John 7

A Secret Journey to the Festival

1After this, Jesus went about in Galilee. He did not want to move about in Judea, because the Jews were looking for a way to kill him. 2Now the Festival of Tabernacles, a festival of the Jews, was near. 3So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples too may see the works you are doing. 4No one acts in secret while wanting to be known in public. If you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” 5For not even his brothers believed in him. 6So Jesus told them, “My time has not yet arrived; for you, any time is ready. 7The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I testify against it — that its works are evil. 8Go up to the festival yourselves. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” 9After saying this, he stayed behind in Galilee. 10But once his brothers had gone up to the festival, he went up as well — not openly, but as if in secret. 11At the festival the Jews were looking for him and asking, “Where is that man?” 12And among the crowds there was much murmuring about him. Some said, “He is a good man.” Others said, “No — he is leading the people astray.” 13Yet no one spoke about him openly, for fear of the Jews.

Teaching in the Temple

14When the festival was already half over, Jesus went up to the temple and began to teach. 15The Jews were astonished. “How does this man have such learning,” they said, “when he has never studied?” 16Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not my own; it belongs to the one who sent me. 17If anyone wants to do his will, he will find out about this teaching — whether it comes from God, or whether I speak on my own. 18Whoever speaks on his own is after his own glory; but whoever seeks the glory of the one who sent him — that man is truthful, and there is no wrong in him. 19Did Moses not give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?” 20The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is trying to kill you?” 21Jesus replied, “I did one work, and you are all astonished. 22Moses gave you circumcision — though it comes not from Moses but from the fathers — and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. 23If a man is circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken, why are you furious with me for making a man’s whole body well on the Sabbath? 24Stop judging by appearances; judge with a just judgment.” 25At that, some of the people of Jerusalem began to say, “Isn’t this the man they want to kill? 26And look — he is speaking in public, and they say nothing to him. Can it be that the authorities have really recognized that he is the Christ? 27But we know where this man is from; when the Christ comes, no one is to know where he is from.” 28Then Jesus, teaching in the temple, cried out, “You know me, and you know where I am from. Yet I have not come on my own: the one who sent me is true, and him you do not know. 29I know him, because I am from him, and he is the one who sent me.” 30At that they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. 31Still, many in the crowd believed in him. “When the Christ comes,” they said, “will he do more signs than this man has done?” 32The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent guards to arrest him. 33So Jesus said, “I am with you a little while longer, and then I am going to the one who sent me. 34You will look for me and you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.” 35The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go, that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to our people scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? 36What does he mean by saying, ‘You will look for me and you will not find me,’ and, ‘Where I am, you cannot come’?”

Rivers of Living Water

37On the last day of the festival, the great day, Jesus stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me — as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from deep within him.” 39He said this about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were going to receive; for the Spirit had not yet come, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. 40When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, “This really is the prophet.” 41Others said, “This is the Christ.” But others objected, “Surely the Christ does not come from Galilee? 42Doesn’t the Scripture say that the Christ comes from the line of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” 43So the crowd was split over him. 44Some of them wanted to seize him, but no one laid hands on him. 45The guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him?” 46The guards answered, “No one has ever spoken the way this man speaks.” 47The Pharisees retorted, “Have you been led astray as well? 48Has a single one of the authorities believed in him? Or any of the Pharisees? 49But this crowd that knows nothing of the law — they are under a curse.” 50Nicodemus — the one who had gone to him earlier, and who was one of them — said to them, 51“Does our law judge a man without first hearing from him and learning what he is doing?” 52They answered him, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see: no prophet arises from Galilee.”

The Woman Caught in Adultery

53Then they went away, each to his own house,*