter is, if anything, even more crucial than the former. Whether he is “Jesus of Nazareth” who healed on the Sabbath, or an anonymous and uneducated stranger at the Tent festival, what matters above all is where his teaching comes from. Is it from God, or is he simply imparting his own wisdom? Only those who “do the will of God” will know.
25–27 The reply to Jesus’ short speech (vv. 21–24) comes not from “the Jews” (see v. 15), and not (at least not explicitly) from “the crowd” (v. 20), but from “some of the Jerusalemites,” probably in the sense of “some” within the crowd. This group functions as a kind of chorus, summarizing the situation for the reader. “Is not this the one they are seeking to kill?” they ask (v. 25), in glaring contradiction to what the crowd has just said to Jesus, “You have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you?” (v. 20). Their words should be read not as a statement of what had been obvious all along (for it clearly has not been), but as a sudden realization, a moment of truth. Finally, they have picked up on Jesus’ repeated hints (vv. 20, 21, 23), and have understood that he is indeed the fugitive “the Jews” are looking for. Yet they are puzzled. Why has he not been arrested? “And look,” they continue, “he is speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to him! Do the rulers truly know that he is the Christ?” (v. 26). The notice that Jesus is now speaking “publicly”* signals exactly what his brothers asked of him at the beginning of the chapter: now at last he is no longer “in secret” (vv. 4, 10), but “in the public eye”* (v. 4), just as they had urged.
These “Jerusalemites” are torn between two alternatives. Could it be that this Jesus, this fugitive, is actually “the Christ” and that “the rulers”* know it? (v. 26). That is, have they changed their minds because they know that he actually is “the Christ”? Answering their own question,* they conclude, “No, we know where this man comes from, but the Christ, when he comes, no one know where he is from” (v. 27). We have heard nothing of Jesus as “the Christ” for several chapters. Yet when the Gospel writer first named Jesus, it was as “Jesus Christ” (1:17), as if “Christ” were part of his very name. John’s acknowledgment that he himself was not “the Christ” (1:20; 3:28) carried with it the implication that “the One coming after” (1:15, 27, 30) perhaps was. This impression was confirmed when Jesus’ first disciples hailed him as “the Messiah—which means Christ” (1:41), and thus as “someone of whom Moses wrote in the law, and of whom the prophets wrote” (1:45; see also 5:46). Later, in a non-Jewish setting, a Samaritan woman had said, “I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ” (4:25), and Jesus had quickly and explicitly responded, “It is I—I who am speaking to you” (4:26). “Could this be the Christ?” the woman had asked the men of her town (4:29), and in due course they had acknowledged Jesus as “truly the Savior of the world” (4:42).
What does all this tell us about Jewish expectations of “the Christ,” or “the Messiah”? Not very much. Only that his coming was prophesied both in the law and the prophets, and that he was expected to “baptize” or purify the world in some way (see 1:25).* Now the reader learns one thing more: Jesus is supposed to be disqualified as “the Christ” because “we know where this man is from, but the Christ, when he comes, no one knows where he is from” (v. 27). In saying “we know,” these “Jerusalemites” refer to what they consider to be common knowledge,* whether among them personally, or “the crowd,” or “the rulers.” He is evidently now recognized in Jerusalem as “Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth” (see 1:45; also 6:42), and it is assumed that if his geographical origin and lineage are known he cannot be the Messiah.* Such a belief is rarely if ever attested in Jewish sources. It is not the same, for example, as the notion of a hidden Messiah who comes into the world but remains incognito until it is time for him to be revealed.* Concealment is, after all, implicit in the very idea of being “revealed.”* Here it is not a matter of recognizing who the Messiah is, but of knowing “where he is from.”* As it stands, the pronouncement flatly contradicts the thought, soon to be expressed, that “the Christ comes from the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was” (v. 42), serving to underline the confusion of these “Jerusalemites.” It also flatly contradicts what “the Jews” will say two chapters later about Jesus to the man born blind: “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he is from” (9:29). The irony of the former blind man’s answer is telling: “What is amazing in this is that you do not know where he is from, and he opened my eyes” (9:30).
The irony is already present here. Even though Jesus’ hearers think they know where Jesus is from (v. 27), they really do not, any more than they could have known where the good wine at Cana was from (2:9), or the “living water” Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman (4:11). His comings and goings are as mysterious to them as the wind (3:8).* He is from Nazareth in Galilee, but ultimately he is “from above” (3:31), or “from heaven” (3:13, 31; 6:32, 33, 38, 42, 50, 51). Ironically, what they say about the Messiah is true of Jesus: “when he comes, no one knows where he is from.” His origins are beyond human comprehension.
28–29 In light of the foregoing, Jesus might easily have said, “No, you don’t know where I am from. You only think you do. I am from above. Consequently, I am the Messiah.” But that is precisely what he does not say. Instead he continues “teaching in the temple” (v. 28, as in v. 14), with a solemn pronouncement which he “cried out”* (v. 28). This verb implies not so much a loud shout or outcry* as a solemn proclamation. It was used once of John early on (1:15), and will appear twice more with Jesus as the subject (v. 37; 12:44). Along with “testify” (see 1:15), it seems to take the place of the more common early Christian term for preaching or proclaiming the gospel message.* Like “Amen, amen,” it calls attention to the importance and the solemnity of what follows. “You know me, and you know where I am from,” Jesus admits. Like his first disciples, Jesus knows that being “from Nazareth” (1:45) is quite compatible with being “the Messiah” (1:41), the One “of whom Moses wrote in the law, and of whom the prophets wrote” (1:45). When asked in so many words, he will not hesitate to acknowledge that he is indeed “Jesus the Nazorean” (see 18:5, 8). But what he adds here is crucial: “I have not come on my own,* but the One who sent me is True, whom you do not know” (v. 28). He avoids confronting head-on the issue of whether or not he himself is the Messiah, calling attention again (as in v. 16) to “the One who sent me.” What his hearers do not understand is that where Jesus “comes from”—his origin—is not a place but a Person. To be “from above,” or “from heaven,” is to be sent “from God” (see 3:2, 17, 34; 6:46) or from “the Father” (see 5:36, 37; 6:44, 57).
Quite simply, Jesus is telling his hearers that they do not know God—a startling assertion in view of his words to the Samaritan woman three chapters earlier, “You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (4:22). There he stood resolutely alongside “the Jews” as those who know and worship God, while here he abruptly charges that they do not (see also 8:19, 55; 15:21; 16:3). The reason they do not, he says, is that “the One who sent me is True” (that is, truly God),* so that if they reject the messenger they are rejecting God, who sent him (see above, 5:23; also Lk 10:16b). What has happened between chapter 4 and the present is that God’s messenger has been rejected once in Jerusalem (chapter 5), and is now being rejected again. These “Jerusalemites” can no longer claim that they, in contrast to Samaritans or other Gentiles, know the “true” God, for God has revealed himself in this messenger, and only in him.* “I,” by contrast, “know him,” Jesus claims, “because I am from him,* and he sent me” (v. 29).* In this sense Jesus’ hearers do not know “where he is from,” even though he has just acknowledged (with a touch of irony) that they do (v. 28). He is indeed from a certain place, “Nazareth” as it happens (see 1:45–46), but beyond that he is “from” a Person, “the One who sent me,” and if they will not receive the messenger they cannot know the Sender.
30 It is unclear whether or not Jesus’ hearers understand that he is claiming they do not know God. What is clear is that the solemn words that he “cried out teaching in the temple” (v. 28) made them angry enough that “they sought to arrest him” (v. 30). Whether “they” are the “Jerusalemites” who first realized that he was a wanted man (v. 25), or “the crowd” (v. 20), or “the Jews” (v. 15) is also unclear, at least for the moment. Presumably only “the Jews” would have had the necessary authority.* Perhaps the best way to read verse 30 is as a caption or heading for the next seven verses in their entirety. That is, the writer first states that “they sought to arrest him” (v. 30), and then explains at greater length how the attempted arrest was carried out, and why it failed (vv. 31–36).* In this case, “they” are promptly identified as “the chief priests and the Pharisees” (v. 32), a mixed group more or less synonymous with “the Jews.” Why did the attempt fail? The theological reason comes first. It failed because God determined that it would fail: that is, because Jesus’ “hour had not yet come” (v. 30). The Gospel writer takes Jesus’ words spoken long before to his mother (“My hour has not yet come,” 2:4), and makes them his own.* Jesus’ “hour” had not come back then at the Cana wedding, and we are reminded here that it still has not come. But the present context makes clearer precisely what the decisive “hour” would entail. If an attempt to take him by force fails “because his hour had not yet come,” then his “hour” must be the time of his arrest,* and by extension his trial and execution, the fulfillment of the authorities’ plan to “pursue” Jesus and finally “kill” him (see 5:16, 18). The notice that “his hour had not yet come” explains why Jesus was not captured or killed in the course of debates with his opponents (see 8:20; also 7:43; 8:59; 10:39), yet also points toward the moment when he will finally say that “the hour has come” (12:23; see also 12:27; 13:1; 17:1), and face that which awaits him.
31 The writer now gives a more detailed account of why and how “they sought to arrest him” (v. 30). The reason, it turns out, was not simply that the authorities did not like the speech he had given in verses 28 and 29, but that “many from the crowd believed in him” (v. 31a). Those who believed said, “The Christ, when he comes, will he do more signs than this man did?” (v. 31b). As we will learn later, the fear of the Pharisees and the chief priests was that “everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come, and take away both our place and our nation” (11:48). Those who believed seem to have understood that it was not a matter of just “one work” (v. 21), but that what Jesus had done in Jerusalem on that Sabbath day was typical of what he had been doing on a rather wide front (see above, 3:2, “no one can do these signs you are doing unless God is with him”; also 2:23; 4:45, 48; 5:16; 6:2). Commentators are generally agreed that Jewish expectations of the Messiah did not emphasize that the Messiah would necessarily perform signs or miracles, much less be known by his miracles.* As Schnackenburg points out, “What we have here is not Jewish but Christian messianic dogma”*—driven presumably by the conviction of early Christians that Jesus had actually performed many miraculous signs during his ministry, more in fact than they could count (see 20:30), and that these signs pointed to his identity as “the Christ” (20:31).* On the basis of these signs, we are told, “many of the crowd believed in him.” While the Gospel writer (in contrast to 2:23–25) does not evaluate the genuineness of their faith explicitly, his use of the term “murmuring” in the following verse is hardly encouraging.
32 To the Pharisees, and apparently to the Gospel writer as well,* this belief on the part of “many” was nothing more than “murmuring” (v. 32), arising as it did out of conflicting perceptions of Jesus (vv. 25–27). To them it was much like the crowd’s “murmuring” earlier (v. 12), when they learned that Jesus was wanted by the authorities. Possibly one reason for this was that while “many” believed in Jesus, others did not (see v. 27), so that “the crowd” was divided (as in v. 12, and explicitly in vv. 40–43). The text does not say. But because any belief in Jesus as the Messiah was dangerous, given the authorities’ fear of the Romans (again, see 11:48), “the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him” (v. 32). This was the attempt which according to the Gospel writer was doomed in advance to failure “because his hour had not yet come” (v. 30). But these “officers”* know nothing of the plan of God, and we will hear a very different explanation shortly from their own lips (v. 46, “no man ever spoke like this”).
33–34 In response to this move by the religious authorities, Jesus now speaks, but we are not told to whom. “Yet a short time I am with you, and I am going to the One who sent me,” he announces (v. 33), adding “You will seek me and you will not find, and where I am you cannot come” (v. 34). While his words are consistent with the preceding notice that “his hour had not yet come” (v. 30), they strongly suggest that the decisive “hour” is near. At the same time, they further define this “hour” as his departure from the world, back to “the One who sent me.” Because Jesus has already established that “the One who sent me” is One “whom you do not know” (v. 28), it follows that they do not and cannot know where he is going.
To drive home the point, he uses language which some readers—though not his immediate hearers—might recognize as contrary to what he was supposed to have said elsewhere: “You will seek me and you will not find, and where I am* you cannot come” (v. 34). In two other Gospels he said, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to whoever knocks it will be opened” (Mt 7:7–8//Lk 11:9–10). Here it is just the opposite: there are those who seek Jesus who will not find him. To be sure, Jesus’ first disciples “sought” him and “found” him (1:38, 41), and so did Mary Magdalene (20:15, 16), and even the crowds who followed him in the preceding chapter (see 6:24–25), but the Gospel writer knows that this is not true for everyone, and not even true for his disciples all the time (see 13:33). It cannot be, given the dualism of this Gospel, and least of all in this instance, where those who “will seek” Jesus are agents of those who were “seeking” him only to arrest and kill him (v. 30; also vv. 1 and 11, and 5:18).
An intriguing possibility is that Jesus’ language here is influenced by the biblical account of Elijah’s ascension to heaven, when the prophets of Jericho sent “fifty men who searched for three days but did not find him” (2 Kgs 2:17, NRSV; my italics).* But while that story shaped at least one later account of Jesus’ departure from the earth,* the writer could hardly have expected readers to pick up such a subtle allusion here. More likely, this is simply the dualism of John’s Gospel at work, as Jesus makes explicit in the words that follow: “and where I am, you cannot come.”*
35–36 The preceding qualifies as a kind of a riddle, for Jesus’ hearers do not know what to make of it.* While it is momentarily unclear to whom Jesus was speaking, the response (not surprisingly) comes from “the Jews” (v. 35). Probably these “Jews” are the delegation of “officers” sent by “the chief priests and the Pharisees” to arrest Jesus (v. 32). Because they represent the religious authorities in Jerusalem, the Gospel writer does not hesitate to identify them as “the Jews” (see 13:33, “and just as I said to the Jews that where I am you cannot come, so I say to you now”). What Jesus says to the “officers” he says in effect to those who sent them.* In keeping with their consistent practice up to this point (see, for example, 6:41–43, 52), these “Jews” do not speak to Jesus in reply but “to themselves,” that is, to one another. Characteristically as well, their response is one of bewilderment: “Where will this man go, that we will not find him?” they ask. “Will he go to the dispersion of the Greeks and teach the Greeks?”
The reader has to smile at this, because Jesus had told them very clearly where he was going (v. 33, “I go to the One who sent me”). If he has come from God (vv. 28–29), he can only be going back to God again.* But if they do not know who “the One who sent him” is, they cannot know where he is going. Any thought of a plan to “go to the dispersion of the Greeks and teach the Greeks” is, at one level, absurd. And yet the Christian reader also knows that by virtue of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Christian message has gone precisely to “the dispersion of the Greeks,” and “the Greeks” (no less than “the Jews”) are in fact being taught. They may even be numbered among the Gospel’s first readers. And so, ironically, these confused messengers from “the Jews” have spoken the truth—without actually knowing the truth. The “dispersion,” or “Diaspora,” was (and still is) a technical term for the Jewish community scattered throughout the world (in the New Testament see Jas 1:1; also 1 Pet 1:1, where the terminology is applied to Christians scattered in the world). The phrase “the dispersion of the Greeks”* should therefore probably be read as “the dispersion (or Jewish Diaspora) among the Greeks.”* Otherwise, the text could give the impression that “the Greeks” and not “the Jews” are the ones dispersed. Some have taken this course, on the ground that in John’s Gospel “the Jews” refers to Jews living in Palestine, and “the Greeks” to Greek-speaking Jews living in the Diaspora.* Remarkably, John’s Gospel never uses the common New Testament term for “the Gentiles,”* but “the Greeks” seems to be one of his substitute terms (along with “other sheep” in 10:16, “the scattered children of God” in 11:52, and even “the Samaritans” in 4:39 and 40). The contrast between “Jew” and “Greek,” familiar enough from the book of Acts (14:1; 16:1; 18:4; 19:10, 17; 20:21) and the letters of Paul (see Rom 1:16; 2:9, 10; 3:9; 10:12; 1 Cor 1:22, 24; 10:32; 12:13; Gal 3:28; Col 3:11), seems to be in play here as well. “The Jews” (or more precisely, their “officers”) who hear Jesus’ words can only conclude that he plans to leave Judea to undertake a teaching mission to the Gentile world—a mission that the reader knows has already begun (see 17:18; 20:21).
Finally, in their bewilderment, the officers sent to arrest Jesus ask themselves yet again, “What is this word that he said, ‘You will seek me and you will not find, and where I am you cannot come’?” (v. 36). The repetition does more than underscore their confusion. It also highlights for the reader the significance of Jesus’ pronouncement. It is a pronouncement that he will repeat twice more as the Gospel story unfolds (see 8:21; 13:33), and clearly one of decisive importance.* Jesus will not be present indefinitely, but only for “a short time” (v. 33). Then he must go away to “the One who sent him.” This further defines what he meant by his “hour” (v. 30). Whatever else it may be, it is a time of departure from the world. The reader is expected to understand that he is going back to God his Father (see v. 33; 6:62), yet six chapters later not even his closest disciples have grasped where he is going, or why (see 13:36; 14:5). As for the officers now sent to arrest him, they have shown that they do not understand, nor are they able to accomplish their mission (see vv. 45–47). They cannot arrest him, for “his hour had not yet come” (v. 30). In “a short time,” when it does come, he will depart, but on his own terms, and to a place of his choosing, not theirs.
37–38 The phrase, “Now on the last day, the great day of the festival” (v. 37), serves as a marker, setting off what follows from what had transpired “already at the middle of the festival” (v. 14).* The Tent festival lasted seven days (see Deut 16:13, 15; Lev 23:33; Ezek 45:25), but Leviticus adds that it was followed by a “closing assembly” on the eighth day, set apart (like the first day) as a “day of rest” (see Lev 23:36, 39; see also Num 29:12–35; 2 Maccabees 10:6). It is unclear, therefore, whether “the last day, the great day of the festival,” is the seventh or the eighth day. It is unlikely that the Gospel’s readers would even have been aware of the distinction, and the Gospel writer (if he is aware) does not pause to explain it to them. The Mishnah refers to the eighth day, not the seventh, as “the last Festival-day of the Feast.”* If “the last day” is the seventh day here, it is the exception and not the rule, and I know of no other exceptions in Jewish literature. Josephus, while recognizing a sequence from the first day to the seventh, also states without qualification that the Jewish people at this time “for eight days keep festival.”* Many interpreters have argued that John’s Gospel must refer to the seventh day because Jesus speaks of “living water” (v. 38), and the ritual of drawing water from the pool of Siloam to the temple went on for only the seven days.* On the eighth day the water libation would have stopped.* But the argument rests too much on the supposed parallel between the water poured out at the Tent festival and the saying of Jesus, a parallel which the Gospel writer does not even bother to make explicit.* Even if the parallel is presupposed, Jesus might plausibly have waited for the customary water libation to come to an end before offering “living water” of his own.*
Whether the “last day” was the eighth day or the seventh, Jesus “was there.”* He has not gone “to the dispersion of the Greeks” (v. 35), nor has he been arrested. Again he “cried out,”* just as he had done once before (v. 28). This time he said, “If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, just as the Scripture said, ‘From his insides will flow streams of living water.’ ” The invitation to “come and drink” looks as if it should have been preceded by an “I am” pronouncement, for several of Jesus’ “I am’s” in this Gospel are followed by just such invitations (see 6:35, 51; 8:12; 10:9; 11:25–26; 15:5). He could have said, “I am the Water of Life” (see Rev 21:6; 22:17), or “I am the Spring” (4:14), or even “I am the Rock” (see Ps 78:16; 1 Cor 10:4),* but he claims none of these titles. His hearers have grasped that he is the healer wanted by the authorities, but his true identity is still a mystery to them, and for the time being he lets it remain so.
The punctuation problem here is well known. According to the traditional punctuation (which our translation has followed), a full stop has been placed after the Greek imperative “let him drink”* (v. 37). A new sentence (and in most translations a new verse) begins with the phrase, “he who believes in me,”* identifying the person who “comes” to Jesus and “drinks” from what he has to offer as a person who “believes” in him. Regarding such a person, Jesus immediately cites a text of “Scripture” to the effect that “From his insides* will flow streams of living water” (v. 38).* The text makes it explicit that what Jesus offers is indeed “living water”—exactly what he offered to the woman at the well of Sychar three chapters earlier (4:10–11). Surprisingly, however, on this reading the source of the “living water” is the “believer,” not Jesus. This has seemed odd to many interpreters in light of a later scene at Jesus’ crucifixion where a Roman soldier pierced “his side” with a spear, “and immediately blood and water came out” (19:34). The truth of that account is then attested by an eyewitness (19:35), suggesting that the Gospel writer found it notably significant. Moreover, Jesus and not the believer is the one issuing the invitation to “come to me and drink” (7:37), and Jesus’ words are promptly interpreted as referring to “the Spirit, which those who believed in him were later to receive”* (v. 39), not dispense.*
Consequently many commentators and some translations have punctuated the sentence differently, with a comma after “let him come to me”* and a period after “whoever believes in me”; thus, “If anyone thirst, let him come to me, and let him drink who believes in me. Just as the Scripture said, ‘From his insides will flow streams of living water.’ ”* On this reading, it is unclear whether the Scripture quotation is being attributed to Jesus or the Gospel writer. Most of those who translate it this way attribute the quotation to Jesus without discussing the issue, but there are exceptions.* Either way, the text cited is identifying Jesus as the source of the living water. It is from Jesus’ “insides,” not the believer’s, that the water flows. This seems to many interpreters more in keeping with the other relevant passages in John’s Gospel, as well as with most of the biblical texts to which John’s Gospel might conceivably be alluding.
Yet it should not be forgotten that Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never ever thirst. Instead, the water I will give him will become in him* a spring of water rushing to eternal life” (4:14, my italics). The point there was that the “living water” Jesus offered was self-replenishing. To say that it would become in the believer “a spring of water rushing to eternal life” was simply a more dramatic and more eloquent way of promising that those who drink of it would “never ever thirst” (my italics). The Samaritan woman, even in her misunderstanding, promptly drove the point home with her plea, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not thirst and have to keep coming back here to draw” (4:15). Again, two chapters later, Jesus as “the Bread of life” promises that “The person who comes to me will never go hungry, and the person who believes in me will never ever thirst” (6:35, my italics).* Here in the temple his meaning is probably the same. To say of the believer that “From his insides will flow streams of living water” is yet another way of promising that he will “never ever thirst.” As he told the Samaritan woman, the “living water” he offers is a never-failing, self-replenishing stream. The point is not, as is often thought, that the believer will necessarily become a channel of “living water” to others,* but that the believer’s own well will never run dry.* As Jesus will later announce, “I have come that they might have life, and have it in abundance” (10:10).* These considerations also reinforce the punctuation used in our translation (that is, with a period after “If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink”). The other punctuation (“If anyone thirst, let him come to me, and let him drink who believes”) contradicts the notion that those who believe will “never ever thirst.” If they never thirst, they have no need to drink. The participle “Whoever believes in me” is best understood as referring not to someone being invited to “come and drink,” but to a person who has already done so, never to thirst again.*
The issue is complicated by the uncertainty as to what text of “Scripture” Jesus (or the Gospel writer) has in mind. Among those commonly suggested,* the most plausible is Zechariah 14:8 (NIV), “On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem,” for it is the only text that uses the actual phrase “living water.”* Moreover, “that day” spoken of in Zechariah was to be a day when all the nations of the world would come to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel and “keep the Tent festival”* (see Zech 14:16 and 19).* Yet neither this nor any other biblical text uses the expression “from his insides” in connection with streams of water. Perhaps the closest parallel to that is Justin Martyr’s comment that “As, therefore, Christ is the Israel and the Jacob, even so we, who have been quarried out from the bowels of Christ,* are the true Israelite race” (Dialogue with Trypho 135.3).* The verb “quarried”* evokes another of Justin’s images, that of Christ as “the good Rock” from which “living water” flows (Dialogue 114.4; see above, n.
As Schnackenburg points out, the two traditions (represented by Zech 14:8 and Ps 78:16 respectively) are “not mutually exclusive.”* The place was right (the temple) and the time was right (the Tent festival) for the Zechariah text to be in play, and the imagery of water from the rock was implicit already when Jesus spoke earlier of “thirst” as well as “hunger” in connection with “bread from heaven” and his own identity as “the Bread of life” (6:35). Whatever “Scripture” Jesus may have had in mind, he has so incorporated it into his own pronouncement that the words have become his own. With it he issues the same invitation as before (6:35), but the question lingers, Who was present to receive it?
K. The Last Day of the Festival: Jesus and the Pharisees (7:37–8:29)
Now on the last day, the great day of the festival, Jesus was there and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, just as the Scripture said, ‘From his insides will flow streams of living water.’ ” But this he said about the Spirit, which those who had believed in him were later to receive. For the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Some from the crowd, then, when they heard these words, were saying, “This is truly the Prophet.” Others were saying, “This is the Christ.” But they were saying, “Does the Christ come from Galilee? Did not the Scripture say that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David was? So a split took place in the crowd on account of him, and some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.
Then the officers came to the chief priests and the Pharisees, and those said to them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like that.” Then the Pharisees answered them, “Are you also deceived? Has any of the rulers believed in him, or any of the Pharisees? But this crowd that does not know the law, they are accursed.” Nicodemus said to them—he who came to him previously, and was one of them—“Does our law judge the man unless it hear from him first and learn what he is doing?” They answered and said to him, “Are you also from Galilee? Search and see that a prophet is not arising out of Galilee.”
[[And they went off, each to his house, while Jesus went off to the Mount of Olives. In the morning he again showed up at the temple, and all the people were coming to him, and he sat and began teaching them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and stood her in the center and said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery, and in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said testing him, so that they might have [reason] to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote with his finger on the ground. Then as they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “The one without fault among you, let him first throw a stone on her.” And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who had heard went out one by one, beginning from the elders, and he was left alone, and the woman still in the center. So Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” And she said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Nor do I condemn you. Go, and from now on sin no more.”]]
So again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.” Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying about yourself. Your testimony is not true.” Jesus answered and said to them, “Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true, because I know where I came from and where I am going. But you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh, ‘I’ judge no one. And yet if I judge, my judgment is true, because I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me. And in your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true. I am the one who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me.” Then they said to him, “Where is your father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father; if you knew me, you would know my Father.” These words he spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple, and no one arrested him because his hour had not yet come.
So again he said to them, “I am going, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come. Then the Jews said, “Will he kill himself, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’ ”? And he said to them, “You are from below, I am from above. You are from this world, I am not from this world. I just told you that you will die in your sins. For unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.” So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What can I even begin to say to you? I have many things to say about you and to judge, but the One who sent me is True, and the things I heard from him are the things I say to the world.” They did not know that he was telling them of the Father. So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of man, then you will come to know that I am, and [that] on my own I do nothing, but just as the Father taught me, these things I speak. And the One who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that please him.”
This long section is interrupted by a passage widely regarded as a later addition to John’s Gospel, and therefore set off by double brackets in our translation (7:53–8:11). The passage is omitted by the earliest papyri (P66 and P75), by the earliest of the parchment manuscripts (
39 The traditional punctuation attributes all of verse 38 to Jesus, but what follows can only be read as a characteristic narrative aside by the Gospel writer: “But he said* this about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were later to receive. For the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (v. 39). “This he said” could also be translated “this it said,” referring to “the Scripture,” for “said” echoes “the Scripture said” in verse 38. But the expression “this he said” and others like it are normally used in John’s Gospel as explanations of verbal utterances, not written Scripture (see 2:21; 6:6; 8:6; 11:51; 12:6, 33; 21:19).* More important, if Jesus has indeed made the words of “the Scripture” his own words, it is unlikely that the Gospel writer intends to separate out what Jesus has linked together. The comment should therefore be read as referring to verses 37–38 in their entirety, including but not limited to the “Scripture” citation.
The translation “But this he said” (my italics) attaches to the particle* at least a mildly adversative quality. To a degree, the Gospel writer is adding a small caution or qualification to what he has just represented Jesus as saying. He is telling the reader two things: first, that the “living water” Jesus promises is the Spirit; but, second, that his promise of the Spirit was not for his immediate hearers at the Tent festival but for Christian believers at a later time—above all, for the readers of the Gospel themselves. The first is no surprise, given Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about a new birth “of water and Spirit” (3:5), and his pronouncement at Capernaum that “the Spirit is that which makes alive” (6:63). Clearly, “living water” is nothing other than “eternal life” (see also 4:14), and just as clearly “the Spirit” is the source of eternal life. More surprising is the notice that the gift of the Spirit was something that believers were “later to receive.”* Like certain other narrative asides in this Gospel, its perspective is postresurrection (for example, 2:21–22 and 12:16). That “later” implies “only later,” and not then and there at the Tent festival, can be seen from the Gospel writer’s further comment, “For the Spirit was not yet,* because Jesus was not yet glorified” (v. 39b).*
What does it mean for Jesus to be “glorified”?* The word has not been used before, although the writer has claimed to have seen Jesus’ “glory” (1:14), and has described how Jesus “revealed his glory” at the Cana wedding (2:11). What future “glory” or “glorification” remains? Is it a matter of “the sky opened, and the angels of God going up and coming down over the Son of man” (1:51), or of “the Son of man going up where he was at first” (6:62)? Either of these might be a reasonable guess for any reader who does not know the end of the story, but a complicating factor is the notice a few verses earlier that Jesus’ “hour,” presumably the time for him to be arrested and perhaps put to death, was also “not yet” (v. 30). What could such a grim fate have to do with “glorification” and the gift of “the Spirit”? How do the two contrasting “not yets” relate to each other? Do they cancel each other out? Which comes first? The issue will be resolved later, when the two terms come together, as Jesus’ “hour” turns out to be precisely the hour of his “glorification” (see 12:23; 17:1). Yet for the present the reader confronts the same ambiguity here as in chapter 3, when Jesus spoke of being “lifted up” in the same way that Moses “lifted up the snake in the desert” (3:14). Like that image, the reference to Jesus’ “hour” (v. 30) suggests suffering and death, yet the mention of Jesus being “glorified” looks past death to final vindication. The vindication has already been promised in a variety of ways (not only in 1:51 and 6:62, but in 2:19, “Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up”), and is implicit in the immediate context in Jesus’ invitation to “come to me and drink” (v. 37).
The negative side of the comment is that the gift of the Spirit is not for either “the crowds” or “the Jews” at the temple in Jerusalem during the Tent festival, but for the readers of the Gospel after Jesus was “glorified,” and after he breathed on his disciples, saying, “Receive Holy Spirit” (20:22). Neither of Jesus’ two earlier invitations to “drink” drew a positive response, and the same is true here. First, the Samaritan woman failed to grasp his meaning (4:15), and Jesus changed the subject. In the second instance, he followed his invitation (6:35) by clearly excluding his immediate hearers: “Yet I said to you that you have seen me and you do not believe” (6:36, my italics). This time the Gospel writer’s disclaimer is borne out by what follows. While the immediate reaction to Jesus’ utterance is not uniformly negative (see vv. 40–44), neither will we see among his hearers anything remotely resembling “streams of living water.”
40–42 “The crowd” is explicitly said to have “heard these words,” and various reactions are given. “Some”* said of Jesus, “This is truly the Prophet” (v. 40), while “others” said, “This is the Christ” (v. 41). The two titles side by side recall John’s reply to questioners denying that he was either one (see 1:20, 21), while the phrase “This is truly the Prophet” echoes almost verbatim what some Galileans said earlier about Jesus when they planned “to come and seize him to make him king” (6:14–15).* While there is no reason to assign similar motives to those speaking here, neither is there sufficient reason to attribute to them genuine faith.* In the case of those who said, “This is the Christ” (v. 41), there is more reason to do so, in light of the “many” a few verses earlier who were said to have “believed in him,” asking if “the Christ” would do “more signs than this man did” (v. 31). Yet there is no further mention of explicit “belief,” much less any evaluation of such belief. Readers are left to make of it what they will.
Another voice is quickly heard: “But they were saying, ‘Does the Christ come from Galilee? Did not the Scripture say that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?’ ” (vv. 41–42). Whether this is a third voice, or a rejoinder from those who had said, “This is truly the Prophet” (v. 40), is unclear.* “They” is probably to be understood impersonally, implying that (as Raymond Brown puts it, without comment), “An objection was raised.”* If it were a rejoinder, the issue would be between those who regarded Jesus as “the Prophet” and those who viewed him as “the Christ,” but such a debate is unlikely. More plausibly, the issue was between both groups and those (perhaps the majority) who denied that he was in any way a messenger of God.* Their argument was simple: Jesus was from Galilee. They had already claimed to know where he was from (v. 27), and he had agreed that they did know (v. 28). Consequently, they now argued, he could not be “the Christ” or “Messiah” (see 1:41) as commonly understood, because according to “the Scripture” the Messiah was to come “from the seed of David,”* and therefore “from Bethlehem, the village where David was” (v. 42).* The issue here was not so much Jesus’ ancestry as his birthplace, and “the Scripture” in mind appears to have been Micah 5:2, the same text cited by Herod’s chief priests and scribes according to the birth narrative in Matthew (see Mt 2:4–6).*
The question raised by this appeal to “the Scripture” centers on how the readers of the Gospel are meant to view it. Are they expected to agree with it or not? In light of the certainty that such a text actually existed, and in light of the principle Jesus himself articulates three chapters later, that “the Scripture cannot be abolished” (10:35), they are hardly free to disagree.* “The Christ” must indeed come “from the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was.” If so, and if the readers of the Gospel are truly meant to “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and in believing have life in his name” (20:31), then they must also believe and know that he was in fact “from Bethlehem,” just as two other Gospels (Matthew and Luke) claim that he was.* In short, they are expected to understand that his opponents, in attempting to disqualify Jesus as “the Christ,” are, ironically and in their ignorance, clearly stating his qualifications. Still, when all is said and done, his “qualifications” (on the basis of Jewish messianic expectations) are of secondary importance to the reader. They are trumped, just as his public identity as “Jesus of Nazareth” is trumped, by his origin “from above” or “from heaven,” and by his unique relationship to “the One who sent him” (see 7:18, 28–29).
43–44 The result of the dispute was that “a split* took place in the crowd on account of him” (v. 43), a heightened version of the “murmuring” among the crowds earlier (vv. 12, 32), and of the “murmuring” and “quarreling” in Galilee over Jesus’ words (see 6:41, 52). The “split” is the first of three explicitly noted in this Gospel: this one “in the crowd,” the second among “the Pharisees” (9:16), and the third among “the Jews” (10:19–21). Nothing good comes of such “splits,” for although in each instance some speak in favor of Jesus and some against him, no one is said to “believe” in him or to “drink” of the “living water” he has offered. In this sense, the Gospel writer’s comment that “The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (v. 39) is confirmed. Even though some have said, “This is truly the Prophet,” and others, “This is the Christ” (vv. 40–41), all that comes of such acknowledgments is a standoff. “Some of them wanted to arrest him,” we are told, “but no one laid hands on him” (v. 44). The writer could have added, “because his hour had not yet come” (see v. 30), but he does not. That is of course still the overriding reason, but the more immediate reason Jesus is not arrested is that “the crowd,” unlike the Pharisees (v. 32), does not act as one or speak with one voice.
45–46 This second attempt to “arrest”* Jesus (v. 44) prompts a change of scene, allowing us a glimpse of how the first attempt turned out.* Now we are told explicitly what we already assumed must have been the case, that the officers sent to arrest Jesus (vv. 32–36) returned empty-handed to “the chief priests and the Pharisees” who had sent them. In a kind of parody of Jesus’ own intent to “go to the One who sent me” (v. 33), they have now returned to those who “sent” them (v. 32)—but with nothing to show for it! The scene is almost comic, as the Pharisees ask, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” (v. 45), and the officers reply, “No man ever spoke like that” (v. 46). They are referring to what he had told them when they came to arrest him (vv. 33–34), part of which they had repeated in confusion and disbelief (vv. 35–36). Now their incomprehension surfaces again as a testimony to the overwhelming power of Jesus’ words, recalling other Gospel testimonies to the power of his deeds.*
47–49 The Pharisees’ reply, “Are you also deceived?” (v. 47), reflects the belief already expressed that Jesus “deceives the crowd” (v. 12). Their accompanying question, “Has any of the rulers believed in him, or any of the Pharisees?” (vv. 47–48), is a setup for the appearance of Nicodemus, who will almost immediately prove them wrong (vv. 50–51). Their harsh verdict on “this crowd that does not know the law” is that “they are accursed” (v. 49). As is frequently pointed out, this judgment was characteristic of certain later rabbinic judgments about nonobservant Jews, known as
50 Nicodemus now speaks. He does not come on the scene, but is assumed to be already present because he “was one of them” (see 3:1, “a man of the Pharisees … a ruler of the Jews”). For the reader’s benefit, he is also explicitly identified as “he who came to him previously” (see 3:2). The only reason to introduce Nicodemus here is as living proof that the Pharisees are wrong in implying that none of “the rulers” or “the Pharisees” have believed in Jesus.* If Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus left some doubt as whether Nicodemus in fact “believed,” the doubt is now removed. Whatever his faith may have been, the Gospel writer judges it sufficient to disprove the Pharisees’ rash claim. This remains true even if his faith proves in the end to be flawed, like that of other Jewish “rulers” (see 12:42–43; but as for Nicodemus, see 19:39).
51 Nicodemus does not directly challenge his colleagues, but merely asks a question: “Does our law judge the man* unless it hear from him first and learn what he is doing?” This was a perfectly reasonable point, given the nature of biblical law (see, for example, Deut 1:16–17; 19:16–17). By referring to “our” law (in contrast to Jesus’ own terminology!),* Nicodemus distances himself from the “accursed” crowd that “does not know the law” (v. 49), and confirms to the Pharisees that he is indeed “one of them” (v. 50). His deliberative question* matches (and possibly mocks) the two deliberative questions of the Pharisees themselves, “Are you also deceived?” (v. 47), and “Has any of the rulers believed in him?” (v. 48).* Nicodemus pleads that the Pharisees should “hear” from Jesus first, and “learn what he is doing.” On the face of it, “what he is doing” implies “what he intends” or “what he is up to,”* but Nicodemus’s choice of words reflects his own long-standing interest in what Jesus was “doing,” going back to that earlier encounter when he said to Jesus, “no one can do these signs you are doing unless God is with him” (3:2).* For the reader, it also recalls the original charges against Jesus, that he was “doing such things on the Sabbath” (5:16), and his reply that “the Son can do nothing on his own, except what he sees the Father doing. For whatever things he does, these in the same way the Son does too” (5:19, italics added throughout). Nicodemus knew (or thought he knew) what Jesus was “doing,” and wanted his fellow “rulers” and “Pharisees” to “hear” of it from Jesus’ own lips. But their messengers had already heard, and concluded that “No man ever spoke like that” (v. 46), as if his very words were mighty deeds,* and the Pharisees had rejected their report. As far as they were concerned, they had heard enough.* Ironically, the reader has already heard Jesus’ full defense, delivered as if addressed to “the Jews” directly (5:19–47), and yet without comment or response of any kind from them. As we have seen, that lengthy encounter seems to have been a literary creation, not a literal confrontation, for although Jesus “gave his answer” to them (5:19), they never accused him in person, but only “began pursuing him” for breaking the Sabbath (5:16) and “kept seeking all the more to kill him” for claiming God as his Father (5:18). Consequently, Nicodemus’s point is well taken. Neither “the Pharisees” nor “the Jews” (if the two can be distinguished) have yet “heard” directly from Jesus to “learn what he is doing.”
52 The Pharisees answer Nicodemus with yet another deliberative question, “Are you also from Galilee?” Like their two previous ones (vv. 48, 50), it expects a negative answer, “Of course not!” Yet like the question of the officers sent by the Pharisees (v. 35) and the Pharisees’ question to them on their return (v. 47, “Are you also deceived?”), it also injects a measure of doubt, as if to say, “Surely you are not a Galilean, but just as surely you’re beginning to sound like one!” Their point was that in appearing to defend Jesus, a Galilean, Nicodemus might well be revealing his own Galilean sympathies. This comes as a surprise, because (aside from the one brief remark in vv. 41–42), geographical origin has not been a conspicuous issue between Jesus and the Jewish authorities. Yet the Pharisees’ pronouncement enables certain details in the narrative to fall into place. Before he came to the festival, we were told, “Jesus was walking in Galilee, for he chose not to walk in Judea because the Jews there were seeking to kill him” (v. 1), and when he finally “went up” to the festival (v. 10), he naturally came from Galilee. At the festival, he was at first mistaken for someone “uninstructed,” who would not normally have been expected to “know letters” (v. 15). Later, those who were thought (in part mistakenly) to have “believed in him” (v. 48) were denounced as “this crowd that does not know the law,” and therefore as “accursed” (v. 49). Such details point to certain strongly held stereotypes about Galilee and Galileans among the Pharisees and the ruling authorities in Jerusalem.*
Here it merely becomes explicit. “Search and see,” they tell Nicodemus, “that a prophet is not arising out of Galilee.” “Search and see” is just what Jesus said they customarily did in relation to Scripture.* In this instance they send Nicodemus to Scripture to find out not so much what it says as what (they think) it does not say. Their contention that “a prophet is not arising out of Galilee” is puzzling. If they mean that no prophet has ever arisen out of Galilee, they are mistaken, for Scripture teaches no such thing (see 2 Kgs 14:25, where Nicodemus would have “seen” that Jonah was from Gath Hepher, and known that Gath Hepher was in Galilee).* If they are saying that a prophet is not arising out of Galilee now, in the person of Jesus, it is hard to see how searching the Scriptures would shed explicit light on that question. Therefore it was conjectured that what they were actually saying was, “The Prophet* does not arise out of Galilee,”* a conjecture that became an actual variant reading when the Bodmer Papyrus (P66) was discovered, and published in 1956.* If this reading is original (or if “prophet” without the article is interpreted as nevertheless referring to “the Prophet”), then the Pharisees are probably just repeating the argument of verses 41–42 (based on Mic 5:2) that “the Christ” would not come from Galilee. Because there was no particular discussion in Judaism as to where “the Prophet” like Moses (see Deut 18:15–18) would come from, their assumption would have to be that “the Christ” and “the Prophet” could be regarded as more or less interchangeable figures in messianic expectation. This is plausible in light of the fact that when some Galileans decided a chapter earlier that Jesus was “truly the Prophet who is coming into the world,” their first thought was to “seize him to make him king” (6:14–15).* Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus as “the Christ” and Jesus as “King” appear to be closely related notions (see especially 1:41, 45, 49; also 12:13, 15; 18:33; 19:3, 14, 15, 19). Whatever Scripture they may have had in mind, the Pharisees’ response to Nicodemus seems to dismiss his question out of hand. As for Jesus, therefore, the reader does not at all anticipate that they will “hear from him first and learn what he is doing” (v. 51).
Excursus on 7:53–8:11
If 7:53–8:11 is read as an authentic part of John’s Gospel, the larger unit (7:37–8:29), introduced by the phrase, “Now on the last day, the great day of the festival” (7:37), turns out not to be a unit at all. Rather, the unit introduced there ends with the notice, “And they went off, each to his house, while Jesus went off to the Mount of Olives” (7:53–8:1). The “last day, the great day of the festival,” is over, and with it the festival itself; a new day begins with the words, “In the morning he again showed up at the temple, and all the people were coming to him, and he sat and began teaching them” (v. 2). Still, the reference to “teaching” (as in 7:14 and 28) and the adverb “again” (as in 8:12) signal a certain continuity with the preceding.
7:53–8:2 “They” who “went off, each to his house” (7:53) are evidently “the chief priests and Pharisees” (including Nicodemus), and perhaps their officers who had just returned from their unsuccessful attempt to arrest Jesus (see 7:45–52). In a curious way (and probably coincidentally) their exit for the night in different directions seems to anticipate the notice near the end of the story of the woman caught in adultery, that “those who had heard went out one by one, beginning with the elders” (8:9). Jesus’ antagonists scatter (v. 53), only to come together again (8:3) and again scatter, so that Jesus “was left alone, and the woman still in front of him” (v. 9). The awkwardness will come in 8:12, when Jesus “again … spoke to them,” as if they had never left.
Whatever one may think of the appropriateness of the story of the woman caught in adultery at this point in John’s Gospel, its opening verses make it difficult to view the story as anything but a part of some Gospel somewhere—whether John or Luke or an apocryphal Gospel. Efforts to understand it as a unit complete in itself or as a free-floating piece of tradition are unconvincing because of this clear link to a preceding narrative of some kind. If the disputed passage were 8:3–11, such a theory would make sense, for those verses could conceivably stand alone. But 7:53–8:11 do not stand alone, and it is not hard to understand why most scribes felt compelled to place them somewhere within the text, whether here, or after 7:36 or 7:44, or after Luke 21:38.* The pattern of days teaching in the temple and nights spent on the Mount of Olives is thoroughly in keeping with passion week, according to Luke (see 19:47; 21:37–38; 22:39). Yet despite striking similarities in vocabulary between these verses and Luke 21:37–38, the link is tenuous because placing these verses after Luke 21:38 would be highly redundant.* Possibly they come from a lost passion account resembling Luke in certain respects, yet clearly the scribes who placed the passage here in John’s Gospel did so for a reason. Even though the phrase “all the people”*—instead of “the crowd,” or “the crowds”—is far more familiar to Luke’s readers than to John’s (see Lk 1:10; 2:10, 31; 3:21; 6:17; 7:29; 8:47; 9:13; 18:43; 19:48; 20:6, 45; 21:38; 24:19), what is important to John’s readers is that the next day Jesus “began teaching,” just as he had done at the Tent festival (see 7:14), and that the incident in question happens as part of his teaching ministry.
About this Study Bible
