Rivers of living water: Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles

John's Gospel presents itself as the testimony of the disciple whom Jesus loved (21:24). Since the second century the church has identified him with John the son of Zebedee, and scholars such as D. A. Carson and Leon Morris still defend this. Others, among them Richard Bauckham, think the author was John the Elder, another eyewitness known to Papias, and still others see a Johannine school that shaped the book. The date is usually put at about AD 85 to 95, with a minority arguing for an earlier one. The audience were readers who needed to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (20:31), and John 7 is well suited to that aim because it shows a divided crowd weighing exactly that question.

The chapter belongs to the part of John's story set in Jerusalem, which the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) mostly leave out. They tell of one journey up to Jerusalem at the end of Jesus' ministry. John reports at least three Passovers (2:13; 6:4; 11:55) and several other festivals, and John 7 falls about six months before the last Passover. Scholars who solve the synoptic problem by Markan priority, with Matthew and Luke using Mark and a sayings source, note that John gives a fuller account of the Judean ministry that the Synoptics leave in the background. Luke does say that Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem (Luke 9:51), and he records Jesus' lament over the city (Luke 13:34).

The feast is Tabernacles (Hebrew Sukkot), in autumn. Israel was to live for seven days in booths of branches to remember the wilderness years (Leviticus 23:33-43; Deuteronomy 16:13-15), and the eighth day was a sacred assembly. The prophet Zechariah foresaw the nations going up each year to keep the feast, and living waters flowing out from Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:8, 16). The Mishnah, a Jewish law code written down about AD 200, records a rite of pouring out water at the altar each morning, with water brought from the pool of Siloam, and a nightly lighting of great lamps in the temple. It is a later source, so its details should be used with caution, but the first readers would have known something of both customs. John 7 turns on the water, and John 8 turns on the light.

The Jewish opposition here is the opposition of Judean leaders, not of all Jews. Jesus, his brothers and his disciples are Jewish. John's phrase 'the Jews' usually names the leaders in Jerusalem, and sometimes the crowds, and readers should keep this in mind.

Chapter 7 is narrative made almost entirely of dialogue, and the dialogue is the structure. Different groups talk about Jesus in the third person, and he speaks to them in the second. The recurring word is 'divided' (7:12, 43), and the chapter shows in turn a divided family, a divided crowd, a divided Jerusalem, a divided Sanhedrin. The reader is meant to see that no one is neutral.

Two features of John's style need attention.

• First, John loves irony: speakers say true things without knowing it. The crowd says no one will know where the Christ is from (7:27), and John's readers know where Jesus is from. The Pharisees dismiss Jesus as a Galilean (7:52), and the facts are against them.
• Second, John uses double meanings: 'go up' (7:8-10) can mean to go to Jerusalem and to go to the cross; 'where I am going' (7:33-36) can mean heaven. The reader is expected to follow both.

The cry of 7:37-38 has a famous problem of punctuation and a famous problem of source, discussed in the exegesis below. The interpreter should hold both open and rely on John's own explanation in verse 39: the water is the Spirit, to be given after Jesus is glorified.

Verses 1–9

Jesus remains in Galilee because the leaders in Judea are seeking to kill him (the plot of 5:18). His brothers urge him to go to Judea and show himself to the world. John says that not even his brothers believed in him (7:5). Jesus answers that his time has not yet come, while theirs is always ready, and that the world hates him because he testifies that its works are evil. The word he uses for time is 'kairos', the right moment, not 'hora', the hour of the cross. Some manuscripts of verse 8 read 'I am not going up' and others 'not yet going up'; the second is probably earlier and avoids any contradiction with verse 10.

Verses 10–13

He goes up privately. At the feast the Jews look for him, and there is murmuring among the crowds: some say he is a good man, others that he leads the people astray.

Verses 14–24

About halfway through the feast Jesus teaches in the temple. The leaders are astonished that he knows letters, though he has not been trained in a rabbinic school. He says the teaching is not his own but from the one who sent him, and that anyone who wills to do God's will shall know whether the teaching is from God. The one who speaks on his own seeks his own glory; the one who seeks the glory of the sender is true. Then he turns on his critics: Moses gave the law, and none of them keeps it, and they seek to kill him. They had been angered by 'one work', the healing of chapter 5. He reminds them that they circumcise on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses (Leviticus 12:3) is not broken, and asks why they are angry that he made a whole man well on the Sabbath. He tells them to stop judging by appearances and to judge rightly.

Verses 25–36

Some Jerusalemites are amazed that the authorities let him speak, and wonder whether the rulers know that he is the Christ. They object that when the Christ comes no one will know where he is from, and they know this man's origin. Jesus cries out in the temple that they know him and where he is from, and yet he has not come on his own: the one who sent him is true, and they do not know him. They seek to arrest him but his hour has not come. Many believe and ask whether the Christ will do more signs. The Pharisees send officers to arrest him, and Jesus says he will be with them a little longer and then go to the one who sent him, where they cannot come. They speculate that he will go to the dispersion among the Greeks.

Verses 37–44

On the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stands and cries out: 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.' The next sentence is disputed. The older punctuation, followed by most modern versions, joins 'the one who believes in me' to the invitation, and the scripture speaks of streams of living water flowing from the believer's innermost being. An alternative punctuation takes the water as flowing from Jesus himself. No single Old Testament text matches the words, and interpreters point to Isaiah 58:11, Ezekiel 47:1-12, Zechariah 14:8 and the water from the rock (Exodus 17:6; Psalm 78:15-16). John explains that Jesus spoke of the Spirit, whom believers would receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus was not yet glorified (7:39). The crowd is divided. Some say he is the Prophet, others the Christ, others ask whether the Christ comes from Galilee when the Scripture says he comes from David's village of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). John does not correct them. The reader who knows the other Gospels knows the answer (Matthew 2:1-6; Luke 2:4-7).

Verses 45–52

The officers return without Jesus and say no one ever spoke like this man. The Pharisees answer that the crowd is cursed because it does not know the law. Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night (3:1-2), asks whether the law judges a man before hearing him. They answer that he must search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee. That is false: the prophet Jonah came from Gath-hepher, in Galilee (2 Kings 14:25). Verse 53 begins a passage (the woman caught in adultery) that most scholars think did not belong originally to John, and which is treated with John 8.

The chapter develops the doctrine of the Holy Spirit within the person of Christ. John does not mean that the Spirit was absent from the Old Testament (the prophets spoke by him), but that the outpouring promised by the prophets (Joel 2:28-29; Ezekiel 36:25-27) awaited the glorified Jesus. Jesus sends the Spirit after the cross (14:16, 26; 16:7; 20:22) and the book of Acts reports the gift at Pentecost.

It also shows the Bible's pattern of how God's revelation is received: by doing God's will one comes to know the teaching (7:17). This is not obedience as a condition of earning knowledge, but willingness as the posture in which truth is seen. The same Gospel says that those who do the truth come to the light (3:21).

The chapter also sets out the offer of the gospel in a sentence open to everyone: 'If anyone is thirsty'. Isaiah 55:1 had invited all who thirst to come to the waters, and Revelation 22:17 ends the Bible with the same call. The feast that remembered God's provision in the wilderness is where he offers the provision itself.

Jesus stands at a feast of wilderness water and light and claims to be the source of what the feast remembers. The connection is fulfillment, spoken by Jesus and interpreted by John. At Tabernacles the pouring of water looked back to the water from the rock (Exodus 17:6) and forward to Zechariah's river from Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:8). Jesus invites the thirsty to come to him. Paul later says the rock that followed Israel was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4), and the exodus water is an echo that his claim brings into the open. Isaiah 12:3 speaks of drawing water from the springs of salvation, and the Hebrew word for salvation there comes from the same root as the name Jesus, a possible echo.

The chapter also contains promise and irony. The crowd cites Micah 5:2 to rule Jesus out as the Christ because he is from Galilee. The prophecy is true, and Jesus' birth in Bethlehem satisfies it (Matthew 2:1-6; Luke 2:4-7). Whether John expected his readers to know this is debated, but the irony works either way. The mention of 'the Prophet' (7:40) is the promise of Deuteronomy 18:15, which John elsewhere applies to Jesus (1:45; 6:14).

Near the end the officers testify that no one has ever spoken as he does. They were sent to arrest Jesus and returned without him. John's readers are invited to weigh the same evidence.