Johnchapter 7
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Speaks with:John 7×20John 8×9John 5×5John 1×5Matthew 12×4John 14×4
Summary
Chapter summary
Feast of Tabernacles; brethren's unbelief. 'My time is not yet come.' Rivers of living water on the last day of the feast: 'this spake he of the Spirit.' Division among the people; officers sent to arrest him return saying 'never man spake like this man.'
Context
Gospel · John — John overview
- A. 1–13 Jesus Goes Up to the Feast in Secret
- B. 14–24 Teaching in the Temple: Judge Righteous Judgment
- C. 25–36 Is This the Christ? Officers Sent to Take Him
- D. 37–53 Rivers of Living Water and a Divided City
The outline
A.Jesus Goes Up to the Feast in Secretvv. 1 to 13
Read vv. 1 to 13 →B.Teaching in the Temple: Judge Righteous Judgmentvv. 14 to 24
Read vv. 14 to 24 →C.Is This the Christ? Officers Sent to Take Himvv. 25 to 36
Read vv. 25 to 36 →D.Rivers of Living Water and a Divided Cityvv. 37 to 53
Read vv. 37 to 53 →
The world behind this chapter
John 7The history
Tabernacles filled the city. Families built and lived in booths of branches for a week, remembering the wilderness, and the feast doubled as the harvest thanksgiving after the grapes and olives were in. It was the largest pilgrimage of the year.
Two ceremonies dominated it, and both explain what Jesus says. Every morning a priest carried a golden pitcher down to the pool of Siloam, filled it, and processed back to pour the water out at the base of the altar while the crowd sang from Isaiah about drawing water from the wells of salvation. On the last and greatest day of the feast — the day John names — Jesus stood up and cried out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
The other ceremony was light. Great lampstands were lit in the Court of the Women and burned so brightly that, according to Jewish tradition, there was not a courtyard in Jerusalem that did not reflect their light, and men danced with torches through the night. The claim to be the light of the world, which comes immediately after this feast, was made in that room.
The temple police sent to arrest him were the Levitical guard the chief priests commanded, a real force with real authority inside the complex. Their report — no one ever spoke like this man — is one of the more quietly remarkable lines in the Gospel. Nicodemus then invokes an actual rule of Jewish law, that a man is not judged before he is heard.
What it meant to them
The argument in the crowd is a genuine first-century objection, and John lets it stand unanswered in the chapter: the Messiah comes from Bethlehem, and this man is from Galilee. Readers of this Gospel knew the answer, and John trusts them to supply it rather than stopping to argue.
The Spirit is explained in an aside — that the promise of rivers of living water pointed to the Spirit, who had not yet been given because Jesus was not yet glorified. For readers living after Pentecost, that note connected the feast they had kept as children to what they now had.
Sources cited
- Alfred Edersheim, The Temple: Its Ministry and Services
- The Mishnah (Danby translation), tractate Sukkah
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
The text of this chapter
This site records the readings below for this chapter. Spelling and word-order differences that change no meaning are passed over.
John 7:53 - 8:11
The Woman Caught in Adultery
One of the most beloved stories about Jesus is missing from the earliest copies of John, and in the later copies that have it, it does not stay in one place.
What the manuscripts read here →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.