After this, Jesus traveled around Galilee. He did not want to move about in Judea, because the Jews there were looking for a chance to kill him. 2 Now the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near.[1] 3 So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, so your followers there can see the works you are doing. 4 No one who wants to be known publicly does things in secret. If you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” 5 Even his own brothers did not believe in him.
6 Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready. 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil. 8 You go up to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” 9 After saying this, he stayed in Galilee.
10 But after his brothers had gone up to the festival, he also went — not openly, but in secret. 11 The Jews were looking for him at the festival and asking, “Where is he?” 12 And there was a lot of grumbling about him in the crowds. Some were saying, “He is a good man.” Others were saying, “No — he is leading the crowd astray.” 13 Yet no one spoke openly about him, for fear of the Jews.
14 About halfway through the festival, Jesus went up into the temple and began to teach. 15 The Jews were astonished. “How does this man know the Scriptures,” they said, “when he has never studied?”
16 Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17 If anyone wants to do God’s will, they will know whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. 18 The one who speaks on his own seeks his own glory. But the one who seeks the glory of the one who sent him — that person is true, and there is nothing false in him. 19 Didn’t Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”
20 The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is trying to kill you?”
21 Jesus replied, “I did one work, and you are all astonished. 22 Moses gave you circumcision — not that it came from Moses, but from the patriarchs — and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. 23 If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken, why are you angry with me because I made a man’s whole body well on the Sabbath?[2] 24 Do not judge by appearances. Judge with right judgment.”
25 Some of the people of Jerusalem began to say, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? 26 And look — he speaks openly, and they say nothing to him. Could it be that the rulers really know this is the Anointed One? 27 But we know where this man comes from. When the Anointed One comes, no one will know where he is from.”
28 Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple, cried out, “You know me, and you know where I am from. I have not come on my own. But the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. 29 I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”
30 At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. 31 Yet many in the crowd believed in him. They said, “When the Anointed One comes, will he do more signs than this man has done?”
32 The Pharisees heard the crowd grumbling these things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him.
33 Jesus said, “I am with you only a little while longer. Then I am going to the one who sent me. 34 You will look for me and you will not find me. And where I am, you cannot come.”
35 The Jews said to one another, “Where does he intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? 36 What does he mean by saying, ‘You will look for me and you will not find me, and where I am, you cannot come’?”
37 On the last day, the great day of the festival, Jesus stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let them come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me — as the Scripture has said — rivers of living water will flow from within them.”[3] 39 He said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were about to receive. The Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.
40 When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, “This truly is the Prophet.” 41 Others said, “This is the Anointed One.” But some said, “Surely the Anointed One does not come from Galilee, does he? 42 Doesn’t the Scripture say that the Anointed One comes from the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”[4] 43 So the crowd was divided because of him. 44 Some of them wanted to seize him, but no one laid hands on him.
45 The temple guards went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”
46 The guards answered, “No one has ever spoken like this man.”
47 The Pharisees replied, “Have you been led astray too? 48 Has any of the rulers believed in him, or any of the Pharisees? 49 But this crowd that does not know the law — they are cursed.”[5]
50 Nicodemus, the one who had come to Jesus earlier and was one of their own number, said to them, 51 “Does our law judge a man without first hearing from him and finding out what he is doing?”
52 They answered him, “You are not from Galilee too, are you? Search and see: no prophet arises out of Galilee.”
• • •
The Woman Caught in Adultery (7:53–8:11)
The earliest and most reliable manuscripts do not include this story, and the ones that do sometimes place it elsewhere. It is very old and long-loved, and is printed here in its traditional place.
53 And each one went to his own house. 1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to him. He sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery. They stand her in the middle 4 and say to him, testing him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so they might have grounds to accuse him. But Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground, paying no attention. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin throw the first stone at her.” 8 And again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard this, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, convicted by their conscience. Jesus was left alone, with the woman still standing there in the middle. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, Lord.” Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
Notes
Note 1. During this week-long autumn festival, priests drew water from the Pool of Siloam each morning and poured it out at the altar, and the temple courts were lit with great lamps at night. ↩
Note 2. Jewish law held that circumcision, commanded on a boy’s eighth day, must be carried out even when that day fell on the Sabbath — one command overriding the other. ↩
Note 3. No single passage in the Hebrew Scriptures reads exactly like this quotation, and interpreters have proposed several sources — among them Ezekiel’s vision of water flowing from the temple (Ezekiel 47) and Zechariah’s “living waters” going out from Jerusalem (Zechariah 14), a text tied to Tabernacles. The Gospel itself adds that Jesus was speaking of the Spirit that believers would later receive. ↩
Note 4. The crowd’s objection rests on Micah 5:2, which located the coming ruler’s origin in Bethlehem, David’s town. ↩
Note 5. The contempt here reflects a real social divide. Learned teachers used the phrase “people of the land” (am ha’aretz) for ordinary Jews thought to be ignorant of the law and careless about its finer points; the word rendered “cursed” marks them as beneath the notice of the educated. ↩