Sin no more - John 8:1-11

The last day of the Feast of Tabernacles is when Jesus proclaims that He provides “living water” which enrages the Pharisees even more, but even their own officers can’t bring themselves to arrest him. Everyone goes home for the night and I’d imagine that the emotions are running pretty high at this point, both good and bad. Jesus goes to the “Mount of Olives,” either that night or early the next morning, I assume to pray before the last kind of “unofficial” day of the Feast. The IM points out that this day would have been the Sabbath and Jesus was preparing to return to the temple to teach the people. Upon reaching the temple, “all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.” This must have been a huge amount of people and I’m sure that it infuriated the Pharisees because they start looking for ways to show the people that he is not who they think he is, so they come up with a plan. While teaching, “the scribes and the Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, 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?” Sound like a pretty tricky question, one that they didn’t need His expert opinion on, they were just trying to make problems for him. JTC comments, “though it was not unusual for Jewish officials to consult rabbis of recognized wisdom and experience when difficult cases were to be decided, the case in point involved no legal complications. The woman’s guilt seems to have been unquestioned.”

Why did the Pharisees think that this was a good idea? How would they possibly think that they could trap Jesus on this issue. The IM quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie as teaching, “In bringing this adulteress to Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees were laying this trap for the Master: (1) If he agreed with Moses that she should be stones, he would both (a) arouse the ire of the people generally by seeming to advocate the reinstitution of a penalty which did not have popular support, and (b) run counter to the prevailing civil law by prescribing what Rome (prohibited). (2) If he disagreed with Moses and advocated anything less than death by stoning, he would be accused of perverting the law, and of advocating disrespect of and departure from the hallowed practices of the past.” He could either demand justice or grant mercy, but they didn’t think that he’d be able to do both, and really, there can’t be both, outside of an atonement. If he erred on the side of justice, the people would have been angry because it seems like death for adultery was viewed as archaic and unacceptable. And the Pharisees might have thought viewed this as a double jeopardy situation because even if the people’s wrath didn’t stop Jesus, then surely that of Rome would. Rome let it’s conquered peoples keep their religions and culture, but they forbid the people to put anyone to death without Roman approval. Maybe they were hoping that He would side with the law and demand death for the woman, and therefore be made an enemy of Rome.

Let’s think about how they had gotten to this point. When the Pharisees quoted the law of Moses concerning the consequences for adultery, the scriptures reference Leviticus 20:10 which says, “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” This verse mainly concentrates on the man who commits adultery and, almost as a side note, mentions the woman as well. So that begs the question, where was the man she was with? And how did they find her “in the very act” of adultery? My *guess* is that they set her up. I think that they made this plan ahead of time, and one of the men in the group convinced this unsuspecting woman to commit adultery with him, or maybe they already were and he saw it as an opportunity to sacrifice her, but trap Jesus. Surely they couldn’t have imagined what his response would be other than to stick himself one way or another, they saw this situation ending in no other way except Jesus being ruined.

I am a woman and so I view this story from the woman’s perspective, and I’ve done my time in the dirt, so I feel for her. She’s dragged out into the public sphere of the temple, probably by someone that she trusted, and more than likely by the very man that she had been “with” just a few minutes earlier. She probably has kids, she for sure has a husband and she’s probably terrified at Jesus’ feet knowing that soon her children would be motherless. And what if they didn’t stone her to death, she would be shunned in the community, her children would probably suffer socially. Let’s consider the husband, there’s a reason that she’s committing adultery in the first place. That reason might be because she’s crazy and is running away from a wonderful man who treats her like a queen. Most likely though that is not the case, again, my *guess* is that her husband probably isn’t that nice to her and making her infidelity public knowledge was only going to increase her suffering at home as well now too. She really got the bad end of this deal.
  After hearing the accusations of the priests, “Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them now.”

The fact that Jesus bent down and wrote in the dirt is clearly significant, but why? So I googled, “why did Jesus stoop down?” and I found an incredible blog post at prophecyfellowship.org where a man published a paper written by his good friend who was “a Messianic Jew and Rabbi,” that explains this situation with lots of history and perspective. As a life long Jew and Rabbi, I put quite a bit of confidence into what this man say when it comes to ancient Jewish rituals. After recounting the story of the woman taken in adultery, he says, “whenever someone was caught in adultery, both the man and the woman would be brought to the Nicanor gates and accused… However, in this instance they only brought the woman. This was a violation of the Oral Law of God. Strike one. Secondly, the priest was required to then stoop down and write the law that had been broken (na’aph, or ‘adultery’ would be written in Hebrew), along with the name of the accused, in the dust of the floor of the temple.” He then points out that the requirement was only that the broken law and the names be written in a non-permanent place, but at that time the floor of the temple was the most common place. This next statement gives a very power perspective on what I’ve never understood about this story. He continues, “By doing this (writing in the dust of the temple floor), Jesus showed these accusers that THEY were not keeping the law, but He would anyway. Strike two.”

The way that this story is written in the scriptures almost makes it look like Jesus is akin to a bumbling idiot, who can’t even stand still and listen to someone speak a full sentence without getting distracted and drawing pictures on the ground. Now that I can understand this different perspective, I can see that it’s like a cop arresting a woman at a traffic stop for an expired license. Was the woman wrong? Clearly. Was the law broken by her? Of course. But the cop, instead of following protocol, doesn’t read her her rights, doesn’t let her have a phone call, doesn’t book or process her, just makes her sit in the back of his patrol car and then drives her to the court, bursts into the courtroom and demand that the judge stop whatever he’s doing to sentence her. Yes, the woman was wrong and should have consequences to deal with, but we all know that in a second that case would be thrown out because the cop didn’t follow set protocol, and that’s what Jewish Law is, protocol. The Pharisees were the cop in that situation, they didn’t do what the law required them to do. The judge, when the woman and cop get to court would recognize that she was guilty of a crime, but also that the law wasn’t followed. Jesus’ writing on the floor of the temple would be like the judge saying, “ok let’s start the paperwork so everything can be done correctly.”

The questions continue, and Jesus stands up, and say to them, “he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” This is like when my daughter demands that I punish her brother because he didn’t finish his chores, even though she didn’t finish her chores either. The crowd of men surrounding Jesus and the woman were “convicted by their own conscience, (and) went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.” Continuing with our court analogy, this would be like Jesus filling out the paperwork, then starting the trial, and calling for the first witness like, “I’ll now hear from anyone who has followed protocol in this case.” Of course the cop couldn’t testify after that because he arrested her without following proper procedures which means that it was kidnapping. The cop became ineligible to be a credible witness because of his own crimes, but that didn’t mean that the woman was any less guilty. Not hearing from anyone, and knowing that the woman was in fact guilty, it would be up to the judge (Jesus) to decide her sentence.

I feel like verses 8 and 9 are backwards, and I’ll tell you why. The accused woman is brought to Jesus for judgment, without the man, which is required, and without formal accusation, which is also required. Jesus follows the law and records the formal accusation by bending down and writing it in the dust on the temple floor. He stands up, renders his sentence, then it appears that he bends back down and starts writing again. Our friend the Messianic Rabbi explains why this is important but it is kind of complicated, I had to read it like 3 times before I could make any sense out of it. He gives more background information to set us up, saying, “To end of the day (of Yom Kippur), and announce to everyone the party was over (and it was time to go home), the Kohen HaGaddol (priest who had officiated the ceremony) would come out and quote Jeremiah 17:13… So any religious Jewish man had heard this verse quoted by the High Priest every year since he was 12 years old. At 50, he would have heard it 39 times!... The way it reads in Hebrew is: ‘Oh YHVH, the Immerser of Israel, all those who leave your way shall be put to shame, those who turn aside from my ways will have their names written in the dust and blotted out, for the have departed from YHVH, the fountain of Mayim Hayim (the waters of life.”

Jesus is writing in the dirt, but he’s not just diddling like an idiot, he’s obeying God’s law and fulfilling scripture. Our friend continues, “So Jesus gave them a chance- they could have been just embarrassed and then repented before the LORD, but instead they rejected, and in turn had their names written in the dust. This passage in Jeremiah is a Messianic prophecy of what Messiah would do when he came- and in this passage in John, we see Jesus fulfill the prophecy.” The first time Jesus bends down, it appears to be to record the accusation in the dirt according to the law, and the second time Jesus bends down it seems to be to record the names of those who reject him, and then blot them out. And the fact that they all left in order of oldest to youngest indicates that there was some sort of ritual or tradition that went along with the rejection of a great man or something like that.

After recording the names of those who rejected him, Jesus stood up “and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thing accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. And the woman glorified God from that hour, and believed on his name.” The IM quotes Elder Dallin H. Oaks as teaching, “in this context, the word condemn apparently refers to the final judgment.” The IM continues, “Elder Oaks further explained that Jesus did not condone the woman’s sin, but He was allowing her time to repent and acknowledging that her final judgment would come late: ‘The Lord obviously did not justify the woman’s sin. He simply told her that He did not condemn her- that is, He would not pass final judgment on her at that time. This interpretation is confirmed by what He then said to the Pharisees: ‘Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.’ The woman taken in adultery was granted time to repent, time that would have been denied be those who wanted to stone her.’ President Spencer W. Kimball similarly taught about the Savior’s words to the woman: ‘His command to her was, ‘Go, and sin no more.’ He was directing the sinful woman to go her way, abandon her evil life, commit no more sin, transform her life. He was saying, ‘Go, woman, and start your repentance; and he was indicating to her the beginning step- to abandon her transgressions.’ The Joseph Smith Translation makes clear that the adulterous woman did follow the Savior’s counsel and reform her life: And the woman glorified God from that hour, and believed on his name.’”