Jesus Goes at the Festival of Tabernacles

John 7

After these things, Jesus traveled in Galilee. He didn’t want to travel in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jewish Festival of Booths was near. So His brothers said to him, “Leave from here and go into Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. For no one does anything in secret while he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, reveal yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him.

Therefore Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but y’all are ready all the time. The world can’t hate y’all, but it hates me, because I testify that its works are evil. Y’all go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, because my time is not yet fully come.”

After he said this to them, he stayed in Galilee. But after his brothers had left for the feast, then he also went up, not openly, but in secret. Now the Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, “Where is he?” There was much murmuring among the multitudes concerning him. Some said, “He is a good man.” Others said, “Not so, he leads the multitude astray.” Yet no one spoke openly of him for fear of the Jewish leaders.

Now when the feast was halfway through, Jesus went up into the temple and taught. Then the Jews marveled, saying, “How does this man know so much without any formal education?”

So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but from the one who sent me. If anyone desires to do ʜɪꜱ will, they will know about the teaching, whether it is from God or if I am speaking from myself. The one who speaks on their own seeks their own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of the one who sent them is true, and no unrighteousness is in that person. Didn’t Moses give y’all the law? Yet none of y’all keeps the law? Why are y’all trying to kill me?”

The multitude answered, “You have a demon! Who is trying to kill you?”

Jesus answered them, “I did one miracle, and all y’all are amazed. Moses gave y’all circumcision (not that it is of Moses, but from the fathers), and on the Sabbath y’all circumcise a boy. If a boy receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses won’t be broken, why are y’all angry with me because I made a man completely healthy on the Sabbath? Y’all must stop judging according to appearance, but instead judge with righteous judgment.”

Questions Over Jesus’s Identity

Therefore some of the people of Jerusalem said, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? Look, he is speaking publicly, and they say nothing to him. Do the rulers really know that he is the Christ? However, we know where this man comes from, but when the Christ comes, no one will know where he comes from.”

Then Jesus, while teaching in temple, cried out, “Y’all know me, and y’all know where I am from. I have not come of myself, but ʜᴇ who sent me is true. Y’all don’t know ʜɪᴍ. I know ʜɪᴍ, because I am from ʜɪᴍ, and he sent me.”

At this, they tried to take him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. But many in the crowd believed in him. They said, “When the Christ comes, he won’t do more signs than this man has done, will he?” The Pharisees heard the multitude murmuring these things about him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.

Then Jesus said, “I will be with y’all a little while longer, then I go to ʜɪᴍ who sent me. Y’all will seek but won’t find me. And where I am, y’all cannot come.”

So the Jews said among themselves, “Where will this man go that we won’t find him? Will he go to the diaspora among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What did he mean when he said, ‘Y’all will seek me, but y’all won’t find me,’ and ‘Where I am, y’all cannot come’?”

Now on the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let them come to me and drink! Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, from within them will flow rivers of living water.” But he said this about the Spirit, whom those believing in him were to receive. For the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

When they heard these words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “The Christ cannot come from Galilee, can he? Doesn’t the Scripture say that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, +2 Sam 7:12 and from Bethlehem,+Mic 5:2 the village where David lived?” So a division arose in the crowd because of him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t y’all bring him in?”

The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!”

The Pharisees answered them, “Y’all haven’t been deceived too, have y’all? Have any of the rulers or Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd who doesn’t know the law is cursed.”

Nicodemus, who had come to him before and was one of the rulers, said to them, “Does our law judge a man unless it first hears from him personally and knows what he does?”

They replied, “Are you also from Galilee? Search, and you will see that no prophet has come from Galilee.”

The Adulterous Woman

[+7:53 Later manuscripts add the story of the adulterous woman, numbering it as John 7:53-8:11 Everyone went to his own house.