John 7–8: Before Abraham Was Born, I Am": The Festival, the Woman, and the Hardest Verse in the Book
Scripture: Berean Standard Bible · commentary free in this preview
Chapter eight contains the sentence "You belong to your father, the devil," and few verses in the New Testament have been used to kill more people. It was the backbone of the claim that Jews were children of the devil, it was quoted in the literature of every major expulsion, it was printed in the propaganda of the twentieth century, and it was in the air of a baptized continent during the murder of six million Jewish people. It is printed exactly as it stands, and I will take as long as it needs in the Meaning.
Around it, two chapters of argument at the Festival of Tabernacles. His own brothers do not believe in him, John says, and they goad him. The crowds are divided, the temple police are sent to arrest him and come back empty-handed saying nobody ever spoke like this, and Nicodemus — the man who came at night in chapter three — stands up in the council and asks whether the law condemns anyone without a hearing, and is sneered at for it.
And in the middle of it, in most Bibles, sits the story of a woman dragged in for a public execution and a man who bends down and writes in the dust. That story is not in the earliest manuscripts of this gospel. It is printed here under its own heading, in full, and I will tell you exactly what is known about it.
After this, Jesus traveled throughout Galilee. He did not want to travel in Judea, because the Jews there were trying to kill him. However, the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near. So Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you are doing. For no one who wants to be known publicly acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Therefore Jesus told them, “Although your time is always at hand, my time has not yet come. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I testify that its works are evil. Go up to the feast on your own. I am not going up to this feast, because my time has not yet come.”
Having said this, Jesus remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, he also went—not publicly, but in secret.
So the Jews were looking for him at the feast and asking, “Where is he?”
Many in the crowds were whispering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.”
But others replied, “No, he deceives the people.”
Yet no one would speak publicly about him for fear of the Jews.
About halfway through the feast, Jesus went up to the temple courts and began to teach. The Jews were amazed and asked, “How did this man attain such learning without having studied?”
“My teaching is not my own,” Jesus replied. “It comes from him who sent me. If anyone desires to do his will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or whether I speak on my own. He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but he who seeks the glory of the One who sent him is a man of truth; in him there is no falsehood. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps it. Why are you trying to kill me?”
“You have a demon,” the crowd replied. “Who is trying to kill you?”
Jesus answered them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. But because Moses gave you circumcision, you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath (not that it is from Moses, but from the patriarchs.) If a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses will not be broken, why are you angry with me for making the whole man well on the Sabbath? Stop judging by outward appearances, and start judging justly.”
Then some of the people of Jerusalem began to say, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? Yet here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying anything to him. Have the rulers truly recognized that this is the Christ? But we know where this man is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”
Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “You know me, and you know where I am from. I have not come of my own accord, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, but I know him, because I am from him and he sent me.”
So they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. Many in the crowd, however, believed in him and said, “When the Christ comes, will he perform more signs than this man?”
When the Pharisees heard the crowd whispering these things about Jesus, they and the chief priests sent officers to arrest him. So Jesus said, “I am with you only a little while longer, and then I am going to the One who sent me. You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.”
At this, the Jews said to one another, “Where does he intend to go that we will not find him? Will he go where the Jews are dispersed among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? What does he mean by saying, ‘You will look for me, but you will not find me,’ and, ‘Where I am, you cannot come’?”
On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and called out in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said: ‘Streams of living water will flow from within him.’ ” he was speaking about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. For the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.
On hearing these words, some of the people said, “This is truly the Prophet.”
Others declared, “This is the Christ.”
But still others asked, “How can the Christ come from Galilee? Doesn’t the Scripture say that the Christ will come from the line of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”
So there was division in the crowd because of Jesus. Some of them wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.
Then the officers returned to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”
“Never has anyone spoken like this man!” the officers answered.
“Have you also been deceived?” replied the Pharisees. “Have any of the rulers or Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law, they are under a curse.”
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who himself was one of them, asked, “Does our law convict a man without first hearing from him to determine what he has done?”
“Aren’t you also from Galilee?” they replied. “Look into it, and you will see that no prophet comes out of Galilee.”
The Woman Caught in Adultery (7:53–8:11). This passage is absent from every Greek manuscript of John before the fifth century; the earliest copies run straight from 7:52 to 8:12. Where it does appear, it floats — some copies place it here, some after 7:36, some at the end of John, and some in Luke after 21:38 — and its vocabulary is closer to Luke's than to John's. It is almost certainly a genuine and very old independent tradition about Jesus that circulated before being written into the margin and then into the text. It is printed here in full, as the BSB prints it, under its own heading, because it belongs to the received text of the churches; it is labeled because it is not part of John as first written.
Then each went to his own home.
But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
Early in the morning he went back into the temple courts. All the people came to him, and he sat down to teach them. The scribes and Pharisees, however, brought to him a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before them and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. So what do you say?”
They said this to test him, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger.
When they continued to question him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.” And again he bent down and wrote on the ground.
When they heard this, they began to go away one by one, beginning with the older ones, until only Jesus was left, with the woman standing there. Then Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, Lord,” she answered.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Now go and sin no more.”
Once again, Jesus spoke to the people and said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.”
So the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying about yourself; your testimony is not valid.”
Jesus replied, “Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is valid, because I know where I came from and where I am going. But you do not know where I came from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. But even if I do judge, my judgment is true, because I am not alone; I am with the Father who sent me. Even in your own Law it is written that the testimony of two men is valid. I am One who testifies about myself, and the Father, who sent me, also testifies about me.”
“Where is your Father?” they asked him.
“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus answered. “If you knew me, you would know my Father as well.”
He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts, near the treasury. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.
Again he said to them, “I am going away, and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.”
So the Jews began to ask, “Will he kill himself, since he says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?”
Then he told them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. That is why I told you that you would die in your sins. For unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.”
“Who are you?” they asked.
“Just what I have been telling you from the beginning,” Jesus replied. “I have much to say about you and much to judge. But the One who sent me is truthful, and what I have heard from him, I tell the world.”
They did not understand that he was telling them about the Father. So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but speak exactly what the Father has taught me. He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what pleases him.”
As Jesus spoke these things, many believed in him. So he said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
“We are Abraham’s descendants,” they answered. “We have never been slaves to anyone. How can you say we will be set free?”
Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
I know you are Abraham’s descendants, but you are trying to kill me because my word has no place within you. I speak of what I have seen in the presence of the Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
“Abraham is our father,” they replied.
“If you were children of Abraham,” said Jesus, “you would do the works of Abraham. But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham never did such a thing. You are doing the works of your father.”
“We are not illegitimate children,” they declared. “Our only Father is God himself.”
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own, but he sent me.
Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you are unable to accept my message. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out his desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, refusing to uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, because he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe me!
Which of you can prove me guilty of sin? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
The Jews answered him, “Are we not right to say that you are a Samaritan and you have a demon?”
“I do not have a demon,” Jesus replied, “but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. I do not seek my own glory. There is One who seeks it, and he is the Judge. Truly, truly, I tell you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”
“Now we know that you have a demon!” declared the Jews. “Abraham died, and so did the prophets, yet you say that anyone who keeps your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, as did the prophets. Who do you claim to be?”
Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. The One who glorifies me is my Father, of whom you say ‘He is our God.’ You do not know him, but I know him. If I said I did not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him, and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”
Then the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?”
“Truly, truly, I tell you,” Jesus declared, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
At this, they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus was hidden and went out of the temple area.
The Meaning
I am taking chapter eight, verse forty-four, first, last, and at length, because everything else in this section is smaller than it.
Here is the sentence. In an argument with opponents who have just told him "Abraham is our father," Jesus says: "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out his desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, refusing to uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him."
Here is what was done with it. From the second century onward, as the church became Gentile and lost the memory that this was a family argument, the verse was detached from its scene and applied to Jews as such. It became the scriptural backbone of the charge that the Jewish people were not merely mistaken but diabolical — not opponents but offspring of Satan. It belonged to the theology that surrounded the massacres of the First Crusade, when whole Jewish communities in the Rhineland were destroyed. It was cited in the theology that produced the badge, the ghetto, and the expulsions from England, France, Spain and a hundred German towns. It stood behind the blood libel, the accusation that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes, which emptied and burned communities across Europe for six centuries. Martin Luther quoted it in On the Jews and Their Lies, a book that recommended burning synagogues and destroying Jewish homes, and which was reprinted and displayed by the Nazi party four hundred years later. It appeared in the propaganda of the Third Reich. And it was in the cultural air of a continent of baptized Christians while six million Jewish people were murdered within living memory.
That is not a misuse that happened once. It is the dominant use of this verse across most of Christian history, and any rendering that prints it without saying so is handing a reader a loaded weapon and calling it neutrality.
Now here is what the verse is, in its setting.
It is intra-Jewish polemic in a conventional idiom. The speaker is a Jewish teacher. The audience, John says in verse thirty-one, is "the Jews who had believed him" — people who had just come over to his side and are now arguing with him about what it commits them to. The subject is a paternity claim that they introduced: we are Abraham's descendants. The reply works by the standard logic of that idiom — if Abraham were your father, you would do what Abraham did — and then escalates in the way first-century religious argument escalated. And it escalated hard. The Qumran community, contemporaries writing a few miles away, divided the world into the sons of light and the sons of darkness, and the sons of darkness included other Jews they disagreed with about the temple calendar. The prophets called Israel's leaders rulers of Sodom and a brood of adulterers. This register was normal and it was always used inside the family.
It cannot mean "Jews are demonic," because everyone in the scene is Jewish, because the same book has Jesus say "salvation is from the Jews," and because there is no other party present. What it means is: you are claiming a descent that your conduct contradicts. That is a hard and insulting thing to say. It is not a racial theory, and turning it into one required removing it from a room in which every single person was a Jew.
So: the verse is printed as it stands. I do not soften it, because an edition that quietly files down the sharp edges leaves a reader defenseless when they meet it elsewhere. And I say, as plainly as I can, that any reading of this sentence which licenses contempt for Jewish people is a misreading with a body count, that it has been the misreading of choice for most of Christian history, and that anyone who finishes chapter eight feeling authorized to despise anybody has understood nothing.
Now the woman, and the textual situation, because you are entitled to it.
The story of the woman caught in adultery appears in no Greek manuscript of John before the fifth century. The earliest copies of this gospel go straight from chapter seven verse fifty-two to chapter eight verse twelve. When it does start appearing, it moves around: some manuscripts place it here, some after chapter seven verse thirty-six, some at the very end of John, and some put it in Luke, after chapter twenty-one. Its vocabulary and sentence rhythms are closer to Luke than to John. The early Greek commentators who worked verse by verse through this gospel do not comment on it, because it was not in their copies.
All of which establishes that it was not part of John as first written. None of it establishes that it did not happen. Scholarly opinion runs strongly toward this being a genuine, very old tradition about Jesus that circulated orally and in the margins before being written into the text. Its floating position is what you would expect of a story everybody knew and nobody could place.
And there is a reasonable guess about why, once the story was circulating, it took so long to be admitted into the text, which I find persuasive: it alarmed people. A church working out its discipline for sexual sin, in the second and third centuries, had a serious problem with a story in which Jesus declines to impose any penalty at all and says "neither do I condemn you." A story like that waits a long time at the door.
So it is here, under its own heading, entire. And what it says is worth the trouble. A woman is dragged into a public courtyard as a test case, and the framing of the trap tells you everything: they say she was caught in the act, which requires witnesses, which means there was a man, and the man is not present. The law they cite requires the death of both parties. Half the evidence has been allowed to walk away, and the woman is standing in the middle of a circle as an instrument in an argument about somebody else.
He bends down and writes on the ground. Nobody knows what. Then: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her." Not a suspension of the law — an assignment of who goes first. And they leave, the older ones first, which is either the wisdom of age or the longer memory of one's own record. And then two sentences to her, and the order matters. "Then neither do I condemn you." Then "Now go and sin no more." The absolution comes before the instruction, not as a reward for it. He is the only one present with any standing to throw, and he puts the stone down.
On the hard places. Three more. First, "I am the light of the world" and the run of I am sayings through chapter eight, ending with the one that is not a metaphor at all: "Truly, truly, I tell you … before Abraham was born, I am!" That is not bad grammar. It is the I am of Isaiah's divine speeches, with the burning bush — I AM WHO I AM — behind it, set against Abraham's was born, and the immediate response is that they pick up stones, the punishment the law prescribes for blasphemy, though here without any trial, which tells you they understood him precisely. This gospel's highest claim is made in the middle of its worst argument.
Second, the temple guards, who are sent to arrest him and come back without him, and whose explanation is the best line in the chapter: "Never has anyone spoken like this man!" The police are more impressed than their employers, and the reply they get — "Have you also been deceived? … Have any of the rulers or Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law, they are under a curse" — is a class sneer, and John clearly records it as one.
Third, Nicodemus again. He stands up and makes a narrow procedural point: does our law condemn a man without first hearing him? It is not a defense of Jesus; it is a defense of due process, offered by a frightened man doing the one thing he can do from inside the room. And he is slapped down with a taunt about Galilee. He will show up once more, in chapter nineteen, with an absurd quantity of burial spices. Courage in this gospel is often small, procedural, and late, and John seems to think it counts.
This is the hardest section in the book, and I am going to say why at the outset rather than let it arrive unannounced.