Jesus and the woman caught in adultery

 

Jesus and the Woman caught in adultery

What and why did He write on the ground?

 

Many stories in the Bible are short and succinct but so layered and complex that each time you read them, you’ll learn something new.

Case in point, the account of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. It’s a short narrative in the Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verses 3-11. For those unfamiliar with the story, here goes:

Jesus goes to the temple courts (of the Temple of Jerusalem, the holiest of places for the Jews) at dawn, where ‘all the people’ gather around him and he sits down to teach them. Then ‘the teachers of the law and the Pharisees’ bring in a woman caught in adultery (caught in the very act, they say). They make her stand before the group and they tell Jesus that she was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded them to stone such women. ‘Now what do you say?’

The Bible states clearly that they were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him (verse 6). To illustrate this further, the Mosaic Law said: ‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife…both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death’ (Leviticus 20:10). In this instance, the man wasn’t hauled up before Jesus. The story doesn’t say why. And, surely, the accusers weren’t following due procedure. They should’ve taken both the man and the woman to the authorities concerned, perhaps the Roman Governor.? Why did they drag the woman to Jesus? He was just a popular teacher, a Rabbi, as far as they were concerned. The answer, of course, is as verse 6 says: it was in order to trap Him.

Instead of replying directly to the Pharisees, Jesus does something strange. He bends down and starts writing on the ground with His finger. When they keep on questioning Him, He straightens up and says the now famous, immortal lines: ‘Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone’. Again, he stoops down and continues to write on the ground. After this, the crowd begins to melt away one by one, the older ones first, until only Jesus is left with the woman standing there. Jesus straightens up and asks her: ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

‘No one, sir,’ she says.

‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ He declares, ‘Go, and sin no more.’

Before addressing the issue of what He was writing on the ground, it’s interesting to see how Jesus turns the situation around so that the woman could not be put to death. For the Mosaic Law said, ‘No one shall be put to death on the testimony of just one witness’ (Deuteronomy 17:6). Jesus creates the situation where they aren’t even 2 witnesses left to testify against the woman. Also note, Jesus does tick her off: ‘Go and sin no more.’ He doesn't say, you’re alright, your accusers are mean, horrible, hypocrites, which they were, actually. The thing is, sin is not condoned. Ever.

Now, for the question at hand. What on earth was Jesus writing on the ground? And why?

Bible scholars have debated this through the ages and three main explanations have emerged. I’ll give you all three and then give my point of view:

i) Jesus was simply ignoring the woman’s accusers, showing his contempt for their attempts to ensnare Him. He was God, after all! He knew what was in their hearts. It was almost as if He was saying: ‘Uff, you guys are such idiots. Why are you trying to play with me?’

ii) Jesus was performing a sign that’s fulfillment of a prophesy. Jeremiah 17:13 says: ‘those who turn away from thee shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.’ In John 7:38 Jesus describes Himself as the fountain of living water. So, Jesus was basically writing their sins in the earth. When the Pharisees and teachers of the Law saw this sign performed, they were convicted of their sin, and left the scene. As experts in the Mosaic Law, they would’ve recognized the sign.

In short, Jesus springs a trap on them!

iii) According to Venerable Bede and St. Augustine, when Jesus wrote on the ground with His finger, He was harkening back to the time on Mount Sinai when He had written the Ten Commandments on stone tablets with His finger (Exodus 32: 15-16). It’s like He was saying, ‘I’m the author of the Law and you’re trying to trap me with it?’

The only other time when the finger of God appears in the Bible is in the book of Daniel (5:5) when ‘the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall…’ during King Belshazzar’s banquet. The finger wrote ‘Mene Mene Tekel Uparsin’, which Daniel interprets later as a prophesy of doom against the King, who had stolen gold and silver goblets from the Temple of Jerusalem and then defiled them by drinking wine in them during this feast. That very night, King Belshazzar dies.

*An interesting aside: 2 phrases in this episode became famous in the English language. One was ‘the writing on the wall’ from the above passage. The other is ‘knees knocking together’. That’s in the verse describing King Belshazzar’s reaction to the finger writing on the wall. It says: ‘The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way’.

In both instances (Exodus and Daniel), the finger of God appeared in judgement. But what of the time when Jesus wrote on the ground?

I think Jesus was doing both things: He was sending a sign of judgement against the Pharisees and teachers of the Law and He was reminding them that He- the Lord Almighty- was the author of the Law, so don’t try and mess with Him!

A clip from the TV series 'Jesus of Nazareth' depicting this episode