John 7 - NIV Woman's Study Bible

7:2 The Festival of Tabernacles (or Festival of Ingathering) lasted seven days (see chart, The Festivals of Israel). The celebrations included the ingathering of crops. Participants made booths or “tabernacles” of tree branches. These booths represented shelter and protection. The Israelites lived in these booths throughout the festival period in order to remember their fathers who, when they left Egypt and journeyed in the wilderness, had lived in similar structures.

7:34 Jesus spoke to nominal disciples, those who were not willing to invest their lives in a personal commitment to him. Jesus referred to his death, telling them that he would go to the Father and they would not be able to find him. These Jews had put their trust in belonging to the family of Abraham. They had not put their trust in God’s plan of salvation through Jesus. Jesus told them, in effect, that when they did come to an understanding of God and the Good News and wanted to place their faith in him, it would then be too late.

7:35 God had given the Jews the land of Canaan, the promised land, for an inheritance. The dispersion or Diaspora, which took place over several centuries, was responsible for forcing the Jews out of the Holy Land. This scattering of the Jews throughout the world was due to the Assyrians’ capture of Israel (722 BC), the capture of Judah by the Babylonians (586 BC) and other wars fought in the Holy Land by the Romans and Greeks. Some simply came upon hard times and emigrated to other places to find work and resources. In Jesus’ time, as many Jews lived outside of the Holy Land as lived in the Land.

7:38 The particular quotation from Scripture used by Jesus has never been identified with certainty. He probably had in mind Ps 78:15–16 and Zec 14:8 (see also Eze 47:1–11; Rev 22:1–2). The original language for “from within” is the word “belly,” which was believed to be the seat of the emotions, the innermost being of a person. In essence, Jesus said that the person would have a continual, life-giving source of satisfaction within.