Jesus had spoken very earnestly about the responsibility of exercising special care that those whom he calls his “little ones” shall not be caused to stumble. Then he broke off to enlarge on the dangers of inadequate self-examination and self-discipline. Now he returned to his original theme. It is a measure of the importance he attached to it. Apparently he had specially in mind the big responsibility which the apostles would bear as leaders of his Ecclesia after his ascension.

So he warned them: “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones.” “Little ones” and shepherding of the flock (v.12,13) come together in Zech.13 :7. “For (he went on) I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.”

The care of angels

The Bible doctrine of angels is considerable in its scope and complex in its detail—much too big a topic for elaboration here. One thing at least is clear—a good deal more clear than modern thinking on the subject would normally allow— that one of the functions of the angels of God is the providential care of His chosen the control and guidance of their lives. Whether it be good or what men with their limited horizons deem to be “evil,” all these things are committed by Almighty God to his angels.”Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Heb.l :14). It is a doctrine which can greatly help limited human understanding to a higher faith in God’s providence. Lk.15 :7,10 has the same truth and the same emphasis.

Nevertheless, these words of Jesus are not without their difficulty. For how can angels (the highest angels for the humblest folk! Lk.1 :19) “always behold the face of the Father in heaven” and simultaneously “encamp round about them that fear him”? The seeming contradiction arises through failure to recognize that both expressions are figures of speech The one describes direct contact with the Lord in heaven, the other direct contact (though unperceived) with the “little one” who belongs to the heavenly family.

There is also this fact to take into consideration that whereas God’s people on earth are necessarily creatures of a three-dimensional world, angels are outside this framework, and therefore superior to (lie limitations which are part of it.

It is perhaps not amiss here to issue a warning, in passing, against allowing the modern scientific world to impose too much of its mode of thinking. Science insists always on cause and effect and on the rigid authority of “laws of Nature.” The Bible never mentions any of these, but instead always refers all happenings, big or small, normal or abnormal to the will and act of God. Laws of nature are simply the smokescreen which the scientist interposes between God and His world. By this means he seek to put God out of sight, and if possible out of action. The Bible in many places, and Jesus in this place in particular, insists that in the life of the lowliest disciple all is under God’s control through the agency of His angels. And, strangely enough, it is the lowliest disciple who is usually most aware of this truth. This, as much as anything, is what makes the “little one” precious in the Lord’s sight.

A lost sheep

Therefore there is special responsibility to do all in one’s power to save any disciple from going astray. So Jesus told his lovely parable of the lost sheep. Here he introduced it differently from the other occasion when he told the same story (Lk.15 :4). The Greek phrase seems to imply a shepherd’s responsibility falling almost unexpectedly on a man: “If a hundred sheep come (or, happen) to a man, and one of them is led astray. . .” In neither detail is this normally true to life. But the words are apt enough with reference to ecclesial responsibility and how sheep are lost from its care. This tender parable is lifted almost bodily out of the teaching of austere Ezekiel (34 :6,11,12,16). The good shepherd goes to the mountain, taking endless trouble and wearying himself, because he deems the search worthwhile. In the first century “the mountain” of the temple held the greatest danger to the flock, for the pull back to Judaism was considerable. Today it is in the city (or in the ecclesia!) where most sheep are lost.

The eager search of the shepherd, neglecting (at least, for the time being) those who are safe, is the Lord’s strong imperative that whenever any are caused to stumble or to lose faith in the Truth of Christ or are lured by illicit desires, nothing should have higher priority in the ecclesia’s concern than the finding and recovery of the lost sheep.

There are few ecclesias which do not have experiences of this kind. Unhappily success rarely follows. The Lord’s “if so be” plainly recognizes this fact beforehand. But no situation should ever be accepted as one of final irremediable failure. Even where there is failure, contact should be maintained, or at least details carefully preserved of how contact may be renewed. From time to time every ecclesia should mount an Operation Lost Sheep. If this were done systematically by every ecclesia in the world, the results would far surpass the mightiest preaching efforts ever planned. “It is not a thing wished before your Father (by the angels; v.10) that one of these little ones should perish.” What an understatement of the eagerness of the heavenly host to see the lost ones of the Lord restored to his fold! And it needs to be remembered that “the ninety-and-nine which were not led astray” are silly sheep just like the hundredth. There is little room for self-congratulation.

“We be brethren”

Jesus next moved on to the problem of reconciliation of brethren between whom fellowship has broken down.The Lord’s idealism was not so finely drawn that he lacked the realism to recognize the inevitability of discord among his disciples. He knew what was in man! And throughout his ministry had not the twelve time and again given him reminders enough?

The ideal reaction to any personal offence is a steady determination not to be offended. If the one whose susceptibilities would normally be injured by some thoughtless or offensive action is not susceptible, then no breach of fellowship ensues. If, in spite of sustained provocation, this policy is patiently persisted in, then in due course the offender ceases to offend. He is gained as a brother in the true sense of the term.

This hard road to the healing of bad personal relationships is by far the best, when it can be made to work. But there are those not to be won even by such gracious methods. Those who can pocket pride and put up with continued provocation, the while maintaining a tolerant unresentful attitude are a very rare breed.

So when one’s spirit is tried to the point where offences are not to be shrugged off, even with the help of prayer and self-discipline, then a resolving of the strained situation must be sought through personal encounter of the right, not the wrong, sort, for a continuing enmity is a dead loss to both parties.

Jesus couched his instruction in plain unambiguous terms: “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone” (cp.Pr.25:9). There can be little doubt that the two words “against thee,” omitted by some of the modern versions really belong to this place. Quite apart from the preponderant textual evidence, the parallel passage in Luke 17 :3 is unambiguous and emphatic on this. The context in Matthew (see v.21) points to the same conclusion.

The spirit in which this reproof of the offending brother is to be undertaken is clearly seen from the words: “If he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.” Breach of harmony means that a brother has been lost, no matter how technically correct the fellowship position between the two may be. The whole purpose, then, of any attempt to “talk it out”, must be reconciliation, and not “getting it off my chest” or “giving him a piece of my mind.”

In the precept of Moses on which this wisdom of Christ is built, there is a slightly different but comparable emphasis: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbour, and not bear sin because of him. Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Lev.19 :17,18). Here is the important reminder that when two brethren in Christ are at odds, there is sin in the heart of at least one of them, a sin not to be resentfully cherished but to be expurgated by reconciliation. The motive of “gaining thy brother” must be paramount.

Thus the words: “Go tell him his fault”, carry no hint of an angry tit for tat. Rather they suggest a persuasive attempt to present facts in a different light—to convict the offender of his fault.

“If he hear thee’—in the sense of ‘give heed—’thou hast gained thy brother.” This means more than mere reconciliation, highly desirable though that is in itself. A brother offending or a brother smouldering with resentment is in a false position before God. For this higher reason there must be reconciliation.

But “a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and contentions are like the bars of a castle” (Pr.18 :19). So it may well turn out that, with the best will in the world, there is no progress towards mutual understanding.

Then, “if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” The mere presence of others may serve to import a better spirit into the discussion. The insertion of a few questions as to the facts of the case may do much to elucidate a tangled .situation.

Again, the principle of having “two or three witnesses” was that of the Law of Moses. But, so far as one can discover, no one has yet come up with an explanation of why two or three. If two witnesses are sufficient why should it be necessary ever to specify three? Is it possible that three witnesses were to be insisted on when one of them happened to be a relation of the protagonist or had some close personal involvement in the problem?

If it should prove that even with witnesses present there is no progress towards agreement, the next step is an appeal to the ecclesia, that through its elders the community may offer a balanced opinion not lightly to be set aside. The individual who will stubbornly assert the correctness of his own judgement against that of the ecclesia is a rarity. Indeed it is difficult to envisage such situations arising at all in the early church, when ecclesial leaders were guided by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. Today, even though the counsel of a completed New Testament is available, it is conceivable that ecclesial misjudgements may happen and under present ecclesial organization there is then no further court of appeal.

What has just been written envisages a distinctly unusual situation. More likely is the other which Jesus went on to legislate for: “lf he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee .as a heathen man and a publican.” Even when not convinced that the ecclesia’s pronouncement, is the best possible, the individual who refuses to.’ accept it demonstrates very plainly that he is too wilful to accept the Lord’s authority either—for in this discourse Jesus plainly makes the ecclesia’s judgement final. Even when not content with the attitude adopted by the ecclesia, a man should have the meekness to accept it, willing to persuade himself that his own judgement may be untrustworthy.

To be treated as a Gentile or a publican means neither religious nor social fellowship But it also means, as Burgon has well put it, that such a brother is “one for whose repentance and conversion the church toils night and day.”’ It is surely significant that Jesus said: “Let him be unto thee (not, the ecclesia) as a heathen man and a publican.” This describes the attitude of the one originally offended. The words could mean that there is no official exclusion from the fellowship of the ecclesia, but that the individual offended is left to implement his own personal attitude to the offender. However, Paul’s practical insistence on ecclesial discipline (2 Th.3:6,14) suggest that he gave these words of the Lord a wider reference.

Ecclesial authority.

A further conclusion from this prescribed appeal to the ecclesia is worth noting. By saying: “Let the ecclesia decide,” Jesus was in effect forbidding recourse to any of the world’s courts of law. Evidently this was how Paul understood his words, for in his familiar ruling to the ecclesia at Corinth he wrote with censure and scorn of brethren who invoked the processes of Gentile law (1 Cor.6 :l-6) to settle differences between one another.

Jesus rounded off his very practical precept regarding this unhappy problem with a blunt reminder that the ecclesia’s assessment hostile ratification of heaven: “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” In those days synagogue decisions required, and usually got, ratification from the Sanhedrin. Behind apostolic judgements stood a higher court than that in Jerusalem.

It is not difficult to see how true these words of Jesus must be regarding decisions and actions of the apostles, for they were men consciously guided by the Lord’s special authority. But to assume that the same stands true in this twentieth century is not at all easy. Yet it is even conceivable that an imperfect ecclesial judgement may be used by God as a test of the Christ-like spirit of those involved.

Nor is it easy to believe that the Lord’s next words have a completely literal application today: “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven” [cp.Dan.2:18; Acts 1:14).

The context clearly restricts this to requests helping forward the well-being of the ecclesia. But the Father only gives “good things” to His children (Mt.7:11). Therefore the things asked for must be good (contrast Jas.4 :3). And with the best will in the world this is not always the case (cp. 2 Cor. 12:7-9).

James and John agreed enthusiastically enough regarding that which they asked of Jesus (Mk.10 :35), but this was not done for them, nor will be, as Scripture plainly proves (Rev.3 :21), Even so there is a positive teaching in this Scripture which no good ecclesia will ignore today—the importance and efficacy of united prayer regarding specific needs or problems.

“Two or three gathered together”

The saying with which the Lord rounded off this part of his discourse is one of the best-known and most misapplied: “For where two or three ore gathered together in my name, there am I in tke midst of them.” In the present context—a long discussion on how best to save a lost brother and how to bring reconciliation in place of discord—reference to the Breaking of Bread Service (which is the meaning most commonly assigned) is hardly possible, especially since the institution of that memorial rite only came some: six months later.

Instead, possible meaning are these:

1. The gathering of two or three for earnest prayer regarding the needs of the ecclesia (this could follow directly from the previous verse.)
2. The meeting of the elders of the ecclesia to decide on disciplinary action against an uncooperative brother (this goes back to verse 17).
3. The gathering together in reconciliation of those who have been estranged. This is most likely, since the Greek expression is, strictly: “gathered together into my name.” If this is accepted, then extension to the Breaking of Bread service is easy enough inasmuch as that expresses the close fellowship of brethren in Christ better than anything else.

Notes: Mt. 18:10-20

10.	For I say unto you. Lk.l5:7, 10 has the same truth and the same emphasis.
	Their angels Ps.91 :11; Lk.15 :7, 10;Acts 12 :7,23; contrast23 :8.
	Always. Literally: through everything.
11.	That which was lost. Gk. middle voice might imply ‘wanted to get lost—true of not a few lost sheep in this generation also.
15.	The little one (v.14) is now thy brother,
16.	In 2 Cor. 13 :1 Paul refers to these words of Jesus and not to Dt.19 :15. This evident from his phrases: “the second time, the third time,” precisely as in Mt. 18 :15-17.
17.	Neglect to hear them; s.w. Is.65 :12 LXX only.
	Tell it to the church. 1 Cor.5 :4,5; 6 :l-6; 1 Th.5 -.20; v.17,20 seem to imply Christ’s absence. It is possible that v.15-20 were originally part of the 40 days’ instruction?

The Feast of Tabernacles concluded, multitudes of Jews were now leaving Jerusalem. But Jesus continued his big campaign in the temple court. A number of the leaders (v.30,31) were hesitating whether they should commit themselves to a wholehearted belief in him. To these he repeated his earlier warning: “I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come.” The time was not far away when he would be with them no longer, so they must make the most of the present opportunity. “The days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it” (Lk.l7:22). Further indecision could lead to disaster: “ye shall die in your sin.” He meant one particular sin, and that not their rejection but their non-acceptance of him.

The repetition of the warning so soon after the earlier occasion (7 :34) is a measure of the intense earnestness of this appeal. It was the experience of Ezekiel, the earlier “son of man,” over again: “If thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity” (3:19), It was also a reminder of the terrible fate foretold for this faithless people by Moses: “And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them” (Lev.26:39; contrast v.40-42). Men who were making up their minds against Jesus of Nazareth were also storing up a terrible legacy for their nation.

It seems fairly clear that when Jesus added: “Whither I go, ye cannot come,” he was alluding to his sacrifice rather than his ascension. Further anticipations of the crucifixion came into his disputation with the Jews, and the same meaning is undeniable on a later occasion: “Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come, so now I say unto you . . . Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards” (Jn.13 :33,36).

The rulers recognised that some specially sombre meaning was intended, for already “Man of sorrows” was written on the countenance of Jesus. ‘Surely he doesn’t mean to kill himself they sneered, getting nearer to the truth than they realised (10:18).

Jesus reproved their malice: “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.” As a proof-text of trinitarian dogma these words are valueless, for “from above” is no more to be taken literally than is “from beneath.” Jesus was speaking of spiritual loyalties rather than origins, as his repetition of “this world” shows. Other examples (Jn.7:4,7; 12 :19,31: 15 :19; 17 :25; 18 :20) show that Jesus was repudiating this punctilious conformity to a soulless Judaistic system.

Nor is his dreadful pronouncement: “ye shall die in your sins,” to be read as rigidly determinist or predestinarian: “for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” By and by it will be possible to demonstrate that that mysterious phrase: “I am he” meant: “I am the saviour whom you need” —that is, you must come to rely on my – death, or face the fact that your own is inevitable. The very popular idea that “I am he” was an appropriation by Jesus of the Covenant Name of God, must surely be let go; for, had this been the evident intention, these hostile rulers would have pounced on it as an outrageous blasphemy which would have brought Jesus to the cross months ahead of his time.

“Believe or die”

The alternatives: “Believe, or die in your sins,” which Jesus set before them echoed his Father’s ultimatum to faithless Israel in the song of Moses: “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand” (Dt.32:39). It was an option which had been presented anew two weeks earlier at their Day of Atonement, as indeed it was on every Day of Atonement.

“Believe that I am he”!-what were they to_; make of him? So, doubtless in the hope that he would commit himself to some dangerous indictable statement, they pressed for definition: “Who art thou?” If only they could be sure that that “I am he” really was a blasphemous misuse of the Divine Name!

The reply of Jesus not only left them baffled; it has also perplexed generations of commentators ever since. For a short sentence of six words ( in Greek) the difficulties could hardly be more numerous: “Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning.”‘ Almost every word can be read in more than one way. There are also problems of grammar, punctuation and ellipsis.

So perhaps it is permissible to try a different approach. It has already been emphasized in these studies that all the Tabernacles discourses of Jesus were shot through with allusions to Law and Prophets. It is then, almost to be expected that this part of the Lord’s teaching will, on examination, show similar characteristics. This time it would appear to be Isaiah 43 which was laid; under contribution: “Shew us former things (LXX: the things from the beginning) … Let them bring forth their witnesses. Ye, and my, Servant whom I have chosen, are my: witnesses (this reading of the Hebrew text is valid, and is supported by Is. 42 :1 and Rev 1 :5): that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he. I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no saviour… I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen (the Lord’s earlier allusion to the smitten Rock and the gift of the Holy Spirit).. .I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins (an allusion to the blood on the mercy-seat, in the Day of Atonement ritual; Lev. 16 :15). Thy first father (Jacob) sinned, and thy teachers (RV: interpreters) have transgressed against me” (ls.43:9-11,19,20,25,27).

Besides these verbal connections these two Scriptures also have several ideas in common. And it will be recalled that the first few verses of Isaiah 44 had been quoted by Jesus in his appeal on the great day of the feast (Jn.7:37-39; Study 111).

If, then, it is established that this Scripture is the background against which the Lord’s present encounter with the rulers took place, it would almost require that the debated passage under consideration should read thus: “(I told you) the former things, even that which I am (now) speaking to you” -that is, himself as the Saviour whose “going away” and whose “lifting up” would achieve immeasurably more than all the feasts and sacrifices appointed through Moses.

Sent from the Father

There was much yet to be expounded concerning his redeeming work, and also regarding the serious position of those who rejected him, but he was hindered by their unwillingness to receive it. Nevertheless, their opposition notwithstanding, “He that sent me is true.” To the modern reader this last saying is wrapped in vagueness until the idiomatic meaning associated with the word “true” is recognized. In the Old Testament “mercy and truth” is a common phrase for God’s Covenants of Promise. Indeed, used separately, these key words often require such a meaning. Thus, “He that sent me is true” may be paraphrased: “In me God is fulfilling His Covenants of Promise; and (therefore) I speak to the world (the Jewish kosmos) the things which I have heard from him.” It is certainly correct to read these words as signifying the fuller declaration of Old Testament truth which was now abundantly available to them in his own teaching. But flat keyword: “heard”, implies more than this, as parallel passages clearly show: “He that cometh from heaven is above all; and what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth” (Jn.3 :31,32); “All things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you” (15 :15). These declarations indicate that Jesus had the experience of personal revelations from his Father far surpassing even the treasury of truth available to him in the Old Testament. After all, if the Law was revealed to Moses though the medium of personal communication from the angel of God’s Presence, what kind of intimate revelation must have been possible to one who was the Father’s only begotten Son?

The twentieth century believer, with the full picture of the status and work of Christ before his mind, can take such a concept in his stride; but to these rabbis, who thought of God’s revelation to Moses as a phenomenon

altogether unique in human history, the idea of a man like this Jesus having personal communion and fellowship with the Almighty was utterly unthinkable. Consequently, anything which Jesus said to them about this could not possibly be taken at its face value. “They understood not, because he spake to them of the Father.” The AV reading here is full of difficulty. They certainly knew that he was speaking of God as his Father. He had already done this in their presence several times (e.g. ch.7:16,17,28; 5:17-27). But now what defeated them was this personal communion with God which Jesus claimed as a normal experience. It was on this basis that he asserted his right to re-interpret the prophets in the way he had with reference to his own mission.

“Lifted up”

In a further attempt to “get through” to them, Jesus added: “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself.”

This “lifting up” was undoubtedly his crucifixion. Not only was that the theme of his present discourse (see v.21,24,26), but also the other occurrences of this expression (3 :14; 12 :32) clearly have this meaning. But how would his crucifixion bring conviction of the truth of his claim to be a divine Saviour? In two ways. The exact fulfilment of his own prophecies concerning himself would validate all else that he said (“I tell you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he;” 13:19). Almost certainly the crucified malefactor and Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus came to right convictions about Jesus because everything about his death was according to Old Testament prophecy and according to his own prognostications. Also, the amazing phenomena which accompanied the crucifixion — darkness, earthquake, theophany—were sufficient in themselves as proof that here was the death of no ordinary man.

A prophet like Moses

Then, if not before, would come recognition of the uniqueness of Jesus, and that “as the Father taught him he spake these things.” Acknowledgement of this truth necessarily meant assent also to his claim to be “the prophet like unto Moses,” for had not God said: “I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I will command him” (Dt.l8:18)?

The Moses allusions in this part of the Lord’s discourse are very forceful. “When ye have lifted up the Son of man” looks back (as in Jn.3 :14) to the brazen serpent set up on the pole. Then the stricken people lived only because they acknowledged: “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the lord” (Num.21 :7). And now Jesus reminded their equally faithless progeny that “if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins” (v.24).

“Then (Jesus continued) ye shall know that 1_AM (hath sent me; v.16), and I do nothing of myself…. He that sent me is with me.” This is an echo of God’s commission to Moses: “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you .. .Certainly I will be with thee… Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent me to do all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind” (Ex.3 :14,12; Num.16 :28).

God also promised Moses that he would not bear the burden alone, but that the heavy responsibility was to be shared by seventy others (Num.11 -.17,16). “The Father hath not left me alone,” Jesus said; and it was very soon after this that seventy Spirit-endowed helpers shared the burden of his final appeal to the nation (Lk.10 :1).

This was the second time that he had spoken of not being “left alone” by his Father. The words carry a hint of the strain of the lonely struggle which Jesus had to endure, every day of his ministry. Even the presence and support of his disciples went only a small way towards providing the fellowship which he yearned for as much as any other human being does.

As his hour drew near this need was to intensify: “Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (Jn.16 :32). Again the words emphasize a degree of real personal fellowship between Father and Son such as ordinary mortals cannot experience. If John had never written words such as these, it would have been necessary to pre-suppose them.

What was it about this discourse of Jesus which made such a marked impact on his hearers? “As he spake these words many believed on him.” Yet through the rest of the ministry there is little sign of the existence of a considerable body of believers committed to open discipleship. Nevertheless, the impact had been made. No doubt those multitudes who joined the community of the believers at Pentecost (Acts 2:41) and soon afterwards were really the converts of Jesus, resulting from his great appeal which began at Tabernacles.

Secret believers

There were also others among the rulers who believed (see the RV of v.31), but who did not believe into him; that is, they could no longer resist the truth of his claims, but were not prepared to give him the open allegiance he called for. The significant difference in phrasing points to under-cover conviction. A man like Nicodemus, one of the top ten of the academic and religious world in Jewry, needed an extraordinary degree of courage to make open declaration of his faith in this hated prophet of Galilee.

To this group, whom Jesus could identify, man by man, in the crowd around him, although their sympathies were unknown to their fellows, Jesus now addressed a special appeal: “If ye abide in my word, then are ye my disciples.” The form of the Greek verb shows that this was not an exhortation to steadfast loyalty (for as yet they were not committed to open discipleship), but that Jesus was asking for a decision to be made there and then. The kind of “Decision for Christ” which the modern evangelist appeals for is mostly a thing of no value at all, because it is based on over-wrought emotions instead of fundamental knowledge and understanding of the Person and Work of Christ. But these men needed no instruction in the Scriptures or in the main principles of God’s purposes. All they needed was a complete conviction that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the prophet like unto Moses, and the courage to avow that conviction openly.

Once this step was taken, they would move at a stride into yet fuller knowledge and o better world: “Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” Again it is necessary to recall that this Truth was no abstraction of the philosophers but the central theme of all God’s dealings with Israel-His Covenants of Promise centred in Jesus as Saviour and King. Here, as the context shows, the allusion was specifically to God’s Promises to Abraham. ‘Believe them as Abraham himself believed them, and this Truth will make you free men from the rigorous bondage of the Judaistic system under which you now spend every moment of your lives.

This implication, that they were men in bondage, provoked an angry retort-not, it may be inferred, from these uncommitted believers to whom the words were directly addressed, but from others with them in the crowd who hated Jesus and resented his claims: “We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man.”

Factually the first statement was true enough. But with the six hundred years of Gentile domination represented by segments of the image of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, how could they say the second? Never a day passed without bringing them unpleasant reminders that Tiberius Caesar was lord of the Holy Land. Then did they mean that as a people they had never quietly accepted the role of a subject people? Or is it just that, as one writer has tersely put it: “the power which the human mind possesses of keeping inconvenient facts out of sight is very considerable”? Doubtless these Jews had their thoughts on the stirring promise to Sarah: “Kings of people shall be of her” (Gen.l7:16); and to Abraham: “Thy seed shall ‘ possess the gate of his enemies” (22:17). But there was no present fulfilment (cp. Rom.9:6-8).

Isaac and Ishmael

Opposing their lie with his own “Verily, verily”, Jesus answered them from their own premises: “Whosoever goes on committing sin is the slave of sin. And the slave (of sin) abideth not in the house (of the Father) for ever (Gen.21 :10): the (true) Son, he abideth (in the Father’s house) for ever” (Gen.25:6; Heb.3 :5,6). Until the allusion to the expulsion of Ishmael from Abraham’s family is recognized, these words hang in mid-air.

When Isaac, the child of promise, was growing up, he had to endure the taunts of Hagar’s son. The gist of these can readily be surmised. There had been the unhappy incident of Abimelech, king of Gerar, seeking to appropriate Sarah as his wife. Then, not long after her restoration to Abraham, Isaac was born. Ishmael, encouraged by his mother to consider himself the true heir of Abraham, was able to make the most of these circumstances. Isaac’s birth a special act of God? Who could believe such a thing? He had been begotten, of course, in the harem of Gentile Abimelech!

This was the very insinuation which Jesus was having to face from his adversaries. Far from acknowledging his claim to be the Child of Promise, the promised Seed of the Woman, they threw mud at him, sneering at the abnormal circumstances of his birth. Yet in truth they, priding themselves on being Abraham’s true seed, were really the spiritual seed of Ishmael. He was no true son, but a slave, begotten of a slave. And as Ishmael, refused an inheritance, was sent away into the wilderness because of his spiteful mockery of the Beloved Son, so also, as penalty for the same sin, these proud Jews would find themselves disinherited and sent away from God’s Land and God’s House. Filled with chagrin, they would come to witness all the signs of the Father’s approval for this man whom they stubbornly rejected with the nastiest insinuations their acute brains could coin.

Abraham’s seed they were (v. 33), No one could dispute the point. But they were not Abraham’s children (v.39)-and they proved this just as conclusively by their hatred of Jesus and their plotting against him. There was no sign at all that they were prepared to receive his teaching. “I speak that which I have seen with the Father. Therefore (Jesus bade them) do ye also the things which ye heard from the Father (through me).” (See RV margin here.)

But they were not prepared to acknowledge any kind of common origin with Jesus, much less that he came to them from God. “Abraham is our Father,” they asserted once again, making thereby the vile sneer: ‘but we doubt whether he is yours.’

“Then, shew the family likeness,” Jesus retorted. “If ye are Abraham’s children, ye were doing the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me … this did not Abraham.” Was there ever such understatement? Indeed, Abraham could have killed Christ, by refusing to believe the Promises concerning him-just as, today, a man may similarly crucify the Son of God afresh by going away from the Truth he has learned concerning him (Heb. 6:6).

But the great work of Abraham, the Friend of God, was the offering of his well-beloved son as a sacrificial act or faith. And to this he had added faith in the promised Seed (Gal.3:26-29). This was “the truth” which Jesus spoke about, the Covenant of Promise which Abraham had heard from the angel and which Jesus had heard from the Father through the eloquence of Holy Scripture.

By contrast, out of disbelief and hatred these men would gladly murder the only-begotten of the Father. So their ancestry was very different. This policy proved it.

Thirty years later Paul was to follow the same line of argument against Jewish pride of birth: “They are not all Israel which are of Israel: neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom.9 :6-8). ^ It dawned on these Jews that, when Jesus said: “Ye do the works of your father,” he was concerned with higher considerations than mere physical descent. So, very cocksurely, they followed him with their self-justification: “We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” It was a clever retort, for it made a nasty insinuation against the birth of Jesus, and their phrase: “One Father” continued the sneer against him, by implying that he had two fathers: Joseph, his putative parent, and the unknown who (they fain would believe) actually begat him. By using a common Old Testament idiom for religious apostasy—fornication —they also claimed to be the heirs of an untarnished religious tradition of faithfulness (very much as the Catholic today blithely asserts that he belongs to what is and always was the true church!). Hence the emphatic phrase: “one Father.” Yet was there any known idol before which their fathers had not bowed down? Had not Hosea denounced the nation as “children of whoredoms” (2 :4) in desperate need of re-adoption as “sons of the living God” (1 :10)?

Jesus bluntly exposed the hypocrisy of their claim: “If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I came forth and am come from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.” To claim to be God’s children, and yet to hate the one who was so evidently His Son, was too obvious a contradiction. Jesus apparently duplicated his phrases for emphasis. Yet there is a distinction. “I came forth from God” sums up his entire mission. “I am come” spotlights his present appeal in Jerusalem. The second of these phrases is common in the New Testament, (nearly thirty occurrences), and with hardly an exception signifies divine action of some kind.

Oddly enough, this emphasis, which was so necessary to convince his hearers of the divine character of his work, has since been much misused by Trinitarians intent on proving his deity. Their carelessness becomes immediately evident to anyone who will read and think about the words: “neither came I of myself, but he sent me.”

The signal of stubbornness of these men regarding himself, his teaching and his miracles seems almost to have bewildered Jesus: “Wherefore do ye not understand the pronouncement about me (the Promise of a redeemer); and wherefore is it that ye are not able to hear (i.e. grasp) the Word (in the Old Testament) about me?”

Seed of the Serpent

And the only explanation of this spiritual obtuseness he could supply was markedly predestinarian: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye wish to do.” The devil referred to was the serpent in Eden. Jesus had already hinted at the idea of such a spiritual connection (in verse 41, and perhaps verse 38). Now he declared baldly that these, his enemies, were the seed of the serpent foretold in the great Promise of Redemption made in Eden. The time was to come when he would renew the accusation with great vehemence and plainness: “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Mt.23 :33).

In the present arraignment he spoke less explicitly with double meaning applicable both to the serpent and to the beginning of the serpent’s seed, Cain. “He was a manslayer from the beginning (just as Jesus was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” so also the temporary triumph of the serpent was foretold); he abode not in the truth, nor does he abide in the truth (the first and greatest lie came from the serpent), because there is no truth in him (the reference is not only to speaking truth but also The Truth-God’s Promise of a great redemptive Purpose).” In every point Cain exemplified this character of the serpent. He was a manslayer. And he lied about it. Also, instead of abiding in the truth, the forgiveness which God held out to him, he “went forth from the presence of the Lord,” preferring to vindicate himself and be his own saviour.

The allusions to Eden carry over into the ensuing argument: “sin” (v.46), “God’s words (the promise of a Saviour; v.47); “taste of death” (v.52). In every point, also, the seed of the serpent now in altercation with Jesus were to follow the same pattern. Rejecting the redemption God was providing in his Son, out of envy they were even now planning to slay Jesus (v.37,40), preferring to depend for salvation on their own futile works of righteousness.

There is a running commentary on all this in 1 John 3 : “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil (this is Genesis 3 :15). . .In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil (the seed of the woman, and the seed of the serpent): whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his Brother (Jn.8 :42: ‘If God were your Father, ye would love me’). For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous . . .Whosoever hateth his Brother (Judaistic hostility to Jesus) is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him ” (v.8,10-12,15). 1 John 2 :22 also is specially apt: “Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? . . .Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: but he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also.”

The precise force of the Lord’s next words jot the end of verse 44) depends on translation. The common version has them referring entirely to the serpent. But the alternative makes more pointed allusion to the Lord’s present antagonists: “If a man (like yourselves) speaketh a lie (in denying the truth of Christ), he speaketh of his own (i.e. he is talking the language of his own family), for his father (the serpent in Eden) also is a liar.”

“But,” Jesus went on, “because I tell you the truth(of God’s redeeming Purpose in myself), ye believe me not.” And whilst they thus did the deeds of their father, Jesus challenged them with the evidence that he did the deeds of his Father: “Which of you convicteth me of sin?” What a contrast with the dramatic incident of yesterday! Then there was not found a single one without sin to cast the first stone. Instead, convicted by their own conscience, they had sneaked away from the presence of the Light of the World. To be sure, the Lord’s challenge was not a proud assertion of his own spiritual superiority. As such it would have vitiated his own claim. The point’of it was to ram home to his adversaries that whilst their lie and their enmity proved them to be the seed of the serpent, his own character, “without blemish and without spot,” similarly proved him to be the promised Seed of the woman. And since they could say no word in denial of his claim, why did they not believe him? Why indeed!

Strangely enough, it is believers in Jesus who fail to marvel as they should at this astonishing truth. It is normal human experience that the holier a man becomes, the more convinced he is of his own sinfulness. Three passages from Paul illustrate this perfectly: “I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle” (1 Cor.l5:9). A few years later he describes himself as “less than the least of all saints” (Eph.3 :8). Near the end of his days this became: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (1 Tim. 1:15). A spiritual giant like Paul chronicles such a progression, but from Jesus there is only the unselfconscious truth: “I do always those things that please the Father.”

Jesus went on: ‘You call, yourselves God’s children (v.41). But how can you be? For if you were His children you would believe His words about me. But no! you are seed of the serpent really, and so by nature are wedded to the serpent’s lie and the serpent’s enmity.’

More sneers

The Jews, with neither fact nor argument for answer, could only fall back on vituperation and slander: “Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?” It was a useful jibe to throw at him. The Samaritans were a mixed race, an upstart people, who founded a false religion. Thus these rulers labelled Jesus as bastard and false prophet. But it is a commentary on their desperation that they also had to fall back on the smear they had used against him more than a year before-that he was possessed with a devil, and in league with Baalzebub, the chief of all the devils.

Reviled, Jesus reviled not again, but gave them the truth which they knew to be truth. Whilst they threw at him all the mud they could gather, he honoured his Father with all he said and did, and the Father honoured him: “I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh (my glory), and judgeth (them that dishonour me).” Thus he reminded his enemies of their own peril.

Death and “death”

Very solemnly he bade them seek salvation from the judgment they were storing up for themselves: “If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death.” What did he mean? Believers in the immortaliy of the soul or in eternal life without judgment make this a favourite proof-text. It is hardly an adequate answer to read it as a reference to the second death. Then is there any reason why the words should not mean what they say? The consistent teaching of Jesus and his apostles is that for the true believer death is not death but a sleep, for he has died already in his baptism into Christ (Rom.6:2-1 1). And from the Lord’s point of view, the faith of the disciple keeps him immune from any judgment of condemnation.

Here was teaching to outrage the opinions of the rulers more than ever, for these Sad-ducees (and the Samaritans also!) taught that there was no future life of any kind, except in one’s descendants (Study 165). Had not Israel heard the voice of God Himself at Sinai? And they died in the wilderness! Then what could the word of Jesus accomplish? So they jeered at him: ‘Never taste of death? Abraham and the prophets are dead and buried. And you say that through you a man will never know death? You are quite mad.’

Jesus answered them:

‘It isn’t a question of who I think I am, for my own unconfirmed witness to myself is worth nothing.’ Thus he cancelled out their move to stone him for blasphemy. However, by and by they were to grasp at another and better excuse (v.58,59).

He went on:

‘It is my Father who glorifies me, the One whom you call your God, and yet you don’t acknowledge me. Thus you prove that your self-glorifying claim to be .God’s children (v.41) is worthless; you don’t belong to Him at all. And if I were to depend on my own witness I should be no better than you, children of a lie, seed of the serpent.’

‘But I know the Father, and I keep His Word, fulfilling His great Promise about the seed of the woman.’

Abraham’s Faith

‘And another great Promise as well! For the Promise to Abraham is fulfilled in me. Abraham understood and believed it; but you don’t, therefore no matter how vociferous your claim (v.33), you are not true sons of Abraham at all, any more than m unbelieving Ishmael.’

‘But Abraham rejoiced in the Promise. Does not the Scripture say that he laughed; for joy, saying, A child shall be born to him that is a hundred years old, and Sarah that is ninety years old shall bear. And did not Abraham, himself new-named, take delight in calling his son Isaac?’ (Gen. 17:17; 21:3).

But Jesus was not referring merely to the birth of Isaac, or even to his own birth Abraham rejoiced, thus expressing his faith, in order that through his faith he might see the great day of Christ (Lk.17 :22), yet future, when his Seed will possess the gate of his enemies (Gen.22 :17). On the day of the offering of Isaac Abraham had confidently declared: “God will provide (Hebrew: will see) a Lamb-my son” (22 :8; cp Moriah, the seeing of Jehovah). Thus Abraham “m afar off (Heb. 11 :13), and was glad.”

It must have been obvious enough to these highly intelligent Bible scholars just what Jesus was getting at. They knew well enough what he meant, but they could only answer him by a deliberate misunderstanding, giving a slick twist to his words:

‘You’ve seen Abraham? Why, you are not yet fifty. Don’t talk rubbish!’

Irenaeus, a rather foolish early ‘father! not to be taken too seriously, inferred from this that when crucified Jesus was nearly fifty. But perhaps there is a hint here of how worn out and prematurely aged Jesus was. Or were they referring to priestly retirement age (Num. 4:3, 39) thus satirically insinuating; ‘Are you claiming to be Abraham’s king-priest, Melchizedek?’

Jesus did not follow them in their foolish prevarication, but brought them back bluntly to the essential truth: “Before Abraham was, I am.”

It is a simple fundamental of faith, that the entire purpose of God with this world centres in Christ and was so fore-ordained from the beginning (1 Pet.1 :20; Rev.13 :8). “He is first in relation to me,” John the Baptist had declared. “He is first in relation to me” was also Abraham’s saving faith.

Stoned for blasphemy?

It by no means follows from the use of “I am” that he was appropriating the Covenant Name of God to himself, but it may surely be inferred from the context that in fad he did so intend, for “they took up stones to cast at him.”

With deep satisfaction these men recalled the drastic action of Israel in the wilderness when face to face with what they deemed to be an exactly parallel case to their Jesus-of-Nazareth problem:

“The son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an Egyptian . . . strove in the camp and . . . blasphemed the Name” (Lev.24:10, 11). The decision then had been: “Let all the congregation stone him.” So of course they must do the same to this Jesus, son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was they knew not who, for had they not just heard him repeatedly blaspheming the Name?

But Jesus, not depending on any self-glorifying claim, knew that his Father would glorify him-and his Father did, for Jesus “was hidden” (Gk.) from them. It does not say how he was hidden. But it is not outrageous to believe that he was shrouded in the Cloud of the Shekinah Glory so that not only was he protected but also the truth of all that he had been saying was vindicated.

Thus he, and the Glory of the Lord . .. “went out of the temple, going through the midst of them” as the Glory had gone through the midst of the sacrifices (symbols of Israel) when God made His Covenant with Abraham (Gen.15 :17).

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty … He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shall thou trust . . .He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone . . . Because he hath set his love upon me therefore will I deliver him” (Ps.91 :1,11,12,14).

Notes: Jn.8:21-59

24.	That I am. Evidently this was not taken to be a claim to the Divine Name, but in v.58, yes.
25.	The reading of Is.43 :9 suggested in the text is a valid translation of the Hebrew, and it finds support in LXX and in 42: land Rev 1 :5.
26.	He that sent me is true. In expansion of the comment in the text consider:
	a.	Gen.24:27;32:10;2Sam.l5:20;Ps.89:14;Mic.7:20.
	b	lKgs.8:23;Dt.7:9;2Chr.l :8; ls.55:3; 16:5.
	c.	2 Sam.2 :6; Ps.31 :5; 40 :10,11; 132 :11; ls.38 :18,19.
28.	Even as he taught me. Gk. aorist perhaps indicates an Old Testament education, especially the Scriptures about Moses.
29.	Is with me. If Is.50 :6 is a prophecy of Jesus, then so also the two preceding verses.
31.	Abide in my word. cp. 15 :7; 1 Jn.2 :6,24,27. The phrase could mean: “in the Word about me.”
	Make you free. So also Paul: Gal.4 :l-7,22ff.
38.	The alternative to following RVmg (as in the text) is to take AV and read it as a further allusion to Isaac and Ishmael: “I speak the things which I have seen with my Father (the scripture about the offering of Isaac?-‘ In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen’), and ye do the things which ye have heard(RV) with your father (Ishmael’s mockery of Isaac)”, that word “heard” playing with the meaning of Ishmael.
39.	Abraham is our father. Pride in natural descent had been declared worthless by John the Baptist; Mt.3 :9.
41.	AllusiontoDt.23:2; contrastEx.4:22;ls.63:16;64:8.
42.	Is it possible that the entire verse is an allusion to Joseph and his brethren?
46.	The Bible’s claims concerning the sinlessness of Jesus are copious: Jn.8 :29; 4 :34; 14:30; 15 :10; Heb.3 :15;7 :26; 1 Pet.l :19; 2 :22; 3 :18,.|s.53 :9; Ps.18 20-26; 1 Jn.3 :5; 2 Cor.5 :21. There are many more.
48.	Hast a devil. In LXX this word means a false god. Then were they referring to the gods the ancient Samaritans brought with them? 2 Kgs.17 :29-33.
53.	It is possible that the allusions to Genesis are being continued through these verses, thus: ‘You know that I honour the Father, and you despise me for it (as Cain despised Abel for his godliness). I do not seek my own exaltation (any more than Abel did): but God seeks out your evil motives and judges them (as He did Cain’s). If a man hold on to the Promises about me he will not see death (for through me there is the conquest of the serpent and its power; 3 :14).’
	‘Now we know that you are possessed with a devil, you are the seed of the serpent, for you say that if a man rests on your teaching he will not taste of death (as Adam and Eve did by eating of the forbidden fruit). Yet our great father Abraham died, promises or no promises. Are you greater than he?’
51.	Those who would be over-literal with the Greek here, reading it “not taste of death forever,” should try it-in Jn.13 :8 where the Greek is the same. Death of the believer asa sleep: Mt.27:52;Jn. 11 :11; Acts 13:36; 1 Cor.15 :20,51; 1 Th.4 :14
55.	There is an effective switch here from “know” meaning ‘learn, get to know’ to ‘know intimately or without effort.’
56.	Saw it. But he only go to glimpse of it (Gk. aorist).
58.	Could read: Before Abraham is to become, I AM
	To cast at him. Cp. also Heb.12 :20. Several attempts to stone Jesus culminated in his being thrust through with a dart.
59.	Part of this verse is unwarrantably omitted by some modern versions.

After the Feast of Tabernacles there was a return to Galilee, but not with the intention of resuming the work of preaching. Instead, “he would not that any man should know it.” This because now Jesus was concentrating on the further education of the disciples. In their minds his Messiahship was no longer in question. The Transfiguration had laid to rest all doubts regarding that.

But now it was imperative that they be prepared for the shock of seeing their Lord suffer at the hands of his enemies. His first attempt (Mt.16 :21) to teach them about this had been altogether unsuccessful. Their minds were impervious to the idea. Now the effort was renewed.

The gist of this teaching was necessarily just the same: “The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he shall rise”(Mk.) Matthew has: “the third day he shall be raised again.” The two expressions mean the same. The appeal of the chief priests to Pilate shows this: “Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day. . . ” (Mt.27 :63,64).

Delivered up? Betrayed?

When Jesus spoke of being “delivered up,” did he mean: “the Son delivered by God into the hands of men, ” or did he mean: “betrayed by one of his followers”? The language can be read with either meaning. The former finds a parallel in Romans 8 :32: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all… ” But the verb is also the same as that used many times of the Lord’s betrayal by Judas. Probably Jesus intended both ideas. The imperative of Holy Scripture was strong in his mind, and not to be evaded. Probably, also, Jesus was seeking to warn Judas of the grave danger into which he was drifting. The probability is that Judas was the only one among the twelve who clearly understood the Lord’s teaching about this. Since the time of the feeding of the five thousand lie knew that his Master refused all kingship of the kind the populace clamoured for. Now, this talk of inevitable failure took all the heart out of his discipleship.

The rest of the disciples would be full ol speculations as to who amongst those around their Leader was likely to “hand him over” to his enemies. “They understood not this saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not” (Lk.). The suggestion of determinism here harmonizes ill with the sustained and serious efforts Jesus was making to enlighten them. So almost certainly the translation suggested into margin of the NEB is correct: “it was so obscure to them that they could not grasp its meaning,”

Even so, the general tone of their Lord’s warning upset them considerably (Mt.), but they were afraid to press their questions upon him-perhaps out of fear that their forebodings might be correct (in which case they would rather not know), or because they feared further rebuke for their “little faith” or their “hardness of heart.”

It is at this point that Matthew has introduced his unique account of the tribute money paidbf a coin found in a fish’s mouth. It is unlikely thati belongs here chronologically, for there is son evidence that the collection was made in Ik month before Passover. It will soon be seei, however, that there is an important link betweei these sections of the gospel story (which seem si different).

“Your teacher does pay the tribute money, doesn’t he?” Peter was asked by the collectors when they returned to Capernaum. The answer was a confident “Yes”, so presumably Peter ha known his master make this payment on some earlier occasion. This “tribute” was not a tax imposed by Roman overlords, but was a Jewish poll-tax payable each year to the temple, It was paid by every Jew in the Roman empire, and an elaborate system was in operation for the collection and transference of it to the temple treasury in Jerusalem.

The basis of this payment was the commandment in Ex.30 :11-16 that there be an individual payment of “half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary” by “every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and upward.” This “offering unto the Lord to make an atonement for your souls” was to be paid on every occasion when the people were numbered, “that there be no plague among them.” There was no need for this procedure to be followed each year, but the grasping men of the temple had managed to impose it on the nation as an annual affair.

For the purpose of this tax all Jews had the same standing before God. Whereas there were graded sin-offerings (Lev.4) according to the status of the individual, in this instance “the rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel.”

On the first occasion when this collection was taken up after Israel came out of Egypt, from the silver coins with which the payment was made the new tabernacle was equipped with the sockets in which its acacia-wood boards stood and also with the hooks from which its curtains hung (Ex.38 :27,28). Thus the tabernacle was founded and finished in Atonement.

Who pays?

It was this half-shekel of atonement about which Peter was asked. There was no compulsion about the payment, but to render it was considered a high religious duty. Peter’s utter surprise may be judged when Jesus, as on sc many occasions (Jn.2 :25), read his thoughts and spoke first to him about it – and in a fashion such as he had not expected: ‘You know well enough, Simon! Do earthly kings extort taxes from their own family or from outsiders?’ Peter, a Jew to the core, answered with feeling: ‘From strangers, of course. Look how the Romans treat us Jews!’

‘Then’, argued Jesus, ‘ought we to be paying a tax to God in heaven? Does not the acceptance of such a burden imply that whoever pays it is really a stranger from God, a foreigner, from His point of view? But you and I, Peter, we belong to God’s family. What need is there for us to pay atonement money?’ So Jesus and Peter could regard themselves as already atoned for! The merits of Golgotha were retrospective as well as prospective!

And then, whilst Peter still groped after his Master’s meaning, Jesus swung the other way. There must be no stumbling-block to hinder either rulers or people from believing in Jesus. Therefore, although a proper assessment of the situation required nothing of the kind, the payment had better be made. If word went round that Jesus or his disciples refused to pay this temple poll-tax-and with what malevolent satisfaction the Jewish leaders would help such a report on its way! – there would be such a reaction from national and religious prejudice as to make any further progress in the mission of Jesus altogether impossible. So, as a concession to the spiritual immaturity of the nation, the half-shekel was paid.

A strange fishing?

But by what a strange method! It may be taken as almost certain that the common fund of the apostolic band contained enough money to make the payment there and then, for apparently some time earlier there was enough in it to pay for the whole group eight times over (Jn.6:7).

However, instead of a simple down payment by Judas, Peter was bidden go to the lake and resume his fishing. In the mouth of the first fish caught he would find a coin adequate to pay the half-shekel for Jesus and himself. How remarkable the Lord’s knowledge was here! (Ps.8:8). He knew that something would be caught, and that very quickly: the fish would have a coin in its mouth, and the coin’s value would be exactly right to pay the tribute money for two.

This strange, almost bizarre, miracle stands in a class to itself – in more ways than one. The commentators, puzzled by what they deem to be freakish and grotesque, have got to work to coin explanations even more freakish and grotesque.

One of them recounts instances of valuable items of property turning up inside fish which have been caught. Another tells a legend about Solomon’s signet ring in the mouth of a fish. Yet another tracks down information about a certain species of fish living in the waters of Galilee, which carries its young in its mouth and sometimes in lieu of this has been known to hold a small pebble. Says another: It looks as though some detail essential for our understanding of the incident has been left out of the narrative. One sceptic asserts: “It didn’t really happen. It was just a joke on the part of Jesus,” and he is supported in this by another who jibes: “A miracle for ten shillings!” (nearer £50, actually, by 1983 explosion standards). Another asserts that Peter was intended to get the needful money by selling the fish which he caught — “and a wonderful price it would be for a fish caught with a hook!” counters someone else; and in that he is surely correct, for there are no monster salmon in the waters of Galilee.

It may be safely assumed that all explanations such as these go in the wrong direction.

The sign of the fish

From the very earliest times the fish was an accepted Christian symbol. Long before the church in its apostasy appropriated the cross as its sign, the fish was prominent as an expression of faith, in the catacombs and in the earliest forms of Christian art. The reason usually assigned for this is that the Greek word for fish supplies the initial letters of the phrase: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. This may be true, but there is probably more to it, especially where the incident under consideration is concerned.

The gospel section immediately preceding this tells how Jesus was forewarning his disciples of his impending crucifixion and death — “and the third day he shall be raised again” (Mt.17 :23). There is a clear link here with his words in the previous chapter: “There shall be no sign given unto it (to an evil and adulterous generation) but the sign of the prophet Jonah” Mt.16 :4) — salvation out of the mouth of the fish! (hence also v.22,23).

Here was the readily-understood symbol of the death and resurrection of Jesus-a divinely-provided atonement coming, so to speak, out of the mouth of the fish, and the fish dying in the process of yielding up the atonement price. Even if in process of catching the fish Peter did not discern the connection with the sign of the prophet Jonah he would surely recognize it in retrospect on a third day which brought joy unspeakable.

For whose benefit?

There are yet other overtones to this remarkable miracle. The very first of all the temptations Jesus had to face after his baptism was the suggestion (whether from within or without) that he use the divine power that was in him to seek his own comfort and well-being. To this temptation he responded with an unequivocal ‘No’. Yet now, about a year before his death, he suddenly went back on this principle and worked a miracle for his own benefit. This payment of the tribute money is the only miracle of Jesus from which he himself benefitted — “the fish that first cometh up”!

The reason for this is now readily discernible The miracle was a parable of Jesus paying the vital atonement price for his disciple. But it was an atonement in which he himself needed to share! “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh”, that is, with the very human nature which he came to save. This, the apostle John insists, is a most fundamental first principle (1 Jn.4 :l-3). In the very act of teaching his own redeeming power, Jesus added this other vital instruction that he too needed deliverance from this poor Adam-wrecked nature which he came to save: “Thai take, and give unto them for me and thee.”

Yet even whilst Jesus so clearly bound himself and his disciple together in the same need for on atonement price, he did so with a difference. His words were not: “Give it unto them for us”, but “for me and thee.” The distinction here is as valuable to faith as the identification. For the one who cannot see that Jesus is different from his disciple, a Son by right (and not — as Peter was — a son by adoption), even though in nature he be like him, dishonours the one “whom God made strong for himself”, the peerless Son of God, “separate from sinners.”

From ancient days it stood written: “They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches; none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him” (Ps.49 :6,7). But nowhere was one who paid in silver, but put no trust in silver; who went forward with clear vision to pay the only possible price in coin precious beyond all estimation. With this he redeemed his brother and himself. Well pleased with the payment made, “God redeemed his soul from the power of the grave” on the third day.

All this was laid up in a never-to-be-forgotten acted parable for the blessing and rejoicing of a Spirit-enlightened Peter in later days.

There was one other aspect of that experience which Peter would not forget. The atonement price was provided by Jesus, but he did not put the coin in Peter’s hand. Instead the disciple had to follow his Master’s bidding, in faith that it would work out as he said, and in that faith he had to exert himself personally in order to appropriate what was available by such marvellous means. The disciple of today who misses this lesson of the miracle might just as well be without the miracle altogether.

Notes: Mt. 7:22-27        

22.	This is usually called the second warning to the disciples, but it is really the third: 16:21; 17:12, 22.
	Shall be betrayed. Mk. has “is being betrayed.” Judas making plans already?
23.	They were exceeding sorry – after Jesus had foretold his resurrection! This suggests that they had begun to grasp the message about his sufferings but did not understand his talk about resurrection. “It was hid from them”(Lk.9:45).
21.	Came to Peter. So even outsiders had come to regard Peter as the chief of the apostles.
25.	Strangers. The argument also implies that now Israel, paying the tax, were really no better than Gentiles in God’s sight.
27.	Lest we cause them to stumble (RV). The important lesson here is: In all non-essentials make every possible concession; Mk.9:39; Rom. 14:1; 1 Cor.9:20.
	That take and give to them. Fisherman Peter would, of course, be sorely tempted to go on fishing. But no! in this experience of the grace of God there can be only one fishing and only one atonement price paid.
	For me and thee What about the other eleven? Was the quarrel behind Mt.18 :1 an outburst of indignation against the priority so often accorded to Peter?

Three passovers had been marked by a resolution on the part of the Jewish rulers to get rid of Jesus. His teaching, his miracles, the loveliness of his character, his vivid personality, were all a threat to their standing and authority.

The cleansing of the temple had brought the first hostile reaction (Jn.2:18) and also a secret attempt to wreck his work from within (2:24). At (lie next Passover, the healing of the stricken man at Bethesda on the sabbath and the Lord’s subsequent claim to divine authority made them oil the more resolved to kill him (5:18). After the feeding of the five thousand and the discourse on Bread of Life the first signs appeared of a split in the party of the Pharisees in their attitude towards him, and this made the more hostile section more determined than ever to be rid of him (7:1). But they lacked opportunity, for Jesus was preaching for something like six months in western Galilee. Spending a great deal of time quietly concentrating on the instruction of the twelve, he kept away from Jerusalem.

There seems to have been a period of eighteen months (5:1;7:1) during which Jesus left the holy city severely alone. The commandment that “three times in the year shall all thy males appear before the Lord God” |Ex.23:17) had to give way to the much more pressing duty of ensuring the loyalty and proper understanding of the twelve. As matters stood at present, to take them to Jerusalem would have ensured their spiritual destruction. The Lord’s absence from Jerusalem also become a kind of retribution against them for their hostility (cp.8:59a,b).

John uses the phrase “walked in Galilee” as though to hint at Jesus being the seed of Abraham (Gen.l3:17;17:l).

But if was eastern Galilee (Mk.7:31; 8:13,22; 9:30), more Gentile than the rest, not Herod’s Galilee, for Herod had now been persuaded by the Jewish leaders (who secretly loathed him) to give encouragement to the campaign against Jesus (Mk.8:15; Mt.l7:12)

Danger

Instead, “the Jews (the rulers) sought (were constantly seeking) to kill him.” Their resolve to be rid of him became stronger every time they saw him. For this reason Jesus “did not wish to walk in Jewry”. This tense atmosphere of increasing hostility oppressed his soul. He wanted to get away from it. It was a depressing business, to know that in all his appearances in his Father’s house, he was surrounded by the hatred of holy men.

His life was now in real danger. To think that, on every visit to Jerusalem (which he could no longer forego; Ps.84:l,2; 26:8-12; 27:8), his personal safety depended (humanly speaking) entirely on the presence of the crowds of pilgrims from Galilee! Any attempt by the rulers to arrest him could have meant open riot in the city.

Jesus and his brothers

On the way south from Caesarea Philippi, Jesus had, naturally enough, passed through Capernaum. All through Galilee great numbers were making preparation to go up to Jerusalem for the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles which followed a few days later.

The Lord’s brothers-half-brothers, strictly-had no sympathy whatever for his preaching activities and Messianic claims. So it was with strong irony that they said: ‘You will make no progress at all in your campaign unless you show the people that you are a zealous observer of the Law. Even your own closest followers need to be reassured that you are not disloyal to Moses. If you miss the Feasts, as you have been doing, you will lose disciples. Let them see that you are as enthusiastic about works of the Law as anybody.’ Since several of the apostles were related to the family of Jesus (see Study 42), the Lord’s brothers would know well enough of the recent disaffection among the twelve.

Their reference to “thy works which thou doest” is commonly taken to mean more startling miracles’, but the Lord’s reply requires reference to what were conceived by them to be works of righteousness through the punctilious observance of Moses’ Law and the rabbinic tradition. James, the eldest of the brothers, is known to have had a great reputation among the Jews for his close adherence to Mosaic practice even after his conversion to faith in Christ. So the advice, offered now in an unsympathetic spirit: “Show thyself to the world (ie. to the Jewish world —a common use of kosmos in the New Testament),” probably came specially from James. It was an attitude that was to change dramatically (Acts.l5:13ff).

But at present “neither did his brethren believe on him”. This expression (with its Greek imperfect) might be meant to imply: ‘they no longer believed in him’. But disbelief had been their attitude a good while earlier (Mk.3:21, 3Iff). So, tentatively, it may be surmised that some of their brother’s remarkable miracles had imposed a change of heart —but not for long, because of his bitter encounters with Pharisees and scribes. If the apostles had reacted uneasily to those experiences, the strongly Judaistic brothers would be likely to react much more strongly.

There was a neat double meaning in the reply Jesus gave to his brothers: “My time is not yet come.” They doubtless took this to mean: ‘The time is not ripe for me to make a big appeal to either people or rulers in Jerusalem by a display of zeal for the Law.’ But what he really meant was: ‘The time is coming when I shall die a sacrificial death in Jerusalem. It will be a sacrifice to supersede all Day-of-Atonement offerings'(Jn.11:50,52; studyl42).

“But (he went on) your time is always ready.” With their dedication to Mosaic observance they could always count on the approval of the men of the temple. Indeed the Jewish world gave ready admiration because of their strict Jewish orthodoxy, but for Jesus was reserved only a sustained hatred simply because he testified continually that their proud Pharisaism, which they thought to be a life of righteousness, was an evil thing.

There is some doubt as to whether Jesus said: “I go not up unto this feast”, or “I go not up yet”. The second reading (as in the AV) is better supported. But, either way, the meaning was that he had no intention of joining one of the organised caravans going to the feast. For “go up” (Gk.anabaino) was often used technically for ‘a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to keep a feast ‘ the Lord’ (see notes). If the suggestion in Studies 105, 106 that the Transfiguration took place about the time of the Day of Atonement, is correct, here is the necessary reason for Christ’s independent travel. So the family set off without him. Also, it is not impossible that Jesus wos aware of a plot to have him assassinated (as though by hostile Samaritans; Lk.9:52,53) in the course of the journey (see v. 1).

A strange parallel

It is of interest to note at this point a remarkable and mysterious sequence ol correspondences between the first sign in is gospel (2:1-11) and this climax of appeal in Jerusalem (ch.7). Clearly John intends bis readers to see a special significance in this pattern of ideas. But what?

Chapter 2	Chapter 7
His mother	His brothers
In the midst of the wedding feast	In the midst of the feast of tabernacles.
“Mine hour is not yet come.”	“My time is not yet come.”
Then works miracle. Only those pouring the water knew,	Then goes to Jerusalem in secret
“He manifested his glory	“Ma ke thyself known to the world.”
Water for Jews’ purification	Tabernacles’ ceremony of water-pouring.
“Kept the best until now”	“On the last day of the feast.”
“The ruler of the feast knew not…”	“Do the rulers know indeed…?”

Some days later, after the Transfiguration on the Day of Atonement (Study 105), Jesus appeared suddenly (on the sabbath day! v.21-25) in the crowded temple court. People had been on the look-out for him ever since the feast began. The Jewish rulers, specially anxious to have word concerning him, bombarded his brothers with enquiries, for their spies had already reported that Jesus and the twelve had been seen moving in the direction of Jerusalem. Their enquiries were made simply that they might kill him (5:18; 7:1; 19,25; 8:37).Their avoidance of the name of Jesus — “Where is that fellow?”-was surely an expression of their loathing of him.

Varying Opinions

But the ordinary people talked among themselves about him. ‘Whatever else, he is a good man’, said some, ‘see the kindness he shows to so many in their need.’ Others shrugged this off: ‘How can he be? He leads the multitude astray from Moses.’ In his commentary John discards both attitudes as deplorable. Even those who conceded that Jesus was a good man where making a hopelessly inadequate assessment of him. So John uses the pejorative “murmured” about them all. Thus, whether critical or vaguely approving, with a certain fearfulness, opinions were quietly thrown backwards and forwards.

But no one now seemed to think it possible that Jesus was the promised prophet like unto Moses. His repeated avoidance of any political leadership had settled people’s minds on that score. But until the rulers came out with some pronouncement, either favourable or adverse, regarding him, no one dare openly assert any convictions. The Jewish religious leaders were men of great power and unscrupulous in the use of it. Any man who incurred their displeasure might find life very uncomfortable.

Malachi allusions

Teaching by rabbis in the temple court was a normal feature of the Jewish feasts. Those among trie laity who wished to learn had splendid opportunities.

So there was no small sensation when, half way through that week of worship and enjoyment, Jesus himself suddenly appeared as one of the instructing rabbis.

It may be inferred from the gist of his reasoning and disputation that he chose a familiar scripture in Malachi 3 as the theme of his discourse. It was a prophecy concerning himself: “Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord whom ye seek (mark the biting irony there) shall suddenly come to his temple.” Jesus did just this-he came suddenly to the temple. And the word “seek” became the key to all that he had to say: “Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me.”(v.34,36). But, alas, their seeking of him was for an evil purpose: “Why seek ye to kill me?” (v.19). “Who seeketh to kill thee?” (v.20). “Is not this he whom they seek to kill?” (v.25). “Then they were seeking to take him” (v.30; see also v.1,4,11,52 and 8:21,37,40,50). Similarly, Jesus referred to his Father time and again as “he who sent me” (v. 16.18,26,28,29).

Evidently some recognized the prophetic theme which he was developing, for at one point their rejoinder was: “We know this man whence he is; but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is” (v.27) —as who should say: ‘Malachi says that Messiah is to come suddenly to his temple, and until that moment he will be unknown to Israel. Then how can Jesus of Nazareth be he, for he and his family have been known to many of us for years?’

In a way they were quite correct in this conclusion. When Jesus does come as the Messiah of Israel, he will be utterly unknown to them. This sudden appearing in the temple at Tabernacles was only a fore-shadowing of the real fulfilment, just as his triumphal entry into the city six months later also was.

Psalm 50

It is known that Psalm 50 was sung in the special temple services on the third day of that week. There is a marked aptness about some of these words which raises the possibility that Jesus used them in his discourse. “Thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee…

Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slenderest thine own mother’s son (the reaction of his own family). . . Whoso offereth praise (to God) glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his way aright will I show the salvation of God” (this is remarkably like: “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine”). (The readings on the fourth and fifth days were Ps.94:16ff; 8-15).

A sequence of discourses

The tracing of the argument through the discourse of Jesus, here and in nearly every other place in John’s gospel, is no easy matter. John may have written in words of one syllable, but assuredly he was not writing for children.

Indeed, the somewhat disjointed character of this part of the record lends itself to the idea that John is supplying a brief summary of the discourses of Jesus on the various days in the second half of the feast. Thus:

4th day:	v. 14-18.
5th day:	v. 19-27.
6th day:	v. 28-31.
7th day:	v. 32-36.
8th day:	v. 37ff.

The rulers marvelled, not only at the seeming effrontery of Jesus in assuming the office of teacher in the temple court but at the quality of his teaching: “How knoweth this man letters (s.w. 5:47; 2 Tim.3:14) having never learned?” (v.49; Mk.1:22;6:2). The surprised question shows that they had found out all that they could about Jesus’ background. They knew that he had never been to college (ls.28:9; 29:11 RVm;40:14).

Clearly, this criticism was not spoken to Jesus; but he knew and answered it just the same. Unlike their judging of him according to his appearance (v.24), he did not need to “judge after the sight of his eyes, nor reprove after the hearing of his ears” (Is.11:3,4), and thus he further proved the truth of his Messianic claims.

Sent from God

The lord gave them the easy obvious answer, which they should have found for themselves: “My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me” (12:49,50; 8:26,28; 14:10,24; Num.l6:28; Dt.l8:15). In an important respect he far surpassed the prophets. They were men who from time to time were empowered to speak with divine authority: “Thus said the Lord.” But the word of Jesus was: “I say unto you,” because always and in everything his speech was filled with a wisdom and holiness and power which were God-guided and God-centred. It may be that he meant more particularly: ‘In the instruction I give, I am expounding the meaning of God-given Scriptures, and not merely quoting the rabbis.’

Any man who heard him without deliberate prejudice was bound to recognize the fact. “If any man wishes to do God’s will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” That question: “How knoweth this man letters?” betrayed the evil inclination of the rulers. They meant to tolerate no rivalry to their own spiritual despotism. This inevitably put blinkers on their eyes so that most of the teaching of Jesus became a mystery to them. This fundamental truth regarding a man’s willingness to be instructed by the Word of God is to be traced both positively and negatively, in many a Scripture (eg. Jn.5:46; 18:37d_; Ps.25:9,12,14_; ls.66:2 Jas.l:21; Mk. 10:15; Gen.18:17; Pr.l3:13;3:7).

God-centred teaching

In further vindiction of his authority Jesus propounded a simple test: If a man’s teachings self-centred, by that fact it betrays his sera motives and his merely human authority; but conversely, “he that seeketh the glory of him that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.” This was a restatement in terms relevant to the present situation, of God’s counsel in Deuteronomy: Ifo prophet arises working signs and wonders this in itself will not validate his claims. The surest test is his doctrine. If the gist of it is: ‘Let us go after other gods’ (and there are other gods besides idols|, then his falsity is exposed (Deut.13:1-3).

When this test was applied to Jesus everything about him rang true. All knew how he avoided the plaudits of the crowd, how he; had disappeared from public life for considerable periods, how time and again he had warned people against making sensational’ reports about his works of healing. Always sought to avoid the pomp and circumstance which could easily have been his. Always directed men back to God and the honour was due to him.

If only the rulers would apply to himself simple test. But it was not convenient! “Did Moses give you the law? and yet none of keepeth the law.”

This charge was all the more pointed because in the temple court there was public reading of the Law at the Feast of Tabernacles (Dt.31:10 Neh. 8 :13-18; further allusions v.19,23,49,51; 8:5). But the arraignment did not refer to their personal wickedness, though on that score it was mordantly true. Regarding himself and the assessing of his divine claims they had carefully avoided applying the Scripture he alluded to. Instead they (the rulers) plotted to kill him (v. 1,12,13,19,25,30,32) because he did not keep the Law! It was a sinister plan not known to the common people (v.20).

The rulers before him knew how accuratelyhe had read their evil purposes. But the crowd listening eagerly to every word, thought this a fantasy of a deranged imagination: “Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?” Besides, he must be mad to assert that the Pharisees, all people, did not keep the Law! That early campaign of derogation against him, that I was possessed with a devil, was beginning to pay dividends.

Sabbath breaker?

The rulers, convinced that attack was the best form of defence against this exposure of their malevolence made bitter accusation that Jesus was a sabbath- breaker. Had he not, on his last visit to Jerusalem eighteen months earlier, healed a sick man on the sabbath at the pool of Bethesda? It was still remembered against him!

‘Indeed, yes’ was his reply, ‘and your marvelling at it still is an acknowledgement of the divine power in me. It is that which establishes my authority.’

Quickly came the rejoinder: ‘It gives you no authority to disregard the sabbath, which Moses bade us observe, and which is being read to us every day in this feast.’

Christ’s reasoned reply was almost syllogistic. Another commandment from Moses concerned circumcision on the eighth day. But when the new baby’s eighth day fell on a sabbath, which of the two commandments was disregarded in order to keep the other? It was, of course, the sabbath law which, by common consent, then took second place —for two reasons: circumcision came before the Law, God gave it as a commandment to Abraham; also, it was through circumcision that a man became related to God’s national covenant with Israel. Then, if circumcision, which wounded the little child in one member, could set aside the sabbath rule, how much more might the miraculous healing which made an entirely helpless man entirely tit and well to do the works of piety which these scribes and lawyers set so much store by? Also, if circumcision, the sign of the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 17:9-11), took precedence over the sabbath given through Moses, must not Messiah, appointed to fulfil the promises made to Abraham, have it in his power to supersede Moses’ commandments?

Indeed, by his “therefore” Jesus seems to have argued that Moses was guided to require Abrahamic circumcision on the sabbath, when necessary, specifically in order to underline the principle that the Law was not inviolable.

Just judgement

Now Jesus rounded on them for their gross perversion of wholesome principles of justice. By contrast with the Messiah, who would not “judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears” (Is. 11:3,4; Jn.8:1-11). They judged “according to the appearance”, in the worst sense of the term. They were utterly disinclined even to consider the possibility that a man out of the common people, and lacking the specialized training they themselves had had, could possibly have authority superior to their own. I nail generations and in all circumstances(even in the ecclesia) men in power are in love with power and will do almost anything to hold on to it.

Jesus sent them back to the exhortation specially addressed by Moses to the “judges and officers” of the nation-a commandment which was spoken to Israel immediately after the law concerning the Feast of Tabernacles: “They shall judge the people with just judgement; thou shalt not rest judgement; thou shalt not respect persons” (Deut. 16:18,19).

The rulers gave up. Their attempt to make Jesus look small in front of the crowd had gone the other way, and they were feeling sore and bitter about it.

Later, probably on the next day, when Jesus had resumed his instruction of the people, he attracted the attention of a group who were citizens of Jerusalem. The rumours about the rulers’ antagonism to Jesus had reached them, and they were puzzled and sarcastic that a man with a price on his head should heedlessly show himself in the temple court: “Lo, he speaks openly (contrast v. 13), and the rulers say not a thing to him, lest (from his answers) they learn truly that he is the Messiah!”

Messiah from Nazareth?

But of course, they, sophisticated citizens of the metropolis, were not to be taken in by this Jesus. How could he be the Messiah! They knew about Jesus of Nazareth-enough not to be impressed. Could any good thing come out of Nazareth? What Scripture says that Messiah comes from that God-forsaken place? Isn’t he to be born in the city of David? (Mic. 5:2).

Here was one of their great stumbling blocks. At this they stuck their toes in, and refused to consider the witness of all else that Jesus said and did (cp. v.42,52; 1:45,46; 6:42; 18:5,7, 19:19; Mt.l3:54,55). And, anyway, when Messiah came, would he not appear suddenly from no-one knew where?

It was a criticism which could damage the word of Jesus as much as the hostility of the rulers. So (next day?) he answered it, at another open-air meeting in the temple, with an appeal for honesty regarding his claims: ‘You do know me —you know me to be Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, but also Jesus the prophet, witnessed to by John the Baptist, Jesus who swept your temple clean of its abuses, Jesus the healer of the sick and afflicted. And therefore you not only know my origins but also who gave me my commission to do these things. I am not the false prophet you would gladly make me out to be, but I am the promised prophet like unto Moses (Dt.l8:15). They sought to kill Moses (Ex.2:15; 17:4), and you seek to kill me (v. 25)’.

The Lord’s repeated and emphatic claims to have come from God and to speak God’s words (5:19,30; 8:28,29,42; 14:10) are surely an indication that at this time the hostility of the rulers was expressing itself in a campaign of misrepresentation: ‘He is a false prophet, with a self-invented message, like those cursed men who withstood the witness of Jeremiah; the Law bids us stone such impostors to death.’

A prophet like Moses

The very prophecy about the prophet like unto Moses had answered also the problem how to discriminate the false prophet from the true: “How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?” (Dt.l8:21).

The test to be applied was: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing ‘which the Lord hath not spoken.” By and by Jesus was to present positive credentials of this kind —short-term prophecies which these sceptics could check (v.33,34,38). But first he picked up that key word “know” in the Scripture which they had (apparently) quoted against him: ‘You do know me, and you know whence I have come with my message and my “claims. Not just a Galilean carpenter, but one raised up by God.’

When he added: “He that sent me is true”, he did not employ the word which contrasts with “false” or “a lie”, but instead that which implies a truth higher than that which is taught by type or shadow. The Law had been revealed to Moses through an angel, but the message now proclaimed by Jesus came from God himself. It was personally intimated by the Father to his only begotten Son.

But, alas, “Him ye know not”—with any true spirituality I-so what hope that they would “know” His Son, the Prophet like unto Moses?

The emphatic claim: “I am from him, and he sent me”, has been perversely misunderstood from that day to this. Today Trinitarians grasp at the first clause to prove the Lord’s personal pre-existence, whilst quietly ignoring the implications of the second-for if indeed Jesus was sent by the Father, what happens to Nicene emphasis on a co-equality of the three Persons in the God-head?

It is true that “from him” is very emphatic, for the Greek phrase implies “from beside him”; but the identical construction is used about John the Baptist “sent from beside God” (1:6), and who is there who would insist that John had a pre-existence in heaven before being born of Elisabeth?

The rulers were much exasperated that the preaching of Jesus should thus go unchallenged, This Jesus was a big enough danger when surrounded by crowds in Galilee. Here in a Jerusalem thronged with worshippers he waso positive menace. So they schemed to get him into their power (v.30). Since their later method (v.32,45) was to attempt an open arrest by the temple police, this earlier plan was probably either the offer of a reward for anyone who would deliver him into their hands, or attempt a secret abduction by hired thugs.

Immune from arrest

Their plan came to nought. The divine reason for this failure was that “his hour was not yet come.” Jesus still had much work to do. A close-packed six months still lay ahead.

The more “natural’ reason for this immunity was Christ’s popularity with a large section of the crowd of worshippers up for the feast. Indeed many of them “believed into him” (cp.8:30; and, later, 11:45; 12:11,42)-the phrase might well imply that many proclaimed their discipleship by public baptism into the name of Jesus. Convinced now by his public preaching in Jerusalem, their minds (they were mostly Galileans) harked back to their own personal experience of abundant miracles. ‘When Messiah comes-whenever that is! -he won’t do more signs than this man did, will he?’-thus implying (without daring to say so explicitly): so he must be the Messiah.’

These indications of the impressions Jesus was making on the crowd goaded the leaders of the people into direct hostile actions. The Sadducee chief-priests, who controlled the temple guard, and the Pharisees, who dominated the Sanhedrin, sent some of their police to arrest him.

They found him in the middle of an open-air meeting making a most earnest appeal to the people to use the opportunity which was now theirs to learn his teaching and give him full allegiance: “Yet a little while (a mere six months| am I with you, and then I go away (to him that sent me)”. It seems likely that the words put in parenthesis here are one of John’s editorial additions (as in 3:13), for in the ensuing discussion no notice was taken of the idea they express.

John leaves his readers to infer that in fact no attempt was made to arrest Jesus that day, for at the end of the feast (v. 37,45) the police were evidently sent again with the same commission. It may be presumed that the rulers (v.35) who accompanied them thought it a policy of discretion to countermand the instruction because Jesus said: ‘Yet a little while I am with you.’ In that case would not the immediate problem (that sympathetic crowds might make trouble in Jerusalem) go away? No need to risk a riot in the temple court by arresting him in the presence of this great crowd.

But how thoroughly mystified they were when he added: “Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me, and where I am, thither ye cannot come.” Here was a short-term prophecy which, when it came to pass within the year, would validate his word as a true prophet of the Lord.

“The Jews”, that is, the rulers, speculated ironically that perhaps their opposition or his very limited success so far, would drive him right out of the country to initiate a campaign among the Jewish communities scattered throughout the Roman empire. He might even start evangelizing the Gentiles themselves. Wasn’t it reported that he had marvellously provided food for a great crowd of Gentiles in the Decapolis?

Like Caiaphas and Pilate later, the sarcasm of these men (and also their speculation in 8:22) was in a fact a true prophecy. Through the work of the lord’s apostles his gospel was to become a prairie fire amongst the Gentiles (a primary fulfilment of Is.1l:l2,14).

O.T. Background

There can be little doubt that the words of Jesus were intended to echo certain vivid prophecies of the Old Testament. The learned men to whom this part of his message was addressed would readily recognize the allusions. Psalm 50 has already been mentioned as one of the temple Psalms for the Feast of Tabernacles having remarkable appropriateness to the circumstances of Christ’s appeal in that week. It also has very pointed connection with Hosea 5. Evidently the mind of Jesus associated these Scriptures with each other. His words: “Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me” are an echo of Hosea 5:6: “They shall go … to seek the Lord; but they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from them.” Little as a modern student might be disposed to see this as a prophecy of Messiah, Jesus himself evidently did so.

“Hear ye this, O priest; and hearken, ye house of Israel… the revolters are gone deep in making slaughter (seeking to kill Jesus), but I am a rebuker of them all.. .They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God: for the spirit of whoredoms (Jn. 8:1-11) is in the midst of them (‘an evil and adulterous generation’ was a phrase often on the lips of Jesus)… among the tribes of Israel (gathered at the feast) have I made known that which shall surely be. The princes of Judah were like them that remove the landmark (in their perversions of the law of God);?; therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like” water (allusion to the water-pouring ceremony at Tabernacles?) … I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face” (Hos.5:l,2,4,10,15).

There are also some remarkable thematic resemblances between the words and incidents of this occasion and Psalm 40. These are best tabulated:

	Psalm 40		John 7
3.	“Many shall trust in the Lord”	31.	“Many of the people believed on him
4.	“Blessed is the man that maketh the Lord his trust.”
7.	“In the volume of the book it is written of me”		Allusions to Ps. 50,40, Hos.5, ls.55,Mal.3
	“Thy law is within my heart”	19.	Discussion on the Law. The reading of the Law at the Feast.
8.	“Not hid (kruptein) Thy righteousness within my heart.”	10.	In secret (enkrupto). 14.”he taught…”
	“To do Thy will.”	17.	“lf any man willeth to do His will”
9.	“I have preached righteousness in the great congregation.	37.	“On the great day of the feast” “he cried out”
	I have not refrained my lips.’	8.	Christ’s earlier reluctance: “I go not up yet…”
11.	“Preserve me.”	30	“No man laid hands on him.”
14.	“Them that seek after my soul to destroy it.”	25.	“Whom they seek to kill”
16.	“TheLord be magnified.”	18.	“Seek His glory that sent him.”

This is not all. The words of Jesus would surely lead at least some among the rulers to recall also the winsome words of Isaiah 55. How many of them would recognize the astonishing relevance of that familiar Scripture to Jesus and the appeal he was now making?

“Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near.” The guess that he planned a mission to the Gentiles was doubtless prompted by the context of those words: “Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee.”

The consequences of identifying this Scripture with the work of Jesus in their midst must have been shattering to these learned men of Jerusalem as they let their minds dwell on the familiar words. One logical conclusion was a tremendous claim to divine authority. Instead of “Seek ye the Lord”, Jesus had dared to say “Ye shall seek me.” and the context of those words surely meant that he was appointed by God as “leader and commander of the people” (v.4), one who would fulfil “the everlasting covenant, the sure mercies of David.” Their very puzzlement with his discourse seemed to be foretold in the same prophecy: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (v.8), There was also a sublime assurance that his mission would not fail: “So shall my Word be that goeth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (v. 11). Most grievous of all to them was the divine imperative: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts (the plot to take Jesus); and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy on him” (v.7). Indeed, had they been willing to accept the appeal and the promise, there would have been a Feast of Tabernacles the like of which had never been dreamed of: “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree” (v.13).

But, of course, this appeal of Jesus was directed most of all to those who were impressed by his message: “the many out of the people who believed into him” (v.31). To them his words meant: ‘I am to be with you for only a short while longer. Use well your opportunity, The day will soon be here when you will long to have me with you once again, but it will be too late.’

These tense meetings in the temple court were to lead to a mighty climax before the feast was over.

Notes: Jn. 7:1-36

1-9.	These verses belong to just before the Transfiguration.
1.	In Galilee. There is not another word in John about the Galilean ministry.
	In Jewry. This term is used sometimes of the whole of Jewry, and not just with reference to territorial Judaea: Mt.3:5; 19:1; Lk.6:17; 23:5; Acts.l:8; 2:9; 8:1 etc. So AV: ‘Jewry’ is right.
	Sought to kill him. The list of passages (probably incomplete) on this theme is quite frightening: Mk.3:6; Jn.2:24 5:18; 7:1,12,13,19,25,31,32; 8:59; 10:39; 11:8,16,50,53,54,57; Mk. 14:13; 3:6.
2.	Tabernacles. Strictly, the word means ‘tent-erecting’; cp.Mt. 17:4.
4.	The world. Very often in John (and not in John only) this means ‘the Jewish world’; eg. 6:14; 8:26; 11:27; 12:19,31; Rom.4:13;Gal.6:14; Col. 2:8,20 etc.
	Show thyself. The Greek word might even imply (sarcastically) a public display of Messianic power. Now contrast v. 10: ‘not openly (s.w.), but as it were in secret’ (Gk. en krupto, with his power hidden, without miracle but simply as a teacher)’ Certainly there was nothing secret about his appearances in the temple court during the feast (cp. Jn. 18:20).
8.	Go up. For the meaning suggested in the text cp. 2: 1 3; 5: 1 ; 11:55; Lk.2:42; 18:31; 19:28; Mt. 20:17; Ps. 122:4.
12.	Much murmuring. Normally used in a bad sense. And others means ‘others of the same sort.’ He deceiveth the people; s.w. Dt. 13:5, hence v. 25 here. Also Lk.23:5.
13.	For fear of the Jews. There had been earlier persecution: Mk. 3:6; Jn.2:24;5: 18. Now the campaign is really on; see note on v. 1.
18.	True. . . unrighteousness. Note the remarkable antithesis. Not ‘truth. . . falsehood’ or ‘righteousness… unrighteousness’ Cp.v.l2;5:30; 1 Cor.13:6
23a.	Other examples of conflict of principles: 3:21: Mt.l2:5; Ex. 12:10;2Chr.30:13,17,18,23. -” Make a man whole. The only instances of healing in the Books of Moses are the healing of Moses’ and Miriam’s leprosy: Ex. 4:7; Num. 12:14.
25.	The question requires a positive answer.
	Seek to kill quotes Ex. 2: 15. Jesus was the prophet like unto Moses in this respect also.
	This fellow. Literally: ‘this one’; usually contemptuous; v.25,26, 27, and frequently elsewhere.
28.	Cried. A deliberate aim at publicity; v37; 11:43; 12:44
	Whom ye know not. A sardonic contrast with v 27a
34.	Ye shall seek me. Cp. Lk. 17:22

The first of several problems which the student of this section of John’s gospel encounters is: Does it belong? Is it an authentic part of what John wrote?

With hardly an exception the modern textual critics answer: No. Yet in the next breath practically all of them are agreed that this passage is part of dependable apostolic tradition. It has “the ring of truth”; there is about it somehow the hall-mark of genuineness. Consequently most modern versions either print it in brackets (RV) or relegate it to the foot of page (RSV) or to the end of the gospel (NEB). But all, in one way or another, make the reader aware of the fact that he is being warned against accepting this as an integral part of John’s gospel.

Then, did John write it, or didn’t he? To most modern readers the question is academic. They like this story. They instinctively believe the truth of it as they read it, and that is good enough for them. Just where it came from, or who wrote it, or how it got where it is, are questions of almost no importance.

But for those who believe in the inspiration of Holy Scripture such sloppy attitudes are hardly seemly. Then, is it possible to come to any definite conclusions regarding this issue?

Textual Evidence

The facts are these. Some very awe-inspiring witnesses can be cited against receiving this section as authentic Scripture.

1. A number of very ancient manuscripts omit the passage: The Sinaitic, Vatican, and Freer codices, and the early Geneva papyrus (No. 66) are among these.
2. A big proportion of the ancient versions do not have it.
3. An important handful of early fathers, whose commentaries on the gospels could be expected to include it, leave out all mention.
4. Those manuscripts which do have it involve a good many more “various readings” than is usual.
5. The language is so obviously not John’s style or vocabulary. This is obvious even to the student who is confined to the text in English

This is an impressive case, only to be set aside by massive evidence the other way. And if it is set aside, a very convincing explanation is called for as to how omission by all these authorities has come about. Both of these it is possible to provide, with the net result that these twelve verses may be confidently received as an authentic and authoritative part of the gospel as originally written.

First the textual evidence:

1. More uncial manuscripts have it than omit it.
2. Well over three hundred cursive manuscripts have it.
3. The “Apostolic Constitutions”, a very early document, includes the words. So also do most of the Old Latin manuscripts and the Latin Vulgate. Jerome commented that this section was to be found in many Greek and Latin codices of his day (4th century). Several of the ancient versions (e.g. Ethiopic and Jerusalem Syriac) include it.

The inclusion by such a large number of manuscripts presents a problem. If these twelve verses represent a floating bit of early tradition which has come to be incorporated with John’s gospel, how is it that practically all the manuscripts insert it at this particular place? The answer usually supplied is that in the fourth century a widespread revision of existing New Testament texts took place throughout the churches, and a big degree of standardisation ensued. This sounds plausible enough, but unhappily no shred of documentary evidence to support such a view has ever been found-and this from a period which has church writings available today in great abundance. Nor is it possible to see how such a revision could be efficient in every part of the Roman empire.

On the other hand there is clear evidence of a very striking character that a documentary revision of a different kind was going on in certain areas about that time. There are indications in the writings of Augustine and other prominent leaders of the fourth century church that the story of the woman taken in adultery was deemed to be a threat to the purity of Christian living, inasmuch as it could be construed as an encouragement to promiscuity. For this reason there developed a marked tendency to give this story as little prominence in church teaching as possible. In the lectionaries it was either relegated to use at one or two very minor church festivals or was not read at all.

More than this, there is evidence in the manuscripts themselves that a campaign of this kind was in progress. Scrivener has pointed out that in one of the Old Latin manuscripts “the whole text from 7:44 to 8:12 has been wilfully erased.” (Introduction to Criticism of New Testament 2.367). In Codex A, the scribe began to write this disputed section, and then erased it. Codices A C L leave a space at this point in John’s gospel, a clear indication that the scribes responsible for them knew of the familiar reading but had some reason for omitting it. A group of thirteen cursives put these verses at the end of the gospel. The Ferrar group (f 13) inserts them at the end of Luke 21, doubtless because of the marked resemblance to two verses there.

All these facts fit readily enough with the hypothesis that an attempt was being made to relegate this inconvenient Scripture (as it was deemed) to a place of obscurity, and this for the reason already mentioned.

Church Lectionaries

The lectionaries of the early church (these were a kind of “Bible Companion”) show very clearly how omission of these twelve verses came about in some manuscripts. The gospel reading chosen for Whit Sunday was John 7:37 to the end of the chapter. But it was desired to include also Jn. 8:12: “I am the light of the world.” Accordingly at 7:52 a//the lectionaries (and there are many of them still in existence) had in their margin a word meaning: “Go over, overleap”, and then at 8 :12 the word for “begin (again).”

Lectionary discontinuities of this sort are to be found elsewhere and have actually led to other similar omissions in some manuscripts (Burgon: Trad. Text, p. 256).

In this instance the ‘overleaping’ is done at the expense of a certain loss of smoothness in the reading. Theargument,againstthe validity of the twelve verses, has often been used that if they are left out there is perfect continuity. But is there? John 7 :52 ends with the altercation between the rulers and the officers and Nicodemus. John 8 :12 resumes with: “Again therefore Jesus spake unto them, saying, I am the light of the world”-a strange kind of continuity, surely! On the other hand, verse 12: “Again therefore Jesus spake unto them, saying . . .” refers back naturally enough to verse 2; “and he sat down and taught them.”

As it stands, the received text presents no continuity problem at all. The argumentation in the temple concluded, “every man went unto his own house, but Jesus went into the mount of Olives.” This harmonizes excellently with the point, which chapter 7 has already mentioned several times, that the rulers sought to kill Jesus. There was no safety for him in the city, hence his taking refuge where they would never dream of looking for him, in the garden of Gethsemane (18:1).

Then, “early in the morning, he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him.” After the challenge of judgment concerning the adulterous woman, his adversaries disappear from the scene (8:9,10), and Jesus is able to resume his teaching: “I am the Light of the world.” It will be shown in Study 110 that not only does this incident harmonize perfectly with the rest of chapter?, but some of the language which follows requires to be read as allusive to the judging of the adulterous woman.

The Problem of Style

There still remains, however, the evident fad that in style and vocabulary these disputed verses seem to have little resemblance to the writing of John. This has to be admitted. But, again, there is a very simple factual explanation available. Unfortunately, although both simple and factual, the explanation is necessarily rather lengthy, and accordingly it is needful to bespeak the reader’s patience regarding it.

There are two very interesting statements available from early church writers regarding the origin of John’s gospel. Clement of Alexandria (c. 190) wrote: “The tradition of the presbyters from the first is that John, last, having observed that the bodily things (regarding Jesus) had been set forth in the synoptic gospels, on the exhortation of his friends, inspired by the Spirit produced a spiritual gospel.” The Muratorian Fragment (c. 180), found in a library in Milan, has this: “It was revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that John should narrate everything in his own name, subject to the revision of the rest.”

These two testimonies from widely separated sources indicate that whilst the writing of the gospel was John’s work (necessarily so), he had associated with him in the writing of it, others, also guided by the Spirit, who were able to vouch for the validity of what he wrote. Some arrangement of this kind was obviously desirable in an age when not a few undependable attempts were being made to set out the life and work of Christ (see Luke 1 :1).

Here, then is the explanation of the strange occasional occurrence of the plural pronoun in John’s narrative: “This is the disciple (John) which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true” (21 :24). This is clearly the authenticating certificate, so to speak, of the brethren associated with John. Similarly, “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory” (1 :14). It is possible now to see that the plural pronouns in this familiar passage are not just a vague way of referring to the human race in general. They are intended to include with John others such as Andrew who also had personal contact with Jesus in the days of his flesh.

With this background to the gospel made more clear, it is not difficult to see the section under consideration as having been contributed by Andrew or one of the others because of its exceptional relevance to the sequence of ideas in the Lord’s controversy with the rulers. Just how relevant it is will be shown in the next study. Thus it becomes possible to regard this section as coming from the pen of some writer other than John and yet as being an integral part of the gospel, decidedly helpful to a proper understanding of all that was taking place at that time.

Next day, after his great appeal in the temple court, Jesus was early in the temple again, resuming the role he had adopted since his arrival in Jerusalem in the middle of the week. He sat as an instructing rabbi and taught all who cared to come and listen.

Whilst this work was in progress there came an interruption. Scribes and Pharisees from the Sanhedrin came pushing through the crowd, challenging Jesus to give judgement on a point of law. They thrust a young woman in front of him.

“Teacher”, they said with an irony which gave them no little pleasure, “this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?”

It was a crude nasty-minded thing to do. Why did they not take her before the court which normally dealt with such problems? And what about the man involved in this sin? Why did they not bring him also? Was not he equally guilty?

Or, if really eager for help in the handling of a tricky point of law, they could have approached Jesus quietly, instead of salaciously parading the woman’s shame before the throng. But they were not seeking advice. Their words showed that their own minds were made up on the matter. They knew well enough the precept of the Law of Moses about such cases. Their real intention was to face Jesus with an embarrassing problem. And their stones were poised, not only to throw at the woman but also at him!

An Evil Dilemma

What, precisely, was the dilemma by which they hoped to score over him in this issue? Clearly, if he said: “No, do not stone her”, then it would be easy to rouse the rabble with the cry: “This man speaks against Moses.”

But if he said: “Yes, do exactly as Moses commanded’, how could they take advantage of such an answer? The explanation comes from the Scripture they had alluded to: “If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die” (Dt. 22 :23,24). There were other cases of sexual promiscuity for which the Law pronounced sentence of death, but this was the only one for which stoning was the penalty. According to the writings of the rabbis, in other instances death was by strangulation, using a cord twisted round the throat. So the accusers were making reference very precisely to this passage-about the sin of a woman betrothed to a husband. Then, had Jesus replied, “Yes, stone her”, they would have triumphantly jibed at him: “Then shall we do just that to your mother?”

Christ’sOrigins

It was a devilish attack, and devilishly clever in the way it was framed. That this was the point of it is evident from the context. In the ensuing discussion, one expression after another takes on a fuller meaning in the light of it:

“As for this fellow, we know not from whence he is” (9 :29). “We be not born of fornication” they threw at him with malicious relish (v.41). And again, deliberately choosing to misunderstand him, they asked: “Where is thy father?” (v. 19).

It is very evident that they had made careful investigation regarding the origins of Jesus, and had come up against a problem. But by providing their own nasty answer to it they felt that they could make capital out of the situation. The sneer in their voices can almost be heard: “Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan?” (v.48)-that is, of mixed Jewish and Gentile origin. To this day the Talmud preserves the Jewish slander that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier called Pandira.

The replies given by Jesus in the same discussion were clearly framed with reference to this foul attack: “Ye judge after the flesh … I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go… I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me … if ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also … which of you convicteth me of sin … he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone” (v.14,15,16,19,29). In the next study it will be shown that one section of this discourse of Jesus was a Biblical answer to this attack now being made on him.

What did Jesus write?

But when the problem of the woman’s sin was put to him he did not make reply at first. Instead he stooped down and with his finger began to write in the dust of the temple court which was as yet unpaved. What he wrote has been a subject for the speculations of all gospel readers.

Was it the relevant passage from Deuteronomy 22, reminding them that the Law commanded judgment on both the offenders? Why had they not brought the man also? Or was it the grim prophecy which was written with “the fingers of a man’s hand” on the wall of a palace in Babylon: “Weighed in the balances, and found wanting?”

There is a suggestion, first made centuries ago, which seems to carry a marvellous appropriateness in many of its details—that Jesus wrote the relevent passages out of Jeremiah 17: “O Lord, the hope of Israel, oil that forsake thee shall be ashamed (the scribes skulking away from Christ’s writing), and they that depart from me (note the change of pronoun) shall be written in the earth (instead of in the book of life), because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters (recall the water-pouring ceremony at that feast) . . . Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the Lord? let it come now? (the challenge made by the Lord’s enemies) … Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be confounded … bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with the double destruction,. . The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give to every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings” (Jer. 17 :9-18). The same Scripture begins with these words: “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars”-and the next verse makes allusion to the fornication which Israel practised, calling it religion.

Careful attention to the details of John 8 reveals that Jesus wrote twice (as his Father also did with the Ten Commandments). Then, at the second writing, did Jesus write in the earth the names (Jer. 17 :13) of his present adversaries and those with whom they had been associated in evil? And if he knew their names, then what else did he know about them?!

Bitter waters

It is not inappropriate here to draw attention to the Mosaic “trial of jealousy (Num. 5:llff|, A man suspecting his wife of unfaithfulness was to bring her and a sin-offering to the priest. The Law’s curses were written in a book and then anointed out by means of and into the “pure living water” (LXX) which had been mixed wild dust from the floor of the sanctuary. These “bitter waters” were drunk by the woman, and the curse operated, in very fearful fashion, only if she were guilty. J. W. Burgon drew attentionto the points of contact between the present episode and the trial of jealousy: sexual unfaithfulness, the dust of the temple, the living water (Jn. 7:37,38), and “waters of conviction” (Num. 5:24 LXX; cp. “they. . . convicted by their own conscience”).

Reference of these details to the woman before Jesus is utterly inappropriate, for they concerned an occasion of unproven suspicion (Num. 5:13,14) whereas she was “taken in the very act”.

But reference to the elders making the charge before Jesus is very likely. It finds support from a remarkable passage in Isaiah 43:24,28 LXX: “Thou dids’t stand before me in thy sins… I, even, I am he that blots out thy transgressions… But do thou remember. . . do thou first confess thy transgressions, that thou mayest be justified. Tour fathers first and your princes have transgressed against me” (and 44:2,3,5).

“Without Sin”

When the adversaries of Jesus pressed him for an expression of judgement on this ease-thinking, no doubt that he was embarrassed and therefore evasive—he broke off to look at them all, saying: “He that is without sin among you (less than two weeks after the Day of Atonement!) let him first cast a stone at her.”

The words could not be construed as a blunt disowning of Moses. But what did they mean? The completely and utterly sinless man? In that case, Jesus himself was the only one qualified to carry out the sentence: “Which of you convicteth me of sin?”-and he refused to carry it out: “Neither do I condemn thee.”

Some have guessed that Jesus meant: He that is without this sin of adultery with which the woman is charged. But it is surely unlikely that the entire group of scribes and elders before him were men of that character.

The use of the same Greek word in its only occurrence in the LXX version (Dt. 29 :19) might suggest the idea: He that is without an ulterior motive in putting this problem before me.

But the absence of the other party to the offence points to a different meaning. The law in Deuteronomy 22 required that both the woman and the man be stoned. Why then was only the woman brought to judgement? Could it be that he was a friend or colleague of those now badgering Jesus about this problem, and that he had been quietly let go scot-free? Yet Deuteronomy commanded that even though an offence be committed by “thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul. . . thine eye shall not pity him. . . thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones that he die” (13:6-10). Thus Jesus exposed once again their inability to “judge righteous judgement”.

The outcome

As he resumed his writing on the ground, the force of his rebuke went name, the more so because now the point of it was appreciated by all the crowd ringing them round in tense alert silence. The elders in the Sanhedrin deputation saw that instead of Jesus it was themselves who had lost standing (Ps. 9 :15), and they quietly made off through the crowd, as though their enquiry were concluded. And the rest of their group soon followed them. Perhaps their retreat, one by one, took place as Jesus wrote in succession the names of each one of them in the earth (Jer. 17:13).

The phrase: “being convicted by their own conscience, “unwarrantably omitted in some translations, is vindicated by the link with Num. 5: 17 LXX: “waters of conviction”, and by Jeremiah: “they that forsake me shall be ashamed” (17:13).

The situation is reminiscent of the occasion when the prophet Samuel came to the home of Jesse, and the seven sons of the family were paraded before him. “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him.” But, no! “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” Then came David, the Beloved, the keeper of the sheep. “This is he … and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him.” The others, for all their impressiveness to human eyes, came and went unhonoured by God (1 Sam. 16:7).

Yet another marvellously apposite Scripture is that which Jesus himself alluded to in his preaching earlier that week: “The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple… he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver … a swift witness against the adulterers, and against false swearers . . . But who may abide the day of his coming” (Mal. 3:1-5).

Such resemblances served then to emphasize the Lord’s divine authority. Today they also serve to establish the unity and divine authority of the record.

Uncondemned

The tenseness was gone now from the situation. Jesus straightened himself from writing on the ground. There was only the foolish sinful girl in tears, and all round a dense throng in silence, listening hard for the Lord’s next word. No accusers? No condemnation? “No man, Lord.” She called Jesus “Lord”. Her experience proved the truth of a matchless scripture: “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (Ps. 130:4).

“Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”

There is a certain amount of evidence that because of the seeming lenity of this pronouncement, this section of the gospel had a certain unpopularity in the early church, for it was interpreted by some as an encouragement to moral looseness. And who shall say there is no such suspicion in modern times?

Yet Jesus did not attempt any cover up of the blunt facts of the case. What the woman had done was a sin, and was plainly labelled as such.

Her own attitude has been variously represented. Hoskyns is surely in error in his comment: “The woman expresses neither faith nor repentance.” Cannot both be inferred from the fact, first, that she stayed there with Jesus. A wayward strumpet would have cheerfully taken herself off as soon as her accusers disappeared. But she stayed with him-andslie addressed him as “Lord”, Does not that one word speak volumes about change of heart?

There is a parable here of more than ordinary importance. Jesus in the temple in the company of three kinds of sinners: the woman, knowing herself to be a breaker of God’s law and known as such by everybody there: she stays with Jests and finds no condemnation; the crowd, themselves sinners, all of them, witnessing die graciousness of Christ and staying to hear him say: “I am the Light of the World: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life;” and the elders, hypocritical, yet convicted of sin, and going away from Jesus (and from the temple) unforgiven, unforgiveable.

Notes: Jn. 8:1 -11

1.	The verses 7:53-8 :2 are very like Lk. 21 :37,38. But the details would be equally true for any occasion when Jesus was teaching in the temple.
4.	In the very act. The Greek root means ‘theft’.
5.	Such. The Greek word is feminine. There is pointed ignoring of the man involved.
6.	This they said. Explanatory insertions are characteristic of John’s gospel: 6:6,71; 7:39; 11 :13,51;21:19,
	Wrote. Continuous tense: he kept on writing.
7.	Continued. The word means either that they kept at it (as in Acts 12 :10), or that they stayed on (contrast v.9),
	Without sin. Dt.29 :18-20 has other significant allusions to the trial of bitter waters: “turneth away… galled wormwood (bitter waters?)… curse. ..his jealousy. ..all the curses written in this book.. .blot out his name.”
9.	Eldest…last The word is literally elders and last may perhaps mean least important; cp. 1 Cor.4:9, 15:8.

The Feast of Tabernacles came to its climax in a “holy convocation” on the eighth day (lev.23:36). On each of the first seven days of the feast there was the impressive ceremony of water-pouring. Priests went in solemn procession to the Pool of Siloam. There they filled a golden vessel with water, carried it to the temple court, and emptied it out (with wine also) at the altar. Meantime the Hallel was sung. So also was Isaiah 12.

It was a custom which probably dated back to the time of that prophet: “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. And in that day shall ye say, Praise the Lord, call upon his name, make mention that his name is exalted. Sing unto the Lord; for excellencies he hath made, even waters of knowledge—this in all the Land. Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion; for great is the Holy One in the midst of thee” (Is. 12:3-6).

Zion means “a dry place”, and the spiritual truth embodied in this name was symbolized by die fact that the priests went to Siloam to draw water which came from outside the city via a smitten rock, and carried it into the temple.

But the Scriptures which were read at this Feast promised that “living waters shall go out from Jerusalem” (Zech. 14:8), flowing with increasing depth both east and west, to heal the Dead Sea of Israel and the greater dead sea of the Gentiles.

The water-pouring ceremony was intended as a reminder of Israel’s wilderness journey, when God saved them from perishing by providing a copious supply of water from the smitten rock.

The discontinuation of water-pouring on this eighth day was similarly designed to remind Israel that after the wilderness wandering, God gave them their Land of Promise, “a land of brooks of water” (Dt. 8:7). Yet on this day Jesus was now to remind them that their souls were still dried up for want of true water of life. They needed the promised “fountain… for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” {Zech. 13:1).

On this particular day when the water-pouring ceremony was omitted, and when only one bullock was offered instead of many (Num. 29:35,36), Jesus made a most spectacular appeal to the multitude (cp. v. 28; 12:44; contrast Mt.l2:19). It was the last time he would be present at one of the Feasts of the Lord. When the temple court was crowded with people he took his stand in a prominent place and with a loud shout fastened the attention of everybody on himself: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me; and he that believeth in me, let him drink” . . .”wisdom crieth aloud without; she uttereth her voice in the broad places:. . . Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you …” (Pr. 1:20,23).

Zechariah, the last of the Old Testament martyrs (Mt. 23:35), had similarly stood in the temple court and cried out against a people who worshipped God with their transgression, and “they stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of Lord” (2 Chr. 24:20,21).

Very shortly (8:59) they were to attempt the same against Jesus.

Now his earlier meaningful allusions to Isaiah 55 came to a focus: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters . . . wine and fatness without money and without price.”

The smitten rock

And it was an appeal to see in himself the fulfilment of the type of water from the smitten rock—”as the Scripture (Ex. 17; Num. 20) hath said, Out of his belly (that is, from Christ) shall flow rivers of living water”. There is no Scripture which says precisely this. But it may be that this was because the mind of Jesus ran on another Scripture also: “Thus saith the Lord that . . . formed thee, From the belly (LXX s.w. Jn. 7:38) thou shalt yet be helped … I will pour water upon him that is thirsty … I will pour my spirit upon thy seed …” (Is. 44:2,3). Alternatively, as has already been suggested in Study 107, there is here another allusion to Psalm 40: “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my belly (LXX: 2 important MSS). I have preached righteousness in the great congregation” (v. 8,9). The words paraphrase the teaching of the type enacted in the wilderness.

Both places (Ex. 17; Num. 20) where the rock was struck to provide water were called Meribah: “waters of contradiction”. And now, when Jesus offered a new and better water-pouring for their everlasting blessedness there was contradiction and gainsaying in plenty (v.40-43).

Six months earlier Jesus had claimed to be the fulfilment of all that the manna foreshadowed. Now here was its counterpart. “Our fathers .. . did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that rock was (ie. represented) Christ.” (1 Cor.l0:3,4).

Some have found difficulty in this exposition by Paul—as though the Rock providing water actually moved from place to place in the wilderness. Expositors have been known to shed a strange kind of light on this passage by citing rabbinic fantasies of this sort; and thus the obscurity intensifies.

There is a better explanation, suggested by Bullinger, which is almost too simple. The word “them” (in the phrase “followed them”) is not in the text. Instead, the reference is to events following chronologically in the Exodus record. The giving of the manna is described in Exodus 16. The provision of water from the rock comes in the next chapter. Thus, “they drank of that Rock that followed (next in their experience and next in the record)”; cp. also Ps. 78:15-25.

It was on this “great day of the feast” that Psalm 82 had a prominent place in the temple ritual. The relevance of some of its words to the present situation is clear enough: “God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he udgeth among the elohim, (the rulers). How ong will ye judge unjustly? . . . They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness … I have said, Ye are elohim, and all of you are sons of the most High. But ye shall die like men…”(v. 1,2,5-7).

And Isaiah 48 also invites attention: “Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning … they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out” (v.16,21).

The appeal of Jesus focussing attention on himself, would be the more striking because on this “great day of the feast” Psalm 114 had just been sung as part of the ritual: “Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a fountain of waters” (v. 7,8).

The general tenor of this great public claim would be clear enough to the crowd of people who heard it, but the greater fulness of meaning only became evident to the disciples in later days, when they saw blood and water pour out of the pierced side of Jesus (Jn.19:34), and, yet more clearly, when they experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost: “This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Spirit was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” (16:7; Eph. 4:8). As there was no water until the rock was smitten, so there was no outpouring of the Spirit until Christ was crucified.

The word “glorified” was probably intended by the evangelist to direct his readers’ attention to a similar impressive sequence of events in the wilderness. The cleft rock was not only (to means of quenching the thirst of Israel and of washing away sin (see Dt. 9:21), it was also the place of the manifestation to Moses of the Shekinah Glory (Ex. 33:22), so that the Glory was reflected in his face in the presence of the people (34:29-35). Soon after this the Spirit that was upon Moses was imparted also to the Seventy who were to aid his administration of God’s law (Num. 11:24-30).

There are few chapters which illustrate the f theme of this gospel better than this one: “The Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (1:17). The parallel and contrast with Moses illuminates many o verse here (eg. v.4,5,6,12,16-25,28-30,34-41).

When Jesus made his appeal in the temple court there were probably few so discerning as to appreciate these details, but evidently the allusion to the wilderness experience of Israel was understood by some, for they said: “Of a truth this is the Prophet”, i.e. the promised Prophet like unto Moses (Dt. 18:15,18; Jn.l:21,25;6:14).

Others, yet more convinced, declared: “This is the Messiah”. Of course, both groups were right, but some were emphasizing Scriptures about the first advent and the characteristics of Jesus which chimed in with those, and others those about the second.        

Nazareth—Bethlehem

But there was also genuine puzzlement ‘How can he be? This Jesus is from Nazareth, What Scripture says that the Messiah is to come from Galilee? Are we not all familiar with the promise that he will be born in Bethlehem-and not the northern Bethlehem either (Josh. 19:15), but the place where David came from.’ It is interesting to observe that John does not stay to add a correction to this mistaken idea. He takes for granted that his readers, having access to other gospels, already know the truth about the birth of Jesus.

They felt so sure of this interpretation of Mic.5:2 that they ignored the hints that “the Branch out of the stem of Jesse” (Is. 11:1) would have Branch-town (Nazareth) as his home, and would bring light in the spiritual darkness of Zebulun and Naphtali (Is. 9:1,2). Their mistake should be a warning to those in modern times who go in for cocksure dogmatic interpretations of latter-day prophecy.

So instead of a united attempt to understand their Scriptures more clearly in the light of the undoubted truth of the Nazarene’s divine message, there was a division among them, even though they were all on his side. How pathetically prophetic this situation was. Both groups had far more truth than all the rest of the nation, yet they were unable to put up with each other’s point of view. Today it is just the same: ‘You must believe exactly what I believe- and you must say it in my words’ (Lk. 12:51).

No arrest

Those rejecting the claims of Jesus wanted to see him arrested there and then. If only he could be lifted right away from these seething arguing crowds on whom he had made such an impression, the risk of a big explosion in the city would be much diminished.

So once again the temple officers, with renewed instructions to apprehend him, came back to a full meeting of the Sanhedrin without their man. Had someone made a mistake? ‘Are we to arrest a man who talks as he does?’ It might even have meant: ‘We will have no hand in violence against such a man. If you wish him arrested find others to do the job.’

Either way, John Carter’s comment is pithily right: “One of the strangest explanations for failure to make an arrest ever put forward by the police of any age or country.” There seems to be the clear implication: ‘He is the prophet like unto Moses!” Were they more in fear of Jesus than of the chief priests?

Their report must also have included, as further excuse for inaction, that a large and sympathetic crowd was all round Jesus (cp. Lk. 19:47,48), for the angry comment was provoked: “This multitude which knoweth not the Law is accursed.” Yet in truth the curse was on themselves. It had been foretold long centuries before (Gen. 49:5-7; tradition associated the scribes with Simeon).

It is to be remembered that this was not the first time the officers of the temple guard had failed to take strong measures against Jesus. No doubt, when he took upon himself to clear the temple court at his first Passover (2:14ff), steps should have been taken against this arbitrary assumption of authority, yet nothing was done. And now, twice within a week, there was the same reluctance to take action.

The chief priests did not ask what Jesus’ teaching was which had made such an impression on them. Instead, only an angry expostulation (to be followed up, doubtless, by strong disciplinary action): “Are ye also deceived? Is there one out of the rulers (Sadducees) or of the Pharisees who have believed on him?” What a dramatic irony there was in this outburst, for sitting there with them was one who did so believe but who as yet could not muster the courage to confess it.

Timorous disciple

Nicodemus, who more than two years earlier had come to Jesus by night, had never been able to forget that experience. Everything else he had heard and seen of Jesus went to strengthen his conviction that the prophet’s claims were true; there was nothing for it but to accept his authority, believe his teaching, and give him allegiance. But this was more than Nicodemus could steel himself to do. He had resigned from being President of the Council (3:10 RV), rather than be inextricably involved in decisions against Jesus; or it maybe that, his sympathies with Jesus coming under suspicion, he had been edged out of office. But to confess discipleship openly!—no, this was too much; he could not do it.

Now, in an effort to soften reaction against Jesus and perhaps to save the man who had spoken with such persuasion to him, he interposed a legal objection: “Doth our law judge any man before it hear him, and know what he doeth?” He tried to make it appear that he was concerned only with niceties of the Jewish law, It was more than he had courage for to come out openly as a supporter of Jesus.

His legal demurrer was, of course, absolutely valid. Moses’ charge to the judges of Israel was: “Ye shall hear the small as well as the great” (Dt. 1:17). No man, whatever his standing or his crime, was to be condemned unheard. Yet these rulers, by their very wrath, had Jesus condemned already. Nicodemus’ quiet objection neatly exposed their own deficiences. Either they knew not the law, or they were so unscrupulous as to thrust it deliberately on one side.

“He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him” (Pr.l8:13).

Smarting under the implied rebuke, they rounded on him in hectoring, bullying fashion: “Art thou also of Galilee?” Try as he would Nicodemus could not keep his sympathy for Jesus hidden. It showed in his look and tone of voice. “Search and look”, they shouted at him, “for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” In reply Nicodemus might well have bidden them search and look. In their prejudice and hatred they had badly overshot. The prophet Jonah (2 Kgs. 14:25} and, very probably, the great Elijah (1 Kgs. 17:1) came from Galilee; and a powerful prophecy by Isaiah associated the Messiah himself with “the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. . . in Galilee of the nations. . . the land of the shadow of death” (Is. 9:1,2).

But it was useless, as it always has been, to attempt to reason out of Scripture with men whose minds were already adversely made up.

As the sun was setting, and preparations were made for the temple gates to be closed, the crowd round Jesus dispersed, “every man unto his own house”. But Jesus himself “had nowhere to lay his head” (Lk. 9:58)-at least, nowhere where he could be safe from those who “sought to take him.” But he had a refuge in the garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives (18:2), a place where his enemies would never dream of looking for him.

The sequence in the few verses here is worth noting:

7:52	Rejection by the rulers.
8:1	Jesus goes away.
8:2	He returns.
8:3	Judgment.

New policy

A glance back at the activities of Jesus during the Feast of Tabernacles, as described in tfi long, important and exceedingly profound chapter, emphasizes the tremendous contrast be observed between the comparativi obscurity and semi-retirement of the pasti; months and the sudden deliberate adoption of! big publicity methods. This marks the beginninj of his last great appeal to the nation-n preaching effort which was to take him ink, every corner of the country. It was to hi. reinforced by the work of his disciples, If outstanding miracles done in the full light* public attention, and by more than one specid: campaign in Jerusalem.

This, as a deliberate policy, to be carridj through with remorseless resolution and! unceasing activity, is the key to a prop*’ understanding of much that the gospels narn*. about the last six months of the ministry. As the* studies proceed it will be necessary time and again to draw attention to this set purpox dominating the teaching and activity ofJesm right to the end. His unflagging self-dedicationJ to this work and the long drawn-out effort involved was to leave him almost a physio wreck by the time his Passover came on.

Notes: Jn. 7:37-53

38.	Out of his belly. A synecdoche for “from him”; cp. Rom. 16:18; Ph. 3:19; Tit. 1:12. But John doubtless wants his readers to see here an element of the literal; 19:34.
	Shall flow. In the passive this verb always (26 times) refers to the utterance of a divine oracle; e.g. Mt. 1:22.
39.	Not yet glorified; ie. the Rock not yet smitten. Note the various associations of “glorified” in John:
	a.	by disciples at last understanding him; 11:4; 17:10.
	b.	ascension; 16:7.
	c.	the gospel to the Gentiles; 12:20,23; ls.55:5.
41.	The Gk. hardly allows of this question being said in hostility.
42.	Bethlehem. Other examples of John assuming without explanation a knowledge in his readers of details into other gospels:
	a.	The twelve (6:6,7).
	b.	Mary Magdalene (19:25; 20:1).
	c.	The other women with Mary at the tomb(20:2).
	d.	The institution of baptism (3:22,23).
	e.	The Breaking of Bread (6:50,51 – omitted in ch. 13).
	f.	The gift of the Spirit (7:39)implies Acts 2.
	There are other examples.
48.	Any of the rulers: 12:42; ls.53:3;l Cor. 1:20,26;2:8.
49.	Cursed. Yet they must have known Dt. 27:26.
50.	Nicodemus. Allusions in Jewish writings might mean that Nicodemus was a kinsman of Gamaliel, that he was hounded from the Sanhedrin for his discipleship of Jesus, and that he died in abject poverty (Acts.4:34?).

Just as the ceremony of water-pouring at the Feast of Tabernacles was intended to remind the people of Israel of the smitten rock in the wilderness, so also another ritual during that week was designed to recall the way in which God protected and guided His people by the pillar of fire and cloud—the Shekinah Glory. In the Court of the Women were two great golden candelabra. These were lighted, some rabbinic authorities say only on the first evening of the feast, others say every night except the last.

There can be little doubt that as Jesus had appropriated the first symbol, to call men to himself as the true source of “living water”, so now he similarly alluded to the other: “He that followeth me (as Israel were led by the Glory in the wilderness) shall not walk in darkness, bil shall have the light of life.” The “darkness” referred to is not, as might be expected, tin darkness of spiritual ignorance, but of divine displeasure. When Israel came out of Egypt the Glory was “a cloud and darkness to tin Egyptians, but it gave light by night to Israel,” There is no lack of other examples of this darkness signifying the anger of God (Mt. 27:45; Ps. 18:8-14; Is. 9:19).

O.T. Anticipations

In a wonderful prophecy of Messiah, Isaiah had earlier made use of the same figure: “I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth (the Light of the World). . . that thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves” (49:6,9). Here there follows a lovely pen picture of the blessings of God in the wilderness, including these words: “He that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water (the smitten rock) shall he guide them.”

Another prophecy of Isaiah uses similar language as it looks forward even more obviously to the days of the Messiah. Chapter 3 ends with a picture of Jerusalem as a wretched and forsaken woman: “she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.” Here the LXX uses the identical expression by which the adulterous woman is described in John 8:9, where, by the way, the word “standing” is not in the original text. Perhaps this passage may be taken as indication that actually she had subsided on the ground in a posture of hopelessness. Chapter 4 continues: “And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let thy name be called upon us (i.e. consecration); take thou away our reproach … every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem: even he that remaineth in Jerusalem: when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion… by the spirit of judgement. And the Lord shall create over the whole habitation of mount Zion, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the Glory shall be a canopy” (4:1,3-5). The close connections here with the phrasing of John 8 will be readily discerned.

“The Light of Life”

If there is any kind of uncertainty as to precisely what Jesus meant by “the light of life”, help is to hand from the Old Testament source of it: “Lo, all these things doth God work, twice, yea thrice, to bring back his soul from the pit, kit he may be enlightened with the light of life” (Job 33:30).

It may be presumed that this “Light of the world” discourse was a good deal more than the two brief sentences which John reports. Then (and for the rest of chapter 8) Jesus is found in controversy with the Pharisees again. The words: “These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple” (v. 20), imply that the discourse on “the Light of the world” was interrupted by arrest, for the treasury was no place for public teaching but was an important centre of temple administration, next to the famous Hall of Unhewn Stone. Here Jesus was not on trial, but the assembly may well have been intended as a judicial enquiry, with intention to put him on trial later. The encounter has something of that flavour. But (as in John 5) the Lord used the occasion to put his adversaries on trial.

By whose authority?

The enquiry was, ostensibly, to question whether Jesus had the right to claim divine authority for his teaching:

“Thou bearest witness of thyself; thy witness is not true.”

It was the experience of Moses all over again: “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?” (Ex.2:14)-implying ‘God didn’t’, whereas God certainly did. And there was also the implied jibe: ‘A born Israelite? Not you! Ask Pharaoh’s daughter where you came from!’ And there was now the same innuendo about Jesus: ‘A mission from God? Your claim is hilarious! You are not even a true-born man of Israel. Begotten by one of our overlords!’

It was a mean, nasty-minded calumny. As though they had not witnessed authentication in abundance of the claims of Jesus! Miracle after miracle of healing, the cleansing of the temple, discourse of unique power and ability-yet they must needs harp on a theme they had already tried before: Messiah has his Elijah; your forerunner was no Elijah, see how he died! So you are no Messiah. Reduced to bearing witness concerning yourself, how can you be?

Yet, had they stopped to ponder, they would have known that the signs of authentication given to Moses were even more eloquent regarding himself: the serpent-power firmly grasped, and turned into the token of divine authority; and the sin-disease of leprosy in his own bosom proved to be powerless and clean.

But they demanded, as their colleagues in Galilee had done, a sign from heaven: ‘You have just been talking about the Glory of the Lord, and have dared to identify yourself with it! Then show us that vivid Shekinah brightness, and then we will believe!’

Jesus replied by first putting his finger on the root of their rejection of his claims: “Ye judge after the flesh.” It was another way of saying again: “if any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.” The bent of their minds was deliberately and of set choice antagonistic. They, the appointed arbiters of truth among God’s people, had shown themselves to be riddled with prejudice.

Again, Jesus and Moses

Yet this could in no way alter the facts: “I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither 1 go.” There was double meaning here. They had sneered at what they thought the disreputable circumstances of his birth. Here was their answer. But the real emphasis was on his divine authority. Not only could he say: “I know whence I come, and whither I go”, but he also knew whence they came, and whither they went: “Ye are from beneath” (v.23)-not Abraham’s seed (v. 33), but the seed of the serpent (v. 44); “ye shall die in your sins” (v. 24).

At Sinai Israel had been familiar enough with the comings and goings of Moses, but precisely what he experienced on those occasions they never knew: “As for this Moses, we wot not what is become of him.” And now, with the one greater than Moses, there was a like situation. That such a man as Jesus should claim such high authority was to them a stark impossibility.

There was a shouting contrast between their attitude and his own: “/judge no man (after the flesh).” The ellipsis must be supplied in this way, for at that very time he was judging and condemning the men before him, in sharp contrast with his refusal to condemn the woman lately brought before him for judgment.

But in the sense of inflicting judgment, his words were literally true, for he was leaving such penal measures to the Father, as Moses also did (Num. 16:28-30). –

True Witness

Apparently on the eighth day of the Feast the temple service included Psalm 82. Jesus was surely alluding to it, time after time: “God (in the person of Jesus) standeth in the congregation of the Elohim (the nation’s leaders) . . . How long will ye judge unjustly? … They know not neither will they understand: they walk on in darkness.”

“For I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.” Again the incomplete sentence must be filled out: “I and the Father that sent me.-we agree in our judgment.” It was a declaration, readily verifiable, that all Jesus taught was according to the Old Testament, already given them by his Father. The Father had already provided an abiding witness to His Messiah.

The witness of Moses was not always free from blame. “Hear now, ye rebels, must we (Jehovah and I) fetch you water out of this rock?” (Num. 20:10). But Jesus could and did bear witness to his own high status without any hint of the near-blasphemy which brought such a penalty to his great predecessor.

Accordingly, Jesus went on to underline this fact by specific use of the Old Testament: “It is a/so written in your law, that the witness of two men is true” (Dt. 17:6; 19:15). Then how much more irrefragible the witness when the two are divine, and not ordinary men! Years later, with this situation in mind John was to write: “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater” (1 John5:9).

That “also” seems to imply that Jesus had been making allusion to some other Scripture, besides the one specifically quoted. Then, which? Possibly, the very striking LXX reading of Isaiah 43:10: “Be ye my witnesses-and I am a witness, saith the Lord God, and my Servant whom I have chosen—that ye may know and believe and understand that I am.”

Or was the Lord referring to Moses’ charge to the judges appointed to administer justice: “Judge righteously between every man and hi brother … Ye shall not respect persons in judgement… for the judgement is God’s; am the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me (Moses), and I will hear it” (Dt. 1:16,17). In bringing the adulterous woman to Jesus, they had (so he reminded them) inadvertently admitted Jesus to be the prophet like unto Moses. But in their assessment of him and his origin, how they needed the exhortation to “judge righteous judgement.”

When Jesus insisted: “the Father that sent me beareth witness of me”, it is not clear just what witness he was referring to. Clear and strong in his own mind was the recent reassuring witness of the Transfiguration: “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear him”. There was the witness borne him by “signs and wonders and divers miracles.” But in this context most probably it was the testimony of the Scriptures to which Jesus pointed these scribes and rabbis, In them the Father was bearing the plainest witness possible, if only these men of learning would pluck off the blinkers from their eyes.

Instead these unscrupulous men saw their chance to score a point, and leaped to the attack: “Where is thy father?” They fired the derisive question at him repeatedly. By deliberately misunderstanding him they thought to avoid his accusation of them, and to turn tin tables on him; as who should say: “Nobody knows who or where your father is. Then how can he be a witness on your behalf?”

Jesus ignored the jibe, and brought the discussion back to its proper level. “Ye know neither me, nor my Father: if ye knew me; ye would know my Father also.” It was a terrible indictment, that these men, the nation’s highest authorities on all religious questions, should be so caustically described as wallowing in ignorance!

There the discussion ended for the time being, Ms adversaries vengefully eager to get him condemned and punished, but not daring to do so because of the crowd. As always, in this gospel especially, there is point in the mention that this encounter took place in the treasury. This, and the constant repetition of the words “judgement, witness” are doubtless intended to take the reader yet again to the graphic prophecy in Malachi 3 which had already been the backcloth to so much in these Temple encounters: “I will come near to you to judgement; and I will be a swift witness against” all the evil doers (3:5).

The same prophecy continues: “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings . . . Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse . . . and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing” (3:8-10). Tabernacles was a time when, according to Deuteronomy 26:1-11, the people of Israel were to bring their harvest thanksgiving to the Lord. What Jesus now sought in the Treasury was not payment to God in kind or in cash but in their open-hearted acceptance of himself as “the messenger of the covenant.” But he looked for this in vain.

Notes: John8:12-2

12.	The figure of “Light” comes several times to John, but the basis of the figure is not always the same:
		12:23,36: the allusion, as here, is to the Shekinah Glory.
		9:4,5: the light of the sun, daylight.
		1:4-9: light in the beginning of Creation(Gen.l).
		1 Jn. 1:5,6;2:9-11: the darkness of Judaism is contrasted with the light of the Gospel.
13.	Thy witness is not true. The same attack in 5:31; 7:18,28; 8:54.
17.	The witness of two men. Dt. 1:17 is modified here to point the contrast between having men and having God as witness. Note how frequently in Scripture this legal principle is appealed to: Dt. 19:15; 17:6; Num. 35:30; Mt.l8:16;2Cor.l3:l;lTim.5:19

It would seem that the Transfiguration took place at night-time for it was next day (Lk.) when Jesus and three apostles rejoined the rest. There they came upon a scene of great excitement.

A man, whose only son was subject to terrible epileptic fits, had brought the boy (probably in his teens) to Jesus (Mk) seeking a cure. But access to Jesus was not possible. No one precisely where he was. However nine of his disciples were available, and willing to help! So the anxious parent sought their aid. Evidently it was known that earlier in the ministry Jesus had sent out the twelve on a preaching mission and tad imparted to them some of the powers which he himself exercised: “he sent them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits” (Mk. 6:7).

Embarrassed Disciples

However all efforts on the part of the disciples had now proved fruitless. Nor was this to be wondered at. For, inevitably, with wavering faith in their leader had come also cessation of the powers he had given them.

The scribes, ever on the alert to make capital out of a situation, saw a splendid opportunity to weaken yet further the loyalty of these followers of Jesus. Using all their considerable dialectical skill, they exploited the embarrassment of the disciples to the full. Powerless disciples, powerless Leader, of course! Should not their present failure set them wondering whether or not they had been hoodwinked by a demagogue who was too clever for them?

And the disciples had no convincing reply. Thus, whilst Jesus received honour and glory from his Father (2 Pet. 1:17) these nine disciples encountered shame, defeat and dishonour. Before the large crowd which had gathered their incompetence was thoroughly exposed-no display of miraculous healing, and in argument only tongue-tied incoherence. When Moses went up mount Sinai and communed there with the angel of God’s Presence, the situation in the camp of Israel had rapidly gone to pieces, and Moses returned to a scene of apostasy and corruption. Now Jesus similarly returned from the mountain of the Glory of the Lord to find his disciples beset with difficulties, and with faith at a low ebb. The weakness Aaron had shown (Ex.32:1-6, 21,25) was now matched by that of the apostles.

Yet in another respect there was marked contrast with the experience of Moses. When he returned from the mount “the skin of his face shone: and the people were afraid to come nigh him” (Ex.34:30). But when the crowd saw Jesus, “they were greatly amazed (at the sight of the Transfiguration Glory still to be seen in his face?), and running to him they saluted him” (Mk). They “saw Christ’s glory, full of grace and truth.”

Luke hints at the same phenomenon when he comments: “They were all amazed at the mighty power of God” (9:43). The word means literally “majesty” (as in 2 Pet. 1:16 and Dan.7:27).

Paul, commenting on how “the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the (fading) glory of his countenance, asks: “Shall not the ministration of the spirit be more glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.” It is “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor.3:7,8; 4:6).

Elisha, prefiguring Christ, had a like experience: “And when the sons of the prophets . . . saw him (after Elijah was taken away), they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him” (2Kgs.2:15).

Stephen, that outstanding servant of Christ, who so closely recapitulated his Lord’s experience, was also radiant with divine glory: “They saw his face as it had been the face of an angel”; and the explanation of this is withheld to the end of the next chapter: “Looking steadfastly up to heaven, he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God” (Acts.6:15; 7:55).

In a later study (213) it will be seen that when Jesus was in Gethsemane, the Glory was once again seen in his face (Lk.22:43 with Jn.l8:6 andPs.43:5).

Jesus knew that he had returned to a scene of argument and contention. Without a moment’s delay he came to the help of his embarrassed and hard-pressed disciples. He addressed a question to the scribes point-blank: “What question ye with them?” This was enough. These able men, who possibly had already been worsted in discussion with Jesus on some earlier occasion, were happy enough to score points over the untutored Galilean followers but did not at all relish a head-on collision with Jesus himself. So they quietly subsided into the background. And the disciples, unwilling to proclaim their own defeat, left explanations to the father of the stricken youth.

Father and son in distress

The man was only too ready to explain. Kneeling in humble supplication before Jesus, he told his story-how he had hopefully brought his pathetic afflicted son, his only son (cp.Lk.8:42; 7:12), and had turned to the disciples for healing (Mt.lO:8), but in vain. It was the experience of the Shunamite woman over again. Even the staff of the prophet Elisha in the hand of his unworthy minister Gehazi had achieved nothing (2 Kgs.4:29-31). Perhaps the man’s mind ran on this wonderful Old Testament story, gathering hope that even now, as then, the prophet might graciously make up for the failure of his servant.

He went on to tell the details of his poor son’s sufferings. A pooling of details from the three records builds up into one of the most vivid and poignant pictures to be found in the gospels:

“Teacher, Lord,

I have brought my only son to you.

I beg you to look on him,

and have mercy on him,

For he has a dumb spirit (ie. it makes him utterly speechless).

He is moonstruck (ie. the attacks are intermittent),

and he suffers terribly.

Behold, whenever the spirit seizes him,

he suddenly cries out:

it convulses him, and dashes him down:

often he falls into the fire,

and often into the water;

he foams at the mouth,

and grinds his teeth:

it (the spirit) shatters him,

he becomes rigid,

and it will hardly leave him” (RSV mainly).

The father went on to explain: “I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him (they were not empowered, that is, by God”. Matthew, one of those nine failures, has left this on record against himself!

It is not unlikely that this experience was in the nature of a test-case for Judas. First, he found himself not included in the apostolic group of highest privilege. Then failure to heal. Then a withering exposure by the cleverness of the scribes. And finally the Lord’s own censure.

“Faithless Generation”

The man’s pathetic pleading proceeded: “Look on my son”, that is, with concern and sympathy. This is a meaning that is fairly common in LXX, especially in the Psalms.

In response Jesus became a turbulent conflict of compassion and indignation: “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?”

It is no easy problem to settle whom these words were intended for. Surely not for the man himself, already wracked with misery and helplessness. Yet the best texts of Mark’s gospel say that the words were addressed to him. But in that case why the word “generation”? The same difficulty rules out the disciples also, even though in some respects the epithet “faithless” was by no means inappropriate. However it is difficult to imagine Jesus castigating his own followers in the hearing of their adversaries and of the multitude. Nor does it satisfy to apply the words either to the scribes or to the crowd. Fitting enough, no doubt, where the scribes were concerned, but was the father’s heart-rending appeal the right and proper moment to turn on them in this way?

More likely the Lord’s vigorous disapproval was not directed at any one present, but was an apostrophe to the nation generally. Jesus, with an eye always to the spiritual significance of circumstances saw this father and son as a figure of the two aspects of the spiritual condition of the nation of Israel.

As will be seen by and by, from this point of view the entire incident becomes a wonderful acted parable. “Faithless and perverse generation” is Moses’ scorching censure of Israel (Dt.32:5,20). It came to be used also by Peter (Acts.2:40) and by Paul (Phil.2:15) in precisely the same way (cp. Ps.78:8). “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation”? was the expostulation of the angel of the lord to Moses (Num.14:27).

After this brief explosion of indignation, the compassion of Jesus, ever irrepressible, took charge of him. “Bring him here to me”, he ordered. Yet it may be inferred from the details of the narrative (Mark 9:25) that, not content to wait till they brought the boy, who was now evidently resting some distance away, Jesus left the crowd and with the boy’s father went to meet him.

As they were approaching each other, the boy had another fit. Its onset threw him on the ground and very rapidly the convulsions intensified. He roiled about, foaming at the mouth – a piteous and frightening spectacle.

“If thou canst…”

Strong as the compassionate urge in him was to heal the poor sufferer at once, Jesus held back, questioning the father. “Has he been long like this?” “Ever since he was very young”, came the distressed reply. “If you can do anything – if you can — do have pity on us, and help us.” Those plural pronouns spoke volumes, the soul of that helpless father was contorted in suffering just as much as his child was. Yet he could not bring himself to speak with hope or confidence. The long series of disappointments with one doctor after another, and last of all from the futile efforts of the Lord’s own disciples, had brought his spirits to their lowest ebb.

The reply of Jesus may be read in two different ways, depending on which of two manuscripts readings is followed. There is rather better evidence for the AV: “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth”; but the switch of pronouns from “thou” to “him” is awkward. So, if accepted, this reading needs to be helped out by an ellipsis: “If you can believe (I can help you)…” The alternative reading (less certain than would seem from its appearance in RV and RSV) makes the Lord’s words into a somewhat reproving ejaculation “You say: If you can! Let me assure you-all things are possible to him who has the faith.”

In desperation the poor man cried out: “I do have faith; help me in my lack of faith.” There he spoke for thousands of the Lord’s followers in every generation, whose ideals would take them all the way in faithful following of Christ, but who find themselves continually held back from higher achievement by inability to do without the earthly aids and props which are the ordinary man’s insurance policy.

Yet God, in His gracious understanding of the weaknesses of human nature, is willing to accept a half-faith as the stepping stone to the real thing. Abraham, promised in his old age that he should have a seed as the stars of heaven, believed God. Yet almost immediately he was asking for a support to his faith: “Whereby shall I bow that I shall inherit the Land?” There is no lack of Biblical examples of this kind. God does not expect the new-born members of His family to be giants at birth.

Appreciating the man’s intense internal struggle, Jesus went into action without further delay, for the crowd, not to be restrained by the apostles any longer, was surging towards them.

Dead? . . . Healed

Addressing himself to the ‘unclean spirit’ he spoke in terms of authority: “I charge thee-l, Jesus, and not one of my ineffectual disciples – Come out of him, and enter no more into him.”

When this was said, the fit Jesus had just witnessed was past its worst, and the boy was lying unconscious, breathing heavily. But immediately Jesus spoke, another attack came on. The boy cried out and rolled about in violent contortions. Here was a yet further trial of his lather’s faith. It seemed at first as though Jesus was even less successful then his disciples.

Then the attack ceased, and the boy lay still as death. He was a ghastly colour. Breathing seemed to have ceased. Someone knelt to examine him, and looked up at his father, pronounced him dead. And nearly all who could get within sight of him agreed: “He is dead.”

But then Jesus took him by the hand and sat him up. To the astonishment of everyone, the boy came to. With a word of encouragement Jesus got him on to his feet. There was an alert look in his eye, and a healthy colour in his cheek—and holding him, an excited father incoherent with gladness and gratitude.

“Enter no more into him”, Jesus had said, addressing himself to the evil malady just witnessed. That spasm-racked constitution had suffered for the last time.

And the crowd saw and marvelled at “the majesty o God”. This unusual expression is that reserved by Peter to describe Jesus’ appearance in the Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16), so the conclusion is probably correct that the heavenly Glory was still to be seen in the face of Jesus, and it was to this the crowd attributed the miracle.

Disciples’ Problem

Naturally the man pressed Jesus and his followers to accept the hospitality of his home. When they were come into the house the disciples, put out by their own failure and by the exposure of it before many people, asked Jesus anxiously: ‘Why could not we heal the boy? Whose fault?-yours, or ours?’

In reply he had to tell them bluntly: “Because of your little faith.” This is not to be understood as meaning (what modern evangelicals and Pentecostals are eager to claim) that the only essential qualification for working miracles is a firm faith that God will so work through them. This situation was special to the apostles. Earlier, when they went out preaching, Jesus had shared with them his own marvellous endowment of healing power. But in the last few months doubts had grown in their minds about the claims of their Leader. His idea of Messiahship seemed so different from theirs. At times loyalty had been strained to the limit, and faith had been replaced by hesitance and timidity. How, possibly, could the divine power of Jesus continue in them whilst they thus halted between two opinions?

Their biggest problem, exemplified in a further clash with the scribes that day, was their Master’s intransigent attitude to “the establishment.” Recognizing this, Jesus proceeded to underscore that there could be no coming to terms with a system which was not prepared to acknowledge him. “Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”

Those who would attempt to take this saying literally emulate the worst blunders of the disciples and proclaim their spiritual immaturity. “This mountain” is, of course, the Mount of Transfiguration, with its foretaste of the glory and fellowship of Christ’s kingdom. “Yonder place” can hardly be other than Jerusalem, which was almost in sight from where they were. Thus the essential meaning of Christ’s saying was: The coming of the kingdom of God to Jerusalem, so that it is reality and not just an unrealised hope, depends, at least in part, on the faith of those who believe in me.

It is a principle which the Bible teaches in many places, but which the first and twentieth century disciples alike seem loth to learn. Yet it was there, set out in impressive symbolic form, in the miracle of healing Jesus had done that day.

Type of Israel

The boy and his father are a figure of Israel, in desperate need of spiritual regeneration. The boy’s epilepsy represents the unceasing troubles and afflictions of the Jewish people. Hence Christ’s seemingly heartless words: “O faithless generation, how long shall I suffer you?” The apostles, making futile efforts to heal, typify the ecclesia in the time of Christ’s coming, with neither the faith nor the power to achieve any progress towards the kingdom of God. The scribes, controversial and with even less power, stand for the useless perversions of the gospel, in modern times, or maybe for the futilities of Jewish orthodoxy. Jesus comes again, from heaven and in visible glory, at a time when his nation is enduring a paroxysm of suffering (see the references to fire and water in Ps.66:12; Is.43:2). The outcome is that Israel is now given up for ‘dead’. Yet, at such a time, for the father’s sake, there is miraculous restoration to complete and lasting health, so that all nations, beholding, marvel at ‘the majesty of God.’ It is to be noted that this culminating keyword comes in only two places in the Greek Old Testament: “The greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High” (Dan.7:27;cp Jer.33:9).

This is not the first time that a miracle of Jesus has proved to be also a very vivid parable. That such was the intention behind it is indicated by the further answer, perhaps more enigmatic than the first, which Jesus gave to his disciples’ enquiry: “This kind can come forth by nothing

but by prayer and fasting” (Mk.) Few readers of the gospel will be disposed to interpret this as meaning: ‘I have been praying and fasting; you have not. Therefore I have the power to work this miracle, when you are impotent to do it.’ If this is what Jesus meant, the ascetics in the 4th and 5th centuries would have been the outstanding wonder workers of all time. Then what did Jesus mean?

First, it is necessary to settle the textual problem. Should the word ‘fasting’ be there at all? The facts are that, besides the Sinaitic and Vatican codices, there is hardly any ancient authority which leaves the word out. The massive consensus of witness by manuscripts, early versions and quotations in the Fathers is in favour of retaining the word ‘fasting’. It is not difficult to see that some in the early church misunderstood the gist of the passage, found that fasting did not work miracles, and promptly decided that something had gone wrong with the text.

Yet if the suggestion made earlier, that the transfiguration took place on or near the Day of Atonement, be considered, it will be found to help out the meaning here very considerably.

That important day in the Jewish Year was the only fast which the Law of Moses required: “ye shall afflict your souls” (Lev.l6:31). The people assembled in the court of the temple and whilst the high priest followed the appointed ritual inside the sanctuary, they prayed in silence and waited in expectation. The acceptance of the sin-offering on behalf of the nation was signified (in the early days) by the manifestation of the Shekinah Glory, and then the high priest came forth to the waiting multitude and blessed then in the name of the Lord.

So, when Jesus declared that “this kind can come forth by nothing but prayer and fasting”, his mind was on the symbolism of the Day of Atonement and of the miracle he had just performed. And when he said “this kind” he meant the kind of ill men cannot cure-sin!

In this twentieth century the force of the saying is greatly intensified. Not until the peopled Israel show the repentant spirit of which prays and fasting are the outward tokens will the High Priest come forth from the Divine Presence to bless them with the forgiveness of sins: “Unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Heb.9;2!| Then the demon will enter into Israel no more.

Notes: Mk.9:14-29

14.	A great multitude, and the scribes. Would this be likely at the foot of Mt. Hermon?
17.	One of the multitude. Luke’s word suggests a man of importance.
19.	Faithless generation. Consider Phil 2:15; Ads.2:40; Ps.78:8; Dt. 32:5 LXX; as well as Num.14:27.
20.	Probably means: and when he (Jesus) saw him, and not as RSV.
21.	He asked his father. For a similar apparently callous delay, see Mk.5:35.
22.	If thou canst do anything. In 1:40 the leper said: “If you want to…”
23.	All things. A lovely contrast with ‘any thing’ (v. 22)
24.	My unbelief. Could this be a confession that hitherto he had been a worldly irreligious man, not taking his Jewish religion seriously, and therefore not deserving of help?
25.	Deaf and dumb spirit. Zacharias was made deaf and dumb by the angel Gabriel! See Study 30.
26.	This seems to describe another fit following on that in v.20.

Jesus took his disciples away north into the country near Tyre. There was acute need to get them away from all the deleterious influences to which they had lately been subject. Matthew’s word means “he cleared out, he fled;” and Mark seems to imply “next day,” after the violent disputation with the Pharisees. There was also need to further the apostles’ spiritual education. Their understanding of their Master must be filled out. So Jesus was glad to let go the crowd in order to concentrate on saving the Twelve from collapse of faith (cp. Mt. 16:4,6).

It is not unlikely that the house to which they came in this north-western region was put at the Lord’s disposal by one of his wealthy sympathisers, maybe one of those like the Capernaum nobleman who felt everlastingly grateful to Jesus for his miraculous help.

This is the first of a series of allusions in this part of the gospels to Jesus spending time in the more remote corners of Jewish territory and in the Gentile areas just beyond (compare Matthew 15 :39; 16 :13; 17 :1; Mk. 7 :31; 8:10). It was evidently his intention at this time to avoid the Jewish crowds who followed him so excitedly, but who were nevertheless so impervious to the essential character of his teaching.

A plea for help

Even in the neighbourhood of Tyre it was impossible to go unrecognized. A woman there immediately knew that this was Jesus of Nazareth, the one man who could help her daughter in her desperate plight. She is described as “a Canaanite”, and as “a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by race.” The first of these terms was long obsolete. It belonged properly to the races whom Israel were commanded to eliminate when they conquered the Land (Dt. 20 :17), but who had persisted right through the centuries, especially in those areas where in ancient days Jewish domination had never been well established. Perhaps Matthew has included the name so as to hint at the time when the people of Canaan and Tyre were numbered to David along with the tribes of Israel (2 Sam. 24 :7). The mention of Syrio links with the pointed allusion to Gentiles—Naaman and the widow of Sarepta, praised by Jesus for their faith (Lk 4 -.25-27). The latter had had her child restored to her by the man of God. Now there was to be a like act of grace to another Gentile mother in that area. The description “Greek” is equivalent to Gentile (Gal. 3 :28). Since she “came out from those borders” (RV), it almost seems as though she knew of the Lord’s approach, and came to meet him.

Matthew’s characteristic “Behold” emphasizes the unexpectedness of the recognition of Jesus and also the highly unusual attitude of the woman herself. This poor soul was made miserable by the calamitous condition of her little daughter who was “possessed by an unclean spirit”. Judging from the one detail given, the affliction was probably epilepsy, but it is difficult to be sure.

Out on the road this woman came crying after them: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David.” Like the man whose epileptic son was healed just after the Transfiguration (Mk. 9 :22), she suffered acutely in the suffering of her child, hence her cry: “Have mercy on me.” That she should call Jesus “Lord” and “Son of David” showed her quality. Canaanite she might be, but she knew the Hope of Israel, believed it, and believed also that in this Jesus the great Promise to David would be fulfilled.

She was surely a “proselyte of the gate,” that is, not a full convert to Judaism but at least one who accepted the main principles of the religion of Israel.

Persistence

Her repeated cries appeared to fall on deaf ears. Jesus took no notice—or seemed to. After a while the disciples lost patience. Wasn’t it obvious to her, as it very plainly was to them, that Jesus did not intend to help her. Then why couldn’t she take “No” for an answer and go away? But she persisted, to the point of getting on their nerves as she followed them on the road. So they repeatedly asked Jesus to cope with the situation: “Send her away, for she crieth after us.” If they meant (as many have so understood) that Jesus should do what she asked and so gain peace and quiet for them from her importunity, it was a strange way of expressing it. Yet, had they stopped to think, they would have been hard put to recall a single occasion when anyone in need had gone away from Jesus empty-handed.

However it seemed that this was such a time. After all, she was only a Gentile, and they knew Jesus was set on avoiding the publicity which his wonders of healing inevitably brought. When he replied: “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” they knew that they were right. That light-hearted Puritan, Tom Fuller, called them “miserable mediators, interceding for her repulse.” Did they stop to ask themselves what lost sheep he was busy rescuing at that very time? Except for themselves, practically all the people in that area were Gentiles.

Why should Jesus appear so heedless of this moving appeal? Burgon comments: “We have often found cause to wonder at the Saviour’s words, but never till now at his silence.”

The explanation often advanced, that the seeming indifference was a deliberate testing of the quality of the woman’s faith, is anything but satisfactory. It can hardly be said to present Jesus in a good light. At least as plausible is the idea that Jesus did nothing at first because he was genuinely puzzled to know what was best to do. His natural inclination was to respond at once to this cry for help. His almost ungovernable compassion for people in need meant that only by dint of much internal conflict could he say “No”. Yet if he were to go to the woman’s home and exercise his healing power there, massive publicity was bound to follow, and the entire purpose of this retreat to the north would be brought to nought. It is a likely guess that Jesus, unable to resolve the dilemma which the woman presented him with, gave himself to silent prayer about it as he went on the road.

The answer came in the outworking of events. When they got back to their headquarters, the woman, desperate and undaunted, followed them into the house. There, with a puppy, one of the household pets, close by her, she knelt at the Lord’s feet and repeated her petition: “Lord, help me.” Nothing could be more simple, nothing more eloquent or moving.

Jesus framed his reply to fit the circumstances. With his mind obviously on the familiar fact that Jews so often referred to Gentiles as “dogs”, he countered: “Let the children first be filled: it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and cast it unto the dogs (Gk. kunaria: puppies).” The “children” he had in mind were, of course, not the children of Israel, but the twelve. Might not his responding to her plea be the means of robbing them of the weeks of instruction and spiritual rehabilitation which this northern holiday was intended to provide? And if word got round about him going to a Gentile house to heal a Gentile child, would there not be a massive build-up of Jewish prejudice against him? Among his own people the minds of thousands would be closed to all further appeal.

Insight

“Let the children first be fed.” Here was clear implication that in due time Jesus hoped to gather Gentiles also within the scope of his gracious ministry. Whether the woman went so far, or not, in her understanding is difficult to say. But, in any case, to her, in urgent need, it was beside the point. She clamoured for the immediate aid which she was sure Jesus could give. With marvellous readiness of mind for one so distraught, she saw her opportunity and pressed it home: “Yes, Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.”

Again, Fuller comments neatly on this pertinacity: “Indeed she showed one of the best qualities of a dog, in keeping her hold where once she had well fastened, not giving over or letting go until she had gotten what she desired.” She held on, doubtless, because she detected signs of irresolution in the face of Jesus.

What marvellous insight and faith were wrapped up in her short rejoinder. With a word she accepted the inferior spiritual status of Gentiles as “dogs” compared with the true household of God. And the mighty miracle which she pleaded for was but a “crumb”, hardly worth noticing! Then what was the main repast provided for God’s own? What but the forgiveness of sins and all the gracious blessings of Messiah, the Son of David?

Her amazing confession of faith involved even more than this. In his half-playful allusion to the dogs, Jesus had also mentioned the children as having prior claims. In her reply the woman dexterously changed the word into one which also very commonly meant “servants” (just as in French “garcon” means “boy” and also “waiter”). This means that she saw Jesus as the master of the household, his disciples as the children, the rest of the Jewish nation as servants, and herself as a Gentile “puppy” scavenging for crumbs on the floor. What a contrast with the obtuseness of the twelve! (e.g. in Mt. 16:7)!

This faith and persistence and spiritual insight provided the greatest stimulus Jesus had had for a long time. What she had done for him was far greater than what she asked. “O woman, great is thy faith. For this saying go thy way, and be it unto thee even as thou wilt. The devil is gone out of they daughter.” And here again, as always in such instances, Jesus chose his words so as to imply that the cure was permanent. There was nothing to fear for the future.

Healed from a distance

And the woman went, believing, and there was no disappointment. Instead of the stertorous breathing of a contorted little body, and the fierce angry unnatural hue of the poor sufferer’s face, there was one of the loveliest sights in all God’s creation-a child peacefully asleep, relaxed and untroubled. The devil was gone (cp. Jn.4:46ff).

Thus this Gentile woman joined the honourable order of those who refused to be put off, and were blessed for their persistence: the paralytic and his loyal friends (Mk.2:4),, the leper (1:40), blind Bartimaeus (10:48), and wrestling Jacob (Gen.32:26).

There is here an impressive study in unanswered prayer: First, there were persistent requests-No! Then the disciples interceded-again, No! A further direct appeal —and still, No! Then faith seized its opportunity for persuasive expression-and the answer now is Yes! But suppose she had taken that triple refusal for an answer!

But how did the apostles know the outcome of their master’s assurance about the little girl’s recovery? Did one of them escort the woman home? Or did she promptly return to pour out her gratitude?

Many hundreds of years before, the prophecy had been spoken: “Blessed be the Lord God of Shem (the Name); Canaan shall be his servant” (Gen. 9:26). Now those ancient words found a wonderful new meaning in the devotion of a thankful woman.

This was the third time that Jesus chose to work a miracle from a distance. There was the servant of the Roman centurion, and the son of the noblemen in Galilee of the Gentiles; and now this little daughter of a woman of Canaan Later, there was also the Samaritan leper. They all foreshadowed a wonderful truth-how from a distance Jesus was to bring healing to Gentiles in desperate need.

Notes: Mt. 15:21-28

22.	Behold. Thus in a word Matthew tells how extraordinary it was that the woman should know Jesus was there, and —knowing —that she should appeal to him.
	Son of David. A Messianic title used of Jesus only in 9:27; 20:30; 21:9.
28.	Great is thy faith. Besides the paralytic and Bartimaeus, already mentioned, a like commendation was reserved for the woman who touched the Lord’s robe in the crowd (9:22), the two blind men (9:29), the Samaritan leper (Lk. 17:19), and – differently—the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet (Lk. 7:50).