The Light Exposes the Accusation

Every man went to his own house (7:53); Jesus goes out to the hillside. This is the only time the Mount of Olives is named in the Book of John, which elsewhere speaks only of a garden over the brook Cedron (18:1). Luke 21:37 describes the same nightly habit in almost the same words.

“Early in the morning” is orthros, dawn, a word Luke uses (Luke 24:1) but John does not elsewhere. “All the people” is laos, where the Book of John usually says ochlos, crowd. Details like these are part of why scholars think the passage came from another hand.

This is the only place in the Book of John where scribes appear, the professional interpreters of the law who are so common in the other Gospels. They bring the woman into the circle of listeners where the teacher sits, interrupting a lesson already under way.

“Master” translates didaskale, teacher. “In the very act” is a legal phrase for being caught in the deed itself. The law demanded two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 17:6), and for adultery that meant witnesses to the act, a standard hard to meet by chance.

Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22 require the death of both partners but name no method; stoning is specified in Deuteronomy 22:23–24 for a betrothed woman. Some commentators infer from this that she was betrothed rather than married. The Greek “thou” is emphatic: Moses said this; what do you say?

The trap had two jaws. Approving a stoning would clash with Rome, which had kept the power of execution to itself (18:31); refusing would set him against Moses. This is the only time the Gospels show Jesus writing. The words “as though he heard them not” are missing from most manuscripts that contain the passage.

“Continued asking” means they kept pressing him. “Without sin” is anamartetos, a word found only here in the New Testament. The sentence does not abolish the law’s penalty; it asks who among the prosecutors is fit to begin carrying it out.

The second writing mirrors the first, and he again leaves them to their own thoughts. A few later manuscripts add that he wrote “the sins of each one of them”, which is a scribe’s guess finding its way into the text.

The words “being convicted by their own conscience” are lacking in many manuscripts of the passage; the King James follows the later ones. The woman is still standing where she was put, “in the midst”. Augustine summed up the scene in four Latin words: relicti sunt duo, misera et misericordia, two were left, wretchedness and mercy.

“Condemned” is katakrino, a verb found in the Book of John only in these two verses. His question makes her say what has happened: the case has collapsed because no accuser remains to press it.

“Lord” may be no more than “Sir”. By the test of verse 7, the only one left who could have thrown the first stone is the one who does not. “Sin no more” is the same wording Jesus used to the man healed at the pool (5:14).

At Tabernacles great golden lampstands were lit in the Court of the Women, and the Mishnah (Sukkah 5:3) says there was no courtyard in Jerusalem that did not reflect their light. Verse 20 sets this saying in the treasury, which stood in that court. This is the second “I am” with an image attached.

They turn Jesus’ own principle against him. In 5:31 he said, “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.” “Record” here is the same Greek word as “witness” there, martyria, which the King James varies.

The apparent contradiction with 5:31 is resolved by the ground he gives: there he stated the legal rule, here he claims a knowledge they lack. The verbs are pointed: whence I came, and whither I go; they know neither the start nor the end of the journey.

“After the flesh” means by outward, human standards, the complaint of 7:24, “according to the appearance”. “I judge no man” fits 3:17 and 12:47, “I came not to judge the world”, though verse 16 immediately shows he can.

“I am not alone” returns in verse 29 and again on the night of the arrest: “ye shall... leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (16:32). A judge who sits with the Father is not a single witness.

Deuteronomy 19:15 requires two or three witnesses. Jesus says “your law”, as in 10:34, speaking from outside their use of it. The law speaks of two men; he offers himself and the Father, which turns an argument about human testimony into one from the lesser to the greater.

“I am one that bear witness” in Greek begins with ego eimi, “I am”, the phrase that runs through this chapter to its last verses. The two witnesses are both on his side of the case, which is precisely what his hearers cannot accept.

They ask “where”, not “who”. Some readers hear in it an insinuation about his birth, which comes out openly in verse 41. Jesus answers the question as if it were about knowing, not locating.

The treasury held thirteen trumpet-shaped chests for offerings (Mishnah Shekalim 6:5), where Mark 12:41 sets the widow’s two mites. The council chamber was close by, so he is teaching within earshot of those who want him arrested. The closing words repeat 7:30.

“Your sins” is singular in the Greek of this verse, “your sin”, as though there were one sin in view; in verse 24 it becomes plural. “I go my way” is hupago, the verb he uses of going to the Father throughout the farewell discourse.

At the last feast they guessed he meant to go to the Greeks (7:35); now they wonder whether he will kill himself. Josephus wrote that the souls of suicides go to the darkest part of the underworld (Jewish War 3.375), so the jest implies a place no righteous man would follow.

“From beneath” and “from above” are literally “from the things below” and “from the things above”. John the Baptist had made the same contrast: “He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly” (3:31).

The King James supplies “he”; the Greek says “if ye believe not that I am”, with nothing after it. The sentence has no complement, and that is exactly why the next verse asks, “Who art thou?”

Jesus’ reply is one of the hardest phrases in the book to translate. It can mean “what I told you from the beginning” (as here), “essentially what I am telling you”, or, as some Greek fathers read it, “why do I speak to you at all?”

He could say much in judgment, but his task is to pass on what he heard. “He that sent me is true” uses the adjective of 3:33, where anyone who receives his testimony “hath set to his seal that God is true”.

The aside is brief and pointed. Jesus has spoken of “him that sent me” since 4:34, and in this chapter has named the Father outright in verses 16, 18 and 19. The hearers still do not connect the phrase with God.

“Lifted up” is hupsoo, both to raise on a cross and to exalt, as in 3:14 and 12:32–33, where the book explains that it signified “what death he should die”. Here the hearers themselves will be the ones who lift him up.

“Those things that please him” is the phrase of 1 John 3:22, “do those things that are pleasing in his sight”. The verb “hath not left” is past: at no point has the Father left him alone, which answers verse 16 in the form of a history.

“As he spake” is literally “while he was speaking”: the response comes in the middle of hard sayings about dying in sin. The fuller formula “believed on him” is used here, which the next verse changes.

The Greek here is “believed him”, the simpler dative, not the “believed on him” of verse 30, and it is a perfect participle. Some see a deliberate step down. “Continue” is meno, abide, and “indeed” is alethos, truly.

In the Book of John truth is finally a person: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (14:6). The verb for making free, eleutheroo, appears in the book only here and in verse 36, framing the argument about slavery that runs between them.

Israel had been slaves in Egypt, captives in Babylon, and was ruled by Rome as they spoke. They may mean an inner freedom no conquest could touch; the Mishnah says “all Israel are the children of kings” (Shabbat 14:4). Either way, the Passover they had just kept celebrated a release from bondage.

“Servant” is doulos, slave. “Committeth” is poieo, to do or practise. A few old witnesses lack “of sin”, so that the sentence says simply that whoever sins is a slave, and the next verse follows directly from that.

A slave could be sold or sent away; a son stays. Sarah’s demand in Genesis 21:10, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son”, is the classic case, and Paul used it in Galatians 4:30. With Abraham in the conversation, Ishmael and Isaac are likely in view, though the verse names neither.

“Indeed” here is ontos, really, a different Greek word from the “indeed” of verse 31. In a household the son and heir had the standing to free a slave; the freedom depends on who grants it.

“Hath no place” is chorei, to make room or to contain, the verb used of the stone waterpots at Cana “containing two or three firkins” (2:6). His word finds no room in them, as a jar already full takes no more.

The oldest manuscripts lack both “my” and “your”, so the second half can be read as a command: “do ye therefore what ye have heard from the Father.” Later scribes added the possessives, which set up the contrast of fathers that verse 44 makes explicit.

They go back to verse 33. The grammar of Jesus’ reply is mixed in the manuscripts, and some read an imperative: “If ye are Abraham’s children, do the works of Abraham.” Either way, sonship is to be read from conduct.

This is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus calls himself “a man”, anthropos. “This did not Abraham” most likely recalls Abraham running to welcome the three strangers at Mamre (Genesis 18), receiving God’s messengers, though the verse does not name the occasion.

“We” is emphatic, and some read “we were not born of fornication” as a sneer, “as you were”. Later polemic, preserved in Origen’s Against Celsus, did slander Jesus’ birth. The prophets also used whoredom for idolatry (Hosea 2:4), so it may be a claim of pure worship.

“Proceeded forth” is exelthon, came out, and “came” is heko, I have arrived and am here. The logic is spelled out in 1 John 5:1: “every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.”

“Speech” is lalia, his manner of speaking, and “word” is logos, what he says. They cannot follow his speech because they cannot bear the message. “Cannot hear” recalls the disciples in 6:60, “who can hear it?”

“Murderer” is anthropoktonos, man-slayer, a word used only here and in 1 John 3:15. The Wisdom of Solomon 2:24 says “through envy of the devil came death into the world”, and the first lie, “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4), led to death. “Of his own” means out of his native resources.

The Greek “I” is emphatic, set against the liar of verse 44. The word is “because”, not “although”: truth itself is what they refuse, and the conjunction makes the refusal a reaction rather than a misunderstanding.

“Convinceth” is 1611 English for proves guilty or convicts. The verb is elencho, which Jesus uses of the Spirit in 16:8: “he will reprove the world of sin.” He invites the charge and none is brought.

The verse is set out like a syllogism: whoever is of God hears; you do not hear; therefore you are not of God. “Words” is rhemata, the specific sayings, the noun Peter used for “the words of eternal life” (6:68).

“Say we not well” implies they had been saying it for some time. Calling him a Samaritan may reflect his stay in Sychar (4:40) or his challenge to their claim on Abraham, as Samaritans challenged Judaea’s claims to Jacob. Samaria was also associated with sorcery, as with Simon in Acts 8:9.

He denies having a devil and says nothing at all about being a Samaritan. After chapter 4, the Book of John shows no interest in rebutting that part of the insult.

They are seeking to kill him (verses 37 and 40); another is seeking his glory. The verb is the same, zeteo. The one who seeks is also the one who judges, which leaves the verdict between Jesus and his opponents to the Father.

“See death” is a Hebrew idiom, as in Psalm 89:48, “What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death?” “Keep” is tereo, to guard or hold fast. It is the second “Verily, verily” of the chapter, after verse 34.

They change his words: he said “see death”, and they repeat it as “taste of death”, an idiom Mark 9:1 also uses. The rephrasing makes the claim sound more bodily and so more absurd, since Abraham and the prophets plainly died.

“Whom makest thou thyself?” is the charge that runs through the book to the trial: “making himself equal with God” (5:18), “makest thyself God” (10:33), and before Pilate, “he made himself the Son of God” (19:7).

“Honour” here is doxazo, to glorify, the verb of 17:1 and 17:5, “glorify thou me with thine own self”. Some manuscripts give the last clause in direct speech, “of whom ye say, He is our God.”

“Liar” is pseustes, the noun used of the devil in verse 44, “he is a liar”. To deny knowledge of the Father would put Jesus in that company. “Keep his saying” is exactly what he asked of them in verse 51.

“Rejoiced” is the strong word for exulting, followed by the plainer “was glad”. Jewish tradition held that Abraham was shown the ages to come; Genesis Rabbah 44 says God revealed to him this world and the world to come. The verse itself does not say when he saw.

Fifty was the age at which Levites left their service (Numbers 4:3; 8:25), a round figure for a man not yet old. Irenaeus took the verse to mean that Jesus was over forty. Some early manuscripts read the question the other way round: “hath Abraham seen thee?”

Psalm 90:2 sets the same contrast: “Before the mountains were brought forth... from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” In the Greek of Isaiah 43:13 God says “from the beginning I am”. This is the chapter’s third “Verily, verily”, and its last.

Blasphemy was punished by stoning (Leviticus 24:16). The temple was still being built (2:20), and loose building stones were at hand. The closing words, “going through the midst of them, and so passed by”, are absent from the oldest manuscripts and seem to come from Luke 4:30.