CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

John 8:1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
 2 And early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him. And He sat down and taught them.
 3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman taken in adultery. And standing her in the midst,
 4 they said to Him, Teacher, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
 5 Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned. You, then, what do you say?
 6 They said this, tempting Him so that they might have reason to accuse Him. But bending down, Jesus wrote on the ground with His finger, not appearing to hear.
 7 But as they continued to ask Him, He lifted Himself up and said to them, He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.
 8 And again bending down, He wrote on the ground.
 9 And hearing, and being convicted by conscience, they went out one by one, beginning at the oldest, until the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
 10 And bending back up, and seeing no one but the woman, Jesus said to her, Woman, where are the ones who accused you? Did not one give judgment against you?
 11 And she said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said to her, Neither do I give judgment. Go, and sin no more.
 12 Then Jesus spoke again to them, saying, I am the Light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

 (MKJV)

One of the most beloved stories of the New Testament.

First, though, realize that women in the Jewish society were better off than in the surrounding areas.  They could inherit property.  They could run businesses. If they were widowed, the nearest kin to their dead husband could marry them as happened with Ruth.  They didn't have to go onto their dead husband's funeral pyre as ib a Hindu culture.  Divorce actually protected them financially while women from surrounding countries were left with nothing if the man divorced them. They had the unique trait granted by the Scriptures that a person had to be born of a Jewish woman to be a Jew. In all other countries it was the MAN'S heritage that was given sway.

Still, the Pharisees, the lovers of the Law which granted those privileges, were hardly feminists.

http://eugenecho.com/2011/06/09/thank-god-that-i-am-a-man-and-not-a-woman/

 During Biblical context and during the times of Jesus, the Pharisees and other religious leaders prayed numerous times each day. It is reported that customs dictated they pray at least three times/day. And during their prayers, they always thanked God for three specific things (amongst others I suppose):

• God, thank you that I am a Jew and not a Gentile.
• God, thank you that I am free and not a slave.
• And lastly…God, thank you that I am a man and NOT a woman

With that background, let's look again at the events.

They may also have known that Jesus treated women with respect, even as friends;  may even have known of his talk with the Samaritan woman since so many of his disciples had deserted him and some likely had  come back to Jerusalem for the feast.  He valued women .

But they basically saw the woman dragged out for adultery as worthless from the start. 

Jesus has gone to the Mount to spend time alone with the Father, while they each went to their own houses.  Like so many of us today, back to our own denominations, back to our own houses, back to our cars, to our jobs, to all the normalcy, to all the plain brown wrapped life that was meant for the brightness of heavenly life, for the jingling of God's bells, for the ribbons o faith.  Keeping Jesus safely tucked away on the heavenly mount with his Father, where he isn't bothering us by tweaking our consciences or tugging at our heartstrings.

Then, as in our lives, he emerges loudly and starts teaching.  Someone we know gets saved and we have to lend some kind of support.  Someone we love is in trouble and we need answered prayer.  Our dream falls apart and we are driven to our knees. He is teaching but are we listening?  

If we can get beyond our own resources, if we can learn to rely on his Word and his Spirit, if we can learn to trust, TRUST, then we have learned the lesson.  

And the Pharisees couldn't learn to even listen, let alone trust.  Like us so often, they had something to lose, everything to lose.

Thomas Scott's A COMMENTARY ON THE WHOLE BIBLE presents as thorough an analysis as I could ask of the motives and the emotions in these verse:

"Verses 3-11: While our Lord was teaching the multitudes, his enemies concerted a plan for drawing him into a snare. A woman had been taken in adultery, whose guilt was undeniable: they therefore professed a deference to his judgment and authority, and brought the criminal to him, that he might decide what punishment should be inflicted on her; as Moses had commanded that such criminals should be stoned. The law doomed both the adulterer and adulteress “to be put to death;” but these scribes and pharisees showed their partiality by prosecuting the woman and letting the man escape. In a case nearly parallel,  stoning was specified; and probably this had become the general punishment of all convicted of adultery. The scribes and pharisees, however, concluded from many parts of our Lord’s doctrine, that he deemed himself authorized to alter or abrogate the appointments of Moses; and therefore they desired his opinion. But if he had ordered them to execute the law, they would doubtless have accused him to the Romans of assuming a judicial authority independent of their government: had he directed them to set her at liberty, they would have represented him to the people as an enemy to the law, and the patron of the most infamous characters; and had he referred them to the Roman authority, they would have accused him to the multitude as a betrayer of their liberties. Indeed, they seem to have concluded that he must inevitably either render himself obnoxious to the Romans, or unpopular among the Jews, by his answer to this insidious question: and, in either case, it would have facilitated the execution of their purpose in putting him to death. But he saw the wickedness of their hearts; and therefore he stooped down, as if he had not regarded them. Perhaps he wrote with his finger in the dust the sentence which he afterwards spake. Some think that he meant to teach them, in this manner, that they ought to decide such matters by the written word; and others, that he intimated that such base hypocrites should “be written in the earth” (Jer 17:13). But these are vague conjectures.—‘To be willing to be ignorant of what our great Master has thought fit to conceal, is no inconsiderable part of Christian learning.’—Doddridge. His apparent backwardness however to interfere, rendered the scribes the more urgent; and therefore, at length, he abruptly ordered that man who was “without sin among them,” to begin the execution of the criminal by first casting a stone at her. It was appointed by the law that the accuser should thus lead the way in putting the condemned person to death: the whole company that brought this woman were her accusers; but it would have been unsuitable for any one of them, who was conscious of secret wickedness, to have begun this severity; and therefore he required that person to do it who was conscious of his own innocence. We may be sure our Lord did not mean, that no man ought to act as judge or witness, in a criminal cause, who is not wholly exempt from sin in his own conduct; because that would disannul civil government, which is “the ordinance of God.” But he knew the concealed iniquities of these men, and by this appealing to their consciences in respect of themselves, he made them sensible of the impropriety of their taking an active part in this prosecution. A divine power doubtless attended his word, and a new conviction of guilt seized on them, which for the present disarmed their malice: And perhaps fearing lest he should more openly and explicitly mention the particular crimes of which they severally were conscious, they took the opportunity, while he again stooped down, to withdraw silently and singly; the eldest of the company, being most deeply alarmed, departing first, and the others following his example. Thus they were sent away in disgrace and self-condemned, so that Jesus was left alone; that is, none remained with him of that company save the woman, who stood in the midst of the court where the people were assembled to attend on his doctrine; and there she waited to hear what sentence he would pass upon her. But having baffled the designs of his enemies, he declined all interference with the magistrate’s office, and gave her permission to depart; exhorting her, at the same time, not to repeat her crime, or return to any of her former wickednesses.—There is no decisive proof that she was a true penitent; for our Lord in saying, “neither do I condemn thee,” spake only of condemnation to death according to the judicial law; and the exhortation, “sin no more,” was a direct and strong condemnation of her conduct. Yet if these remarkable circumstances were the means of her being converted, pardoned, and saved, it would appear peculiarly suited to his design, who “came, not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”—No conclusive argument can hence be drawn concerning the punishment of adultery under the Christian dispensation: and doubtless it is absurd that this crime should escape almost without any legal censure, when theft, in many cases, is punished with disproportioned severity.—The eleven first verses of this chapter, and the last verse of the preceding chapter, are wanting in many ancient copies and manuscripts; and several learned men have on that ground questioned whether the passage be genuine or not. But others, who have most fully examined the subject, are satisfied that they are indeed a part of the apostolical narrative; and the objections made to it are evidently grounded on prejudice and misapprehension. Some have considered these misapprehensions (or rather the expressions which give occasion to them), as internal evidence against the genuineness of the passage. But it appears to me, that the internal evidence of its being genuine, is sufficient to counterpoise much external evidence to the contrary. Every circumstance is completely in character, and exactly what might have been expected from the scribes, &c. and from our Lord; and consentaneous with several other snares laid for him, and his method of evading them. The manner of the narrative is the plain simple manner of the evangelist; and the answer of our Lord, though perfectly suited to the purpose, would scarcely ever have been through of by human sagacity. In short, it does not appear to me that all the critics, who have argue this point (among whom are some of high respectability and undoubted piety), could, combined together, have framed so singular an anecdote, or one so interesting and instructive. ‘The notice that Eusebius and other ancient writers have taken of the dubiousness of this passage, with a few other instances of a like nature, shows the critical exactness with which they examined into the genuineness of the several parts of the New Testament; and so, on the whole, strengthens the evidence of Christianity.’—Doddridge."

(The Rev. Thomas Scott (1747–1821) (an Anglican) was an influential preacher and author who is principally known for his best-selling work A Commentary On The Whole Bible and The Force of Truth, and as one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society.^[1])

The ongoing mystery is: what did he write in the dirt?  Was it the names of the women the men who brought her to be stoned, had been with themselves?  Was it the names of those who hadn't been stoned because of the Roman rule the scribes themselves wouldn't violate? Was it a list of sins for the accusers?

I suspect John left it out because it wasn't what Jesus wrote that mattered.  What mattered was who wrote it. I could write the same thing and the poor woman would be buried under rocks.

Then we see her true value: Go and sin no more.

"I saved you.  I saved you because you have value.  Now value your salvation and yourself.  Don't return to what would have destroyed you.  Don't return to what will destroy you."

It echoes through the ages,

"Repent."

Repentance.  Other Gospels focus on that call:

 Mt 3:2 Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

 Mt 4:17 From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

 Mt 21:32 For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not; but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye saw it, did not even repent yourselves afterward, that ye might believe him.

 Mr 1:15 and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel.

 Mr 6:12 And they went out, and preached that [men] should repent.

 Lu 13:3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all in like manner perish.

 Lu 13:5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

 Lu 17:3 Take heed to yourselves: if thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.

 Lu 17:4 And if he sin against thee seven times in the day, and seven times turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.

Repent. 

Leave your old ways, turn from your idols toward the true God.  Change.  Make a decision to live differently.  Give up the big sin, that thing that drew you in, that thing that meant so much.  Repent.  Adultery may have been her way of life, the one man she focused n and couldn't release.  Adultery with many me perhaps.  An addiction to sexual experience.  A fixation.  

Repent.

Jesus doesn't stop with the unsaved.  In Revelation, John again tells us of Christ calling for repentance, this time from each of the churches mentioned.  The saved needing to repent from their errors.

Repent calls out to everyone.  As the beginning of knowing him.

Then he transitions smoothly to another truth.

I am the Light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

He says this as she walks away as the others have walked away.  Turning now to speak to the crowd who gathered to see what he would do to her.  Jesus says it as he has granted life to one who could have been killed.

So let's discuss light once again.