This passage from the Gospel of John, chapter 8 is one that I return to in my prayers. It is very short, but packed with sign and symbol. This story has a huge amount to teach us about the way in which God thinks, about Jesus' teaching and the Way he wants us to follow him. The two Bible commentaries I have are some help, but both leave out what for me is the most important aspect of the story: Jesus writing on the ground.
Commentaries discuss whether the crime committed by a married woman caught in adultery was indeed punishable by stoning. In some Jewish law it depended on whether she was in a town (where her cries would be heard, if indeed she cried out) or whether it was done in the fields where her cries would be useless. The first instance is a test of her; did she cry out against the man or was she in fact a willing participant? The second instance implies that the man planned to attack the woman and did so in a place where her cries would not be heard.
There were different punishments for married and unmarried (betrothed) female adulterers – strangling and stoning respectively – in the Mishnah laws, but these post-date the Gospel of John.
What I think they are forgetting is that we are used to statutory laws, set by parliament and impartially administered by courts. In Jesus’ time the laws would have been enforced and punishments meted out in a much more arbitrary fashion, especially in a land whose law is subjugated by Rome. What we have here is a lynch mob, not a court.
Feminist interpretation points out that it takes two to commit adultery, but the man is not being arrested, sentenced and about to be executed. We don’t know what happened to the man; maybe the mob killed him, maybe he leads the mob, maybe he ran off and escaped. Where’s the husband or fiancée? Is he at home, sheltering his children and trying to cope with her betrayal? Is he at the head of the mob, demanding vengeance? Is he absent, working in another town, while she plays hookey? Is he off with another woman, but that is overlooked while her crime is discovered? Did he set the whole thing up? We do not know: so we can not judge.
This story is paired in the liturgy of Lent with the story of Susannah in the Book of Daniel, Chapter 13. In this story, Susannah is innocent, but the judges are guilty of attempted rape, then perjury and conspire to have Susannah judicially murdered to cover up their crimes. Daniel jumps in and points out that the accused has had no opportunity to speak for herself. Good point. But from that moment on he behaves very much like the old judges: he does not give Susannah a voice, instead he questions the elders himself. Even before he questions them, he condemns them completely and assures them that God has condemned them just as thoroughly. He then finds their arboricultural knowledge to be insufficient and the mob takes this as being evidence of their guilt; culpability that we know about but which is in no way proven. Both trials are insufficient and the execution of the elders is not justified by any fair trial process. What is important is that there is no mercy: not from the elders, not from the Daniel, not from God and not from the mob.
The Gospel story has a powerful ending: the elders retreat leaving Jesus and the woman alone. She faces him and he sees her, only now do they speak. He does not tell her what to do. He does not tell her to return to her husband, or forsake her lover, or blame her and nor does he even mention whatever lies in the past. He tells her two things:
“go your way”; you must find The Way, you must make the decisions and the choices, they are yours to make. He is telling her that she is free to follow her conscience, not what her conscience should be telling her.
“from now on do not sin again”; this does not relate to sexual sins, but everything in her life that is coming between her and her Lord. He does not tell her what to do, what not to do, where, when or how. She has complete agency.
The glaring omission from the commentaries is that Jesus is writing on the ground. He had been teaching a crowd. Then they bring him this case and he starts to write on the ground. As they press him for an answer, he writes on the ground again. What does this signify? What is he writing? They come to him with the old law, the law of Moses that was given to the people under the covenant between God and the Hebrews. Now there is a new covenant, a new law that Jesus is writing with his life. That is what he is writing on the ground. It is not a law of crimes and penalties. It is a law of forgiveness, love and mercy. It is a law that sets everyone free, as the woman is set free.
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