The Promise of The Spirit (John 7:37-52)

Pre-Class Questions

1. How will the rivers of “living water” flow from the believer?

2. Was the Spirit not given in some measure prior to Jesus' glorification?

3. What criteria did the Pharisees use to judge the validity of Jesus' teachings?

Paraphrase

On the final and climactic day of the Feast, Jesus took his stand. He cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way, just as the Scripture says.” (He said this in regard to the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were about to receive. The Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified.) Those in the crowd who heard these words were saying, “This has to be the Prophet.” Others said, “He is the Messiah!” But others were saying, “The Messiah doesn’t come from Galilee, does he? Don’t the Scriptures tell us that the Messiah comes from David’s line and from Bethlehem, David’s village?” So there was a split in the crowd over him. Some went so far as wanting to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him. That’s when the Temple police reported back to the high priests and Pharisees, who demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him with you?” The police answered, “Have you heard the way he talks? We’ve never heard anyone speak like this man.” The Pharisees said, “Are you carried away like the rest of the rabble? You don’t see any of the leaders believing in him, do you? Or any from the Pharisees? It’s only this crowd, ignorant of God’s Law, that is taken in by him—and damned.” Nicodemus, the man who had come to Jesus earlier and was both a ruler and a Pharisee, spoke up. “Does our Law decide about a man’s guilt without first listening to him and finding out what he is doing?” But they cut him off. “Are you also campaigning for the Galilean? Examine the evidence. See if any prophet ever comes from Galilee.” Then they all went home.

Summary

On the final day of the Feast of Booths, Jesus promises that believers will receive the Holy Spirit (at Pentecost) after His death. Jewish leaders and the populace hold sharply different opinions regarding Jesus. Truly, “no one ever spoke like this man” Jesus; His teaching exceeded all human expectations, imparting grace to those who heard. His words came directly from our heavenly Father.

Comment

The proclamation of Jesus recorded in these verses, with its dependence on a water metaphor, is entirely appropriate to its setting in the Feast of Tabernacles with its well-known water-pouring rite. There is another thematic connection with the immediately preceding verses. Jesus has just spoken of his departure, of going to a place where his opponents cannot come (vv. 33–36). Those who have read this Gospel before will recognize that the bestowal of the Spirit is directly consequent upon Jesus’ departure—a theme developed in John 14–16, but now coming to explicit articulation here.

John 7:37–38

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”

The opening words, On the last and greatest day of the Feast, suggest a different and later day from that on which the events described in the previous verses occurred. Perhaps once word of the arrest warrant became known (vv. 32–34), Jesus kept quiet and out of sight until the time came for this dramatic pronouncement, and then its audacious authority prevented the temple guards from carrying out their assignment (vv. 45–46).

On the seven days of the Feast, a golden flagon was filled with water from the pool of Siloam and was carried in a procession led by the High Priest back to the temple. As the procession approached the watergate on the south side of the inner court three blasts from the šôp̄ār—a trumpet connected with joyful occasions—were sounded. While the pilgrims watched, the priests processed around the altar with the flagon, the temple choir singing the Hallel (Pss. 113–118). When the choir reached Psalm 118, every male pilgrim shook a lûlāḇ (willow and myrtle twigs tied with palm) in his right hand, while his left raised a piece of citrus fruit (a sign of the ingathered harvest), and all cried “Give thanks to the Lord!” three times. The water was offered to God at the time of the morning sacrifice, along with the daily drink-offering (of wine). The wine and the water were poured into their respective silver bowls, and then poured out before the Lord. Moreover, these ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles were related in Jewish thought both to the Lord’s provision of water in the desert and to the Lord’s pouring out of the Spirit in the last days. Pouring at the Feast of Tabernacles refers symbolically to the messianic age in which a stream from the sacred rock would flow over the whole earth.

The words If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink inevitably call to mind Isaiah 55:1 (cf. also Rev. 22:1–2; Jn. 4:10–14; 6:35).

Isaiah 55:1 ESV

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Revelation 22:1–2 ESV

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

John 4:10–14 ESV

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 6:35 ESV

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

The particular association of the water rite with this Feast demands that we seek more focused significance. It is clear that this Feast was associated with adequate rainfall (cf. Zc. 14:16–17—and interestingly enough, this chapter from Zechariah was read on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles in the liturgy prescribed in B. Megillah 31a), not surprisingly in light of the harvest connections.

Zechariah 14:16–17 ESV

Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths. And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain on them.

Although the water rite was not prescribed by Old Testament law, its roots go back at least a couple of hundred years before Christ, and perhaps earlier (cf. 1 Sa. 7:6).

1 Samuel 7:6 ESV

So they gathered at Mizpah and drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day and said there, “We have sinned against the Lord.” And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mizpah.

Thus in addition to the numerous “water” passages in the Old Testament, some of them associated with this Feast (cf. Is. 12:3, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation”), the water rite itself symbolized the fertility and fruitfulness that only rain could bring. This would be especially clear if we could be certain that a number of Jewish beliefs, recorded later, reflect traditions that reach back to the first century. The water-pouring ceremony is interpreted in these traditions as a foretaste of the eschatological rivers of living water foreseen by Ezekiel (47:1–9) and Zechariah (13:1). In these traditions the water miracle in the wilderness (Ex. 17:1–7; Nu. 20:8–13; cf. Ps. 78:16–20) is in turn a forerunner of the water rite of the Feast of Tabernacles.

Exodus 17:1–7 ESV

All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Numbers 20:8–13 ESV

“Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.” And Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as he commanded him. Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock. And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the Lord, and through them he showed himself holy.

Psalm 78:16–20 ESV

He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers. Yet they sinned still more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert. They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God, saying, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness? He struck the rock so that water gushed out and streams overflowed. Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people?”

In general terms, then, Jesus pronouncement is clear: he is the fulfillment of all that the Feast of Tabernacles anticipated. If Isaiah could invite the thirsty to drink from the waters (Is. 55:1), Jesus announces that he is the one who can provide the waters. But the details of these words turn on a difficult decision regarding the punctuation of the Greek text.

The principal options are two:

(1) The traditional interpretation places a full stop at the end of v. 37 (as in the niv). The result is that it is most natural to take the “streams of living water” (v. 38) to be flowing from within the believer (i.e. “from within him”, referring back to “whoever believes in me”).

(2) The more recent, so-called “Christological interpretation” places a comma after “to me” (v. 37), with no full stop after “and drink”. This results in rough parallelism:

If a man is thirsty, let him come to me,

and let him drink who believes in me.

The result is that the next words, “as the Scripture has said”, need not be taken with what precedes; they may just as easily be the introduction to the following words. If that is the case, the text from “As the Scripture has said” to the end of v. 38 may be an explanatory aside provided by the Evangelist, and the “streams of living water” might then be thought to be flowing from within Christ (i.e. “him” then refers to Christ—which is why this is called the “Christological” interpretation).

Decision is difficult, and there are several mediating positions, but these two dominate the landscape. Before deciding what interpretation seems best, however, it is important to appreciate how much the two options have in common.

Both interpret the water as the Spirit.

Both insist that the blessing is something believers will enjoy only later (from the standpoint of Jesus’ ministry).

Both relate the promise of the Spirit to Jesus’ invitation at the Feast of Tabernacles.

Both make Jesus the one who supplies the “drink” and quenches thirst.

The principal differences between the two are that the first says that streams of living water will flow from the believer, while the second says they will flow from Christ; and the first continues Jesus’ words to the end of v. 38, while the second sees them ending with the first clause of v. 38.

Even here, the difference must not be exaggerated. Perhaps the greatest strength of the second view, as the two are commonly set forth, is that in the Fourth Gospel believers are never the source of “living water”, the Spirit who will come on them after Jesus is glorified. The Holy Spirit comes from God or Christ. The nearest thing to an exception is John 15:26–27.

John 15:26–27 ESV

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

But here all that is said is that believers witness to the world with the Spirit’s help. Only in this very derivative sense are believers said to be the source of the Spirit for others. The extraordinarily strong Christological focus of the entire Gospel therefore commonly serves in many modern commentaries to rule out the first view and justify the second.

But this is probably a false antithesis. Even under the first view, there is nothing in the text to necessitate the conclusion that believers are the source of the Spirit to others. This point is more easily appreciated in the Greek text. Whether “from within him” refers to Christ or to the believer, it is the niv’s rendering of ek tēs koilias autou, lit. “from within his belly”. As the Greek expression here refers to the center of human personality, niv’s paraphrasis is acceptable and reasonable. In terms of the two major interpretative options before us, the question becomes, “Whose belly?” The believer’s, or Christ’s? Those who favor the second view are inclined to see a partial fulfillment in 19:34—when Jesus’ side was pierced the spear brought forth “a sudden flow of blood and water”. But the word koilia (“belly”) does not show up in 19:34, and the lxx provides ample evidence that koilia had become by this time a fairly close synonym for kardia, “heart”—and that word surely applies to believers as well as to Jesus. If on grounds still to be provided we conclude that the “belly” is that of the believer, the closest parallel is John 4:13–14:

John 4:13–14 ESV

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Here there is no suggestion of the believer supplying water to other people. Similarly on the first interpretation of 7:37–39: the image of streams of water from the believer’s heart or belly places the accent “on the rich abundance of the Spirit’s life and power in the heart of the believer, like a self-replenishing stream.” On this reading, the source of the stream is Jesus, regardless of whose “belly” is in view in v. 38, regardless (in the niv text) of the antecedent of “from within him”.

In short, vv. 37–38 preserve a powerful Christological claim, and an invitation entirely congruent with similar invitations elsewhere (John 4:10–14; 6:35).

John 4:10–14 ESV

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 6:35 ESV

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Note the texts that use the metaphor of water to speak of spiritual blessing enjoyed by believers, perhaps the most striking is Isaiah 58:11: “The Lord will guide you always; … You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (cf. also Pr. 4:23; 5:15; Zc. 14:8).

Proverbs 4:23 ESV

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Proverbs 5:15 ESV

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.

Zechariah 14:8 ESV

On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter.

If we enlarge our search and take in texts that promise the blessing of the Spirit, perhaps related to the coming Davidic monarch or to the new covenant, we might think of Isaiah 12:3; 44:3; 49:10; Ezekiel 36:25–27; 47:1; Joel 3:18; Amos 9:11–15; Zechariah 13:1.

Isaiah 12:3 ESV

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

Isaiah 44:3 ESV

For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

Isaiah 49:10 ESV

they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.

Ezekiel 36:25–27 ESV

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Ezekiel 47:1 ESV

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar.

Joel 3:18 ESV

“And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds of Judah shall flow with water; and a fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord and water the Valley of Shittim.

Amos 9:11–15 ESV

“In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name,” declares the Lord who does this. “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them,” says the Lord your God.

Zechariah 13:1 ESV

“On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.

But our search for an Old Testament background can be made more precise. In Nehemiah 8:5–18, those who have returned from exile are pictured obeying the command of Deuteronomy 31:10–11: “At the end of every seven years … during the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God … you shall read this law before them in their hearing … so that they can listen and learn to fear the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of this law.”

The people were in great distress as Ezra and the Levites “instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing there. They read from the Book of the Law, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read” (Ne. 8:7–8).

Nehemiah 8:7–8 ESV

Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, helped the people to understand the Law, while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

Part of what they learned was that at this time of the year, the seventh month, they were to make “booths” or tabernacles and celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (cf. Lv. 23:33–43).

Leviticus 23:33–43 ESV

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the Feast of Booths to the Lord. On the first day shall be a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. For seven days you shall present food offerings to the Lord. On the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present a food offering to the Lord. It is a solemn assembly; you shall not do any ordinary work. “These are the appointed feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim as times of holy convocation, for presenting to the Lord food offerings, burnt offerings and grain offerings, sacrifices and drink offerings, each on its proper day, besides the Lord’s Sabbaths and besides your gifts and besides all your vow offerings and besides all your freewill offerings, which you give to the Lord. “On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the Lord seven days. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest. And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days. You shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year. It is a statute forever throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

This they obeyed, and the celebration lasted the entire month, not merely the prescribed seven days. “Day after day, from the first day to the last, Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God” (Ne. 8:18). Toward the end of the month, some Levites led the people in an extended prayer of praise and confession. That prayer includes an historical recital of many of the principal events during the wilderness wanderings. In particular, the people pray,

In their hunger you gave them bread from heaven, and in their thirst you brought them water from the rock … Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the desert. By day the pillar of cloud did not cease to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst (Ne. 9:15, 19–20).

Clearly, the initial reference here is to the two instances of water from the rock (Ex. 17; Nu. 20). The links are many. The water-from-the-rock episodes are set forth as in some ways parallel to the provision of manna (Ne. 9:15, 20), the “bread from heaven” as it is called (cf. Ex. 16:4; Ps. 78:24; Jn. 6:31). Both the manna and the water are in turn linked with the giving of the law—the manna because it is tied to the word of God in Deuteronomy 8:3, a passage clearly in mind (cf. Ne. 9:21; and note that Dt. 8:15–16 also makes mention of water from the rock, and links it with manna), and the water because Nehemiah 9:15 is syntactically linked (in Hebrew) to Nehemiah 9:13: “You came down on Mount Sinai; you spoke to them from heaven. You gave them regulations and laws that are just and right.…” By Nehemiah 9:20, however, the manna and the water, elsewhere in this chapter linked with the law, are now tied to the provision of the Spirit: “You gave your good Spirit to instruct them”. The last three words demonstrate that the provision of the Spirit, according to Nehemiah, was bound up with the instruction of the people (i.e. in the law). So the gift of the law/Spirit is symbolized by the provision of manna/water.

It is to this set of associations that John 7:37–38 makes reference. Jesus has already insisted that Moses (in the law) wrote about him (5:46). In John 6 the Evangelist has argued that the Old Testament manna is properly fulfilled in the true bread from heaven, Jesus himself, the Word incarnate (6:29ff.). In that chapter the tie with thirst (and therefore implicitly with water) is already briefly drawn (6:35), but the “drink” in John 6 soon turns out to be Jesus” blood, and the food his flesh. Here in John 7, however, partly because of its eminent suitability in connection with the Feast of Tabernacles, the water/thirst motif returns, and the tie with the Spirit which has already been established in the book of Nehemiah is explicitly drawn.

Some other Old Testament passages that link water and Spirit also probably hark back to the water-from-the-rock episodes (e.g. Is. 44:3). That the water in John 7:37–38 is “living” (i.e. running; cf. notes on 4:10) may owe something to Ezekiel 47:1–12, where the river flows from the eschatological temple to bring life wherever it goes. Some of this imagery appears to build on the oracle of Numbers 24:6–9, which again makes an allusion to Numbers 20:11 (the second instance of water gushing from the rock).

Other secondary passages linking water and Spirit may be in view, where neither the Feast of Tabernacles nor the episodes of the provision of water from rock are a central issue (Pr. 4:23; 5:15; Is. 12:3; 49:10; Ezk. 36:25–27; 47:1ff.; Joel 3:18; Am. 9:11–15; Zc. 13:1; 14:8). Indeed, one of them (Ezk. 36:25–27) John has used in John 3:5 (cf. notes there). Taken together, they richly anticipate the eschatological blessing of the Spirit on the believer’s life, like “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4:14), like “streams of living water [that] will flow from within him” (7:38).

If this is correct, Jesus in John 7:37–39, prompted perhaps by the Feast of Tabernacles, thinks of that Feast in Nehemiah 9, and that chapter’s use of the accounts of the provision of water from the rock, and the connection Nehemiah draws between water/manna and law/Spirit.

But he takes one further step, the same Christological step he has taken when talking of worship with the woman at the well, or when talking of manna with the crowds in John 6: he insists he alone can provide the real drink, the satisfying Spirit. “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink” (v. 37). The Scripture has itself promised this bountiful provision of living water welling up in believers: all the Old Testament portrayals of this rich bounty are understood to be at bottom anticipations that point to the richest provision of all. John himself explicitly confirms the connection between water and Spirit (v. 39).

On this reading of John 7:37–39, the awkwardness in finding a satisfying solution to the complexities of the passage springs from the attempt, on the one hand, to follow the second interpretation (when the textual and stylistic evidence strongly favor the first), and, on the other, to find an Old Testament background that refers to water from a believer’s belly. But if the Scripture in view is meant to ground the thought of vv. 37–38 within the context of the Feast of Tabernacles, the interpretation suggested here commends itself.

John 7:39

Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

John now makes it clear, lest any of his readers should fail to comprehend, that what Jesus was talking about by this metaphor, and concomitantly what the Old Testament texts were really anticipating, was the gift of the Holy Spirit. Water sometimes served as a symbol for the Holy Spirit, and, in at least one Jewish interpretation, the ceremony in question was called the “water-drawing” ceremony because “from there they draw the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as it is written, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” [Is. 12:3]”.

John agrees, but sees the source of the promised Holy Spirit to be Jesus himself, once he had been “glorified”, i.e. once he had died, risen and ascended to his Father. By those who believed in him John is referring not only to those who had believed in Jesus during the days of his flesh, but also to those who would later believe (cf. 17:20; 20:29).

Up to this point in Jesus’ ministry, the Spirit had not yet been given. This paraphrase has the meaning right, though the reading most likely original is, literally, “for the Spirit was not yet”. Of course John cannot possibly mean the Spirit was not yet in existence, or operative in the prophets. John himself has already spoken of the Spirit’s operation upon and in Jesus himself (1:32; 3:34). What the Evangelist means is that the Spirit of the dawning kingdom comes as the result—indeed, the entailment—of the Son’s completed work, and up to that point the Holy Spirit was not given in the full, Christian sense of the term.

John 7:40–42

When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?”

When Jesus fed the crowds in the wilderness, some immediately thought he must be the Prophet like Moses predicted in Deuteronomy 18:15–18, doubtless owing to the fact that the closest Old Testament equivalent to this miracle was the provision of manna under Moses' ministry. Perhaps Jesus’ most recent pronouncement (vv. 37–39) prompted some to think of Moses again, this time in connection with the miraculous provision of water from the rock (Ex. 17:6; Nu. 20:11). That is why some reflected on Deuteronomy 18 once again, and concluded, Surely this man is the Prophet.

Others were not sure, and surmised instead, He is the Christ (v. 41). A contemporary Christian reader might find it difficult to imagine how these two confessions could be divided. In the first century, however, many Jews thought of the promised Prophet and of the Messiah as two separate individuals. John 1:19ff. demonstrates further that by “the Prophet” is not meant the one who comes in the spirit and power of Elijah. It is possible (though not certain) that Christians were the first to identify the Davidic Messiah with the Prophet like Moses, precisely because they recognized in Jesus the one who perfectly fulfilled both prophecies—just as it is doubtful that anyone systematically linked the suffering servant prophecies with the royal messianic prophecies until Jesus himself came on the scene.

Still others found difficulty believing that Jesus was the Messiah. They were doubtless Jerusalemites, or at least Judeans, and had been brought up to believe not only that the Messiah would come from David’s family (2 Sa. 7:12–16; Ps. 89:3–4; Is. 9:7; 55:3) but that he would be born in Bethlehem (Mi. 5:2). As far as they were concerned, Jesus was a Galilean: he could not possibly qualify. In this way the third publicly-voiced criterion for messiahship in this chapter is introduced (cf. notes on vv. 27, 31). But this is once again an instance of superb irony. John knows, and any of his readers who have been in touch with Christians at all knew, that Jesus “as to his human nature was a descendant of David” (Rom. 1:3), indeed that he was born in Bethlehem. This is a superb instance of “Johannine irony”. “If we infer from this passage that the fourth Evangelist either did not know or did not accept Jesus” Davidic descent or nativity in Bethlehem, we expose our own failure to appreciate his delicate handling of this situation”. The objection that other “ambiguous or ironic “misunderstandings” by Jesus” opponents in John are eventually exposed in the development of the gospel” while neither David nor Bethlehem is mentioned again, is entirely without weight. The Johannine “misunderstandings” are always explained, but Johannine irony is often left without explicit exposition (e.g. 7:35; 11:48; 13:38). Indeed, explicit exposition on some occasions would be heavy-handed, destructive of the irony itself. In any case, beyond the irony connected with David and Bethlehem, John’s readers are also aware that Jesus came from heaven (cf. 3:8; 8:14, 23). For his opponents to be questioning him is for them to be siding with the world that does not recognize him (1:10, 11).

John 7:43–44

So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.

The three positions about Jesus just outlined (vv. 40–42) doubtless represent a far broader spectrum of opinion. The people were divided because of Jesus: lit. there was a schisma because of him, a recurring theme (the same word recurs in John 9:16; 10:19; cf. also John 3:19–21; 12:31–32, 46–49). Christians may expect similar division to result from their witness (John 15:18ff.; cf. Mt. 10:32ff.); those contemplating the possibility of becoming Christians need to be warned about the possible costs (John 15:18–16:4; cf. Lk. 9:57–62; 14:25–33). Some who leaned toward quick, political answers wanted to seize him, but as in v. 30, no-one laid a hand on him: his hour had not yet come.

John 7:45–46

The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!”

The abortive attempt to seize Jesus in the previous verse reminds the reader that an official arrest warrant has already been authorized (v. 32). The crowds were so divided that “no-one laid a hand on him” (v. 44), therefore the temple guards became disoriented and abandoned their assignment and went back to the chief priests and Pharisees (i.e. to the Sanhedrin; cf. 32). Naturally enough these authorities wanted to know why the temple police had not performed the task assigned them. The response of the guards sharpens up the reasons for their hesitation: No-one ever spoke the way this man does.

Their problem lay partly in the fact that they were not brutal thugs, mercenaries trained to perform any barbarous act provided the pay was right. They were themselves drawn from the Levites; they were religiously trained, and could feel themselves torn apart at the deepest level of their being by the same deeds and words of Jesus that were tearing apart the population at large. Evidence for the incomparable wisdom and authority Jesus displayed in his speech is not hard to find (e.g. Mk. 1:22; 12:17, 32–34, 37; par.; cf. John 8:7–9; 18:3–6). The witness of the guards was not borne of genuine faith, but John intends his readers to perceive that the guards spoke better than they knew. Literally rendered, their words mean, “No man (anthrōpos, “human being”) ever spoke as he does”—for John’s readers know, as the guards did not, that Jesus is not merely a human being, but the incarnate Word (1:14), the one whose every word and deed is the revelation of the Father (John 5:19–30; 8:28–29).

John 7:47–48

The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?

The sneering question of the Pharisees does not mock the guards on the ground that, as police officers, they should have followed orders, but on the ground that, as Levites who should follow the religious authorities, they have compromised their theological integrity and been seduced by a transparent imposter who could never manage to deceive the real thinkers. This of course is more “Johannine irony”, for one of the religious authorities is about to step forward on Jesus” behalf. Even if Nicodemus is not a genuine disciple at this point (cf. John 3:1ff.), nevertheless he, “Israel’s teacher” (3:10), had addressed Jesus as “a teacher who has come from God” (3:2). Indeed, a little farther on John will report that “many even among the leaders believed in him” (12:42). Perhaps the intuitions of the temple guards were not so misguided after all. The irony cuts another way. It is a commonplace of the Christian gospel that not many wise and noble are chosen: God makes it a practice to go after the weak, the foolish, the ignorant, the despised (e.g. Mt. 11:25; Lk. 10:21; 1 Cor. 1:26–31). The religious authorities boast that they have not been duped; their very boasting is precisely what has duped them.

John 7:49

But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.

Over against the rulers and the Pharisees (v. 48) stand this mob (ochlos, “crowd”) that knows nothing of the law. This is an exact representation of the way many learned rabbis viewed the common folk, “the people of the land” (Heb. “am hā”āreṣ) as they condescendingly labelled them. The label had originally been applied to the entire nation of Israel (e.g. Ezk. 22:29), but came in time to refer to the common people over against the leaders (Je. 1:18), and then to the mixed population that settled in Samaria and Judea during the exile, in distinction from the pureblood Jews who returned after the exile (Ezr. 10:2, 11). Amongst the rabbis “the people of the land” always refers to the people who do not know the law, i.e. the law of Moses both as it is found in the Hebrew Scriptures and as it was thought to be preserved in oral tradition; and if they do not know it, they cannot keep it. Since the law is the law of God, the “people of the land” are characterized by both ignorance and impiety. The school of Rabbi Meir said,

“If anyone has learned the Scripture and the Mishnah [a large corpus of Jewish tradition] but has not served as a student of the Learned he is one of the people of the land. If he has learned the Scripture but not the Mishnah he is an uneducated man; if he has learned neither the Scripture nor the Mishnah the Scripture says of him: “I sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with seed of men and seed of cattle [i.e. he is indistinguishable from an animal]” ” (cf. SB 2. 486).

Even the more liberally-minded Rabbi Hillel, a generation before Christ, insisted,

“A brutish man does not fear sin, and no people of the land (“am hā”āreṣ) is pious” (Pirke Aboth 2:6). The sentiment could take on extreme form amongst the Qumran sectaries (e.g. 1QS 10:19–21).

Small wonder, then, that under the exasperation of discovering that Jesus has not yet been arrested, the religious authorities vent their spleen on the temple guards, implicitly condemning them for acting like the “am hā”āreṣ, who can be instantly and sweepingly damned with the words, there is a curse on them. The sheer ignorance of these people ensured that they could be easily deceived. And still John’s irony is quietly chuckling in the background.

John 7:50–51

Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?”

When Nicodemus (cf. on 3:1ff.) speaks up, it is not to defend Jesus directly, but to raise a procedural point which, if observed, would work in his favor. There is no explicit Old Testament text that makes the point Nicodemus raises (though cf. Dt. 1:16); the closest rabbinic rule that has come down to us is probably this: “Unless a mortal hears the pleas that a man can put forward, he is not able to give judgment” (Exodus Rabbah 21:3, a rabbinical commentary on Ex. 14:15). Roman law agreed with the point (cf. Acts 25:16). In Acts 5:34–39 another rabbi, Gamaliel, perhaps only two years or less later, again attempts to inject a cooler rationalism into the Sanhedrin’s heated proceedings.

John 7:52

They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”

But the colleagues of Nicodemus were too worked up and too hostile to listen to mere reason. Where argument fails, they reply with contempt: Are you from Galilee, too?—i.e. the only explanation for your strange outburst in defense of a Galilean, Nicodemus, is that you must have sprung from such inferior stock yourself!

Look into it probably means “Search [sc. the Scriptures]”. The notion that no prophet comes from Galilee is not independently attested in Jewish sources. Indeed, Rabbi Eliezer (c. ad 90) said that there was no tribe of Israel that failed to produce a prophet (B. Sukkah 27b). It is just barely possible that the Jewish authorities say this out of sheer frustration at their inability to curtail the activities and teaching of Jesus, this despised teacher from Galilee. In more sober moments they would have gladly recognized that the prophets Jonah and Nahum sprang from Galilee, and probably others as well. It is also possible that the original reading is not “a prophet” but “the prophet”, i.e. the prophet like Moses (cf. John 6:14; 7:40): some of the earliest and best manuscripts support this reading, though admittedly the bulk of the textual attestation goes the other way. If the definite article is retained, then all the “Johannine irony” found in v. 42 returns. The Old Testament does not tell us exactly where the eschatological prophet would be born. The officials of the Sanhedrin, reflecting the deep biases against Galilee entertained by Judeans, simply cannot believe that the prophet could come from such an area. But in reality, Jesus is not so much a son of Galilee as the authorities think. By voicing themselves so strongly, they succeed only in displaying their ignorance of his true origins.

In-Class Questions

1. How important was the Feast of Tabernacles to the Jews?

2. What was the most significant part of the ceremonies connected with this feast?

3. Name four Old Testament passages which speak of “living water.”

4. What is the “living water” within believers and how does it flow out from within them?

5. What measure of the Holy Spirit was not given prior to Jesus’ glorification?

6. Why could the Holy Spirit not be given before Jesus was glorified?

7. What law was the Pharisees violating in their accusations and actions against Jesus?