John 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus stays in Galilee while his brothers urge him to go public in Judea at the Feast of Tabernacles, and he tells them his time has not yet come. He goes later, quietly, and teaches in the temple halfway through the feast, arguing with the crowd and the leaders about where his teaching comes from, about healing on the Sabbath, and about where he is from and where he is going. On the last day of the feast he invites anyone who is thirsty to come to him and drink. The crowd splits over who he is, temple officers sent to arrest him come back empty-handed, and Nicodemus asks whether the law condemns a man before hearing him.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • After these things Jesus walked in Galilee.
   • Jesus was not willing to walk in Judea.
   • The Jews were seeking to kill Jesus.
2. 7:2
   • The Jewish feast of tabernacles was near.
3. 7:3
   • Jesus' brothers said to him to leave there and go into Judea.
   • His brothers said this so that his disciples might also see the works he does.
4. 7:4
   • His brothers said that no one does anything in secret while himself seeking to be known openly.
   • His brothers said that if he does these things, he should show himself to the world.
5. 7:5
   • Jesus' brothers did not believe in him.
6. 7:6
   • Jesus said to them that his time had not yet come.
   • Jesus said that their time is always ready.
7. 7:7
   • Jesus said the world cannot hate them.
   • Jesus said the world hates him.
   • Jesus said the world hates him because he testifies about it that its works are evil.
8. 7:8
   • Jesus told them to go up to the feast.
   • Jesus said he was not going up to this feast yet.
   • Jesus said his time was not yet fully come.
9. 7:9
   • Jesus said these things to them.
   • Jesus remained in Galilee.
10. 7:10
    • Jesus' brothers went up to the feast.
    • After that Jesus also went up to the feast.
    • Jesus went up not openly but as it were in secret.
11. 7:11
    • The Jews were seeking Jesus at the feast.
    • The Jews were asking where he was.
12. 7:12
    • There was much murmuring about Jesus among the crowds.
    • Some said he is a good man.
    • Others said no, he deceives the people.
13. 7:13
    • No one spoke openly about Jesus.
    • No one spoke openly about him because of fear of the Jews.
14. 7:14
    • About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple.
    • Jesus taught in the temple.
15. 7:15
    • The Jews marveled.
    • The Jews asked how this man knows letters, never having been taught.
16. 7:16
    • Jesus answered them.
    • Jesus said his teaching is not his own.
    • Jesus said his teaching belongs to the one who sent him.
17. 7:17
    • Jesus said that if anyone is willing to do God's will, he will know concerning the teaching.
    • Jesus said such a person will know whether the teaching is from God or whether Jesus speaks from himself.
18. 7:18
    • Jesus said the one who speaks from himself seeks his own glory.
    • Jesus said the one who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true.
    • Jesus said there is no unrighteousness in such a one.
19. 7:19
    • Jesus asked whether Moses did not give them the law.
    • Jesus said none of them keeps the law.
    • Jesus asked why they seek to kill him.
20. 7:20
    • The crowd answered Jesus.
    • The crowd said he has a demon.
    • The crowd asked who is seeking to kill him.
21. 7:21
    • Jesus answered and said to them that he did one work.
    • Jesus said they all marvel.
22. 7:22
    • Jesus said Moses gave them circumcision.
    • Jesus said circumcision is not from Moses but from the fathers.
    • Jesus said they circumcise a man on the sabbath.
23. 7:23
    • Jesus said a man receives circumcision on the sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken.
    • Jesus asked whether they are angry at him because he made a whole man well on the sabbath.
24. 7:24
    • Jesus said not to judge according to appearance.
    • Jesus said to judge righteous judgment.
25. 7:25
    • Some of the people of Jerusalem spoke.
    • They asked whether this is not the man they are seeking to kill.
26. 7:26
    • They said he speaks openly.
    • They said they say nothing to him.
    • They asked whether the rulers have truly recognized that this is the Christ.
27. 7:27
    • They said they know where this man is from.
    • They said that when the Christ comes, no one knows where he is from.
28. 7:28
    • Jesus cried out in the temple as he taught.
    • Jesus said they know him and know where he is from.
    • Jesus said he has not come of himself.
    • Jesus said the one who sent him is true.
    • Jesus said they do not know the one who sent him.
29. 7:29
    • Jesus said he knows him.
    • Jesus said he is from him.
    • Jesus said that one sent him.
30. 7:30
    • They sought to seize Jesus.
    • No one laid a hand on him.
    • No one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come.
31. 7:31
    • Many of the crowd believed in Jesus.
    • They asked whether the Christ, when he comes, will do more signs than this man has done.
32. 7:32
    • The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about Jesus.
    • The chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to seize him.
33. 7:33
    • Jesus said he is with them yet a little while.
    • Jesus said he goes to the one who sent him.
34. 7:34
    • Jesus said they will seek him and will not find him.
    • Jesus said that where he is, they cannot come.
35. 7:35
    • The Jews said among themselves, asking where this man intends to go that they will not find him.
    • They asked whether he intends to go to the dispersion among the Greeks.
    • They asked whether he intends to teach the Greeks.
36. 7:36
    • They asked what this saying is that he said.
    • They repeated his saying that they will seek him and not find him, and that where he is they cannot come.
37. 7:37
    • On the last, great day of the feast Jesus stood.
    • Jesus cried out.
    • Jesus said that if anyone thirsts, he should come to him and drink.
38. 7:38
    • Jesus said that from the belly of the one who believes in him rivers of living water will flow.
    • Jesus said this is as the scripture has said.
39. 7:39
    • Jesus said this about the Spirit.
    • Those who believed in him were about to receive the Spirit.
    • The Spirit was not yet given.
    • The Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.
40. 7:40
    • Many of the crowd heard this saying.
    • They said this man is truly the Prophet.
41. 7:41
    • Others said this is the Christ.
    • Others asked whether the Christ comes out of Galilee.
42. 7:42
    • They asked whether the scripture did not say that the Christ comes from the seed of David.
    • They said the scripture said the Christ comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was.
43. 7:43
    • There was a division among the crowd because of Jesus.
44. 7:44
    • Some of them wanted to seize Jesus.
    • No one laid hands on him.
45. 7:45
    • The officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees.
    • The chief priests and Pharisees asked them why they had not brought him.
46. 7:46
    • The officers answered.
    • The officers said no man ever spoke as this man speaks.
47. 7:47
    • The Pharisees answered them.
    • The Pharisees asked whether they also have been deceived.
48. 7:48
    • The Pharisees asked whether any of the rulers or of the Pharisees has believed in him.
49. 7:49
    • The Pharisees said this crowd does not know the law.
    • The Pharisees said this crowd is cursed.
50. 7:50
    • Nicodemus spoke to them.
    • Nicodemus had come to Jesus before.
    • The King James says Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.
    • Nicodemus was one of them.
51. 7:51
    • Nicodemus asked whether their law judges a man before it hears from him and knows what he does.
52. 7:52
    • They answered him.
    • They asked whether he also is from Galilee.
    • They told him to search and see.
    • They said no prophet arises out of Galilee.
53. 7:53
    • Each man went to his own house.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

KJV "Jewry" is simply an older English word for Judea, the southern region around Jerusalem, as opposed to Galilee in the north, roughly eighty miles away. Also, when John writes "the Jews" in passages like this he normally means the ruling authorities in Jerusalem rather than Jewish people in general; Jesus, his brothers, his followers and the crowds here are all Jewish.

7:2

The Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot, was one of three festivals at which Jewish men were expected to come to Jerusalem. It ran a week in the autumn, at the end of the harvest, and families lived for it in temporary shelters roofed with branches, recalling the years their ancestors spent camping in the wilderness after leaving Egypt. It filled the city with pilgrims.

7:3

"Go up" is the standard idiom for traveling to Jerusalem, which sits high in the hill country; people went up to it from any direction and came down from it. KJV "brethren" here means brothers in the ordinary family sense.

7:6

"My time" translates a term John uses throughout the book for the appointed moment of Jesus' death and what follows it. The contrast is between a fixed moment he is waiting for and his brothers, for whom no moment is fixed. KJV "alway" is simply "always."

7:7

"The world" here means people, not the ground and the sky.

7:8

Ancient copies of John differ here: some read "I am not going up to this feast," others add "yet," as the King James does. The difference is one small word in Greek, and translations still divide over which reading is original.

7:12

In 1611 "murmuring" meant muttering or talking privately under the breath, not necessarily complaining. The picture is of people discussing him quietly so as not to be overheard.

7:13

Speaking up for Jesus was risky. The leaders could shut a person out of the synagogue, the local meeting place for worship and teaching. That meant being cut off from neighbors and friends.

7:14

"The midst of the feast" means around the third or fourth day of the seven. Teaching took place in the temple's open outer courts, a large public space where recognized teachers gathered listeners and where questions and arguments from the crowd were normal.

7:15

"How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" is not a charge of illiteracy. "Letters" means formal schooling in the scriptures, and the objection is that Jesus never studied under a recognized teacher, so he cannot cite a master's authority for what he says, as trained teachers routinely did.

7:16

KJV "doctrine" means simply "teaching," what he says, not a fixed body of beliefs. The same word appears in verse 17.

7:19

"The law" means the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, received through Moses and the foundation of Jewish life and legal practice. It is also the shared ground of the argument: both sides accept it, so the dispute is over who is actually keeping it.

7:20

"Thou hast a devil" means "you have a demon," and in this period the accusation carried the everyday sense of "you are out of your mind." The crowd speaking here appears to be festival pilgrims who know nothing of any plot by the authorities.

7:21

The "one work" points back to the healing of the disabled man at the pool in Jerusalem on a Sabbath, told in John 5, which had started the earlier quarrel.

7:22

Circumcision, the cutting away of the foreskin, was the physical sign of the covenant given to Abraham long before Moses, which is why the text says it came "of the fathers." The law set it on the eighth day after birth, and it was carried out on that day even when it fell on the Sabbath, which otherwise forbade work. That accepted exception is the pivot of the argument.

7:23

"Every whit whole" means completely well, the whole man rather than one part of him, set against circumcision, which affects only one small part of the body.

7:26

"Christ" is the Greek word Christos, translating the Hebrew Messiah, "anointed one": a title, not a surname, for the promised king from David's line. "The rulers" means the members of the Sanhedrin, the council of chief priests, elders and legal experts that governed Jewish affairs in Jerusalem.

7:27

This reflects a strand of popular expectation that the Messiah would appear suddenly and unannounced, with his origins unknown. The objection is that Jesus' hometown and family are common knowledge, which to these speakers rules him out.

7:30

In this book, "his hour" is a set time, the time when Jesus would be arrested and die. John keeps saying it has not arrived yet.

7:31

KJV "miracles" translates the Greek word for "signs," the term John uses for Jesus' works throughout the book. It points to an act that means something, not simply a wonder.

7:32

The Pharisees were a lay movement known for exact observance of the law and widely respected by ordinary people. The chief priests were the temple hierarchy, a different and often rival group. The "officers" they send are the temple guard, a police force under the council's authority, not Roman soldiers.

7:35

"The dispersed among the Gentiles" is the Diaspora, the large Jewish population living scattered outside the homeland in cities across the Greek speaking world. The word the King James renders "Gentiles" here is literally "Greeks," meaning Greek speaking non Jews. The speakers are guessing sarcastically at some far off destination.

7:37

On each morning of this feast a priest carried water in a golden pitcher from the pool of Siloam and poured it out at the altar, with prayers for the rains of the coming year. Jesus' call about thirst and drinking was spoken against that ceremony. Sources differ over whether the "last day, that great day" is the seventh day of the feast or the closing assembly held the day after.

7:38

"Belly" translates a Greek word for the innermost part of a person, not the stomach specifically. The sentence is genuinely ambiguous in Greek and can be read either as water flowing out of the believer or out of Jesus himself, depending on where the punctuation falls. No single Old Testament passage reads exactly this way; the words echo several places that speak of water flowing out from God's presence or from his people.

7:39

"Holy Ghost" is the King James wording for the Holy Spirit; "ghost" simply meant spirit in 1611 English. "Glorified" is John's term for the whole movement of Jesus' death, rising and return to the Father, not for fame or acclaim.

7:40

"The Prophet" is a specific figure, the prophet like Moses promised in Deuteronomy 18, whom many expected before or alongside the Messiah. Some held him to be a separate person from the Messiah, which is why the crowd splits into competing identifications in the next verse.

7:41

Galilee was a northern farming region far from Jerusalem, with a mixed population and a country accent, and people in the capital tended to look down on it. Coming from Galilee counted against a religious claim before anyone examined it.

7:42

"The seed of David" means a descendant of King David, the line from which the promised king was expected. Bethlehem, a small town about five miles south of Jerusalem, was David's home town, and the prophet Micah named it as the place the ruler would come from. The speakers assume Jesus is a Galilean by birth.

7:47

"Deceived" here means led astray, taken in, the same charge the crowd was making in verse 12.

7:49

This is a phrase of contempt. Those who prided themselves on exact observance used it of ordinary working people, who could not keep the detailed rules about purity and tithing, and "cursed" invokes the curses the law pronounces on those who fail to keep it.

7:50

Nicodemus appears in John 3, where he comes to Jesus after dark. "Being one of them" means he is himself a member of the ruling council now debating what to do.

7:51

He is appealing to a recognized principle of Jewish legal procedure, drawn from the law's instructions to judges: a case is heard from the accused before it is decided.

7:52

"Art thou also of Galilee?" is a sneer; Galilee was regarded in Jerusalem as a backward province. The sweeping claim that follows is loose as history, since prophets including Jonah had come from the north, and a few early copies of John read "the prophet" here rather than "a prophet," which would make it a denial about the promised figure of verse 40 rather than about prophets generally.

7:53

This verse begins the account of the woman caught in adultery, which runs through 8:11. It is missing from the earliest surviving copies of John, appears at different places in later ones, and is widely printed with a note for that reason. That is why the chapter breaks off here with everyone simply going home.

Where the Manuscripts Differ

Worth knowing before you stand up: a listener following a modern translation may not have this verse in front of them.

7:53

This account of the woman caught in adultery is missing from the earliest manuscripts, and some later ones place it elsewhere in the Gospels. Most modern Bibles keep it and mark it.