John 8:1Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

But in the time of Jesus Christ it was not applied, because the Jews then had no independent government. They depended on the Romans, whose criminal laws did not prescribe death for the sin of adultery.

Therefore, if Jesus Christ had answered their question affirmatively, He would have spoken against the Roman government. If He had answered negatively, He would have rejected the Law of Moses.

At first Jesus Christ answered nothing to those questioning Him. Bending low, He wrote with His finger on the ground, as though paying no attention to them.

But then, when they continued asking Him, He lifted Himself up and said to them: “He who is without sin among you, that is, against the seventh commandment, let him first throw a stone at her.”

Having said this, Jesus Christ again bent down and began to write on the ground. But each of the accusers was conscious in himself of sin against the seventh commandment.

Besides this, each feared another who might expose him before public opinion in this sin, if he decided to show himself sinless and throw the first stone at the sinful woman.

Therefore they all began to go away, one after another, from Jesus and the accused woman. Only the disgraced woman remained near Him, with a tormenting feeling of shame and fear, repentance, and prayer for mercy.

Turning to her, Jesus says, “Has no one condemned thee?” “No one, Lord,” she answered. And the Lord says to her, “Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.”

They thought that Christ would certainly answer the question put to Him, and that any answer would give them grounds to accuse Him. If He said to stone her, they would accuse Him of inciting the crowd to carry out lynch law against the woman.

If He said to release her, they would accuse Him of disrespect for the Law of Moses.

According to Eusebius, who had read the writings of Papias, a disciple of the Apostles, Papias “relates a story about a woman who was accused before the Lord of many sins, of which the Gospel of the Hebrews also speaks,” Church History 3.39.

The story of the woman was recognized as authentic by Ambrose, De Spir. s. III, 2; Ep. 58 ut 76; by Augustine, Cont. Faustum 22.25; in Iohan. tract. 50; de cons. evang. 4.10; in the Synopsis of Athanasius; and in Apostolic Constitutions 2.24.

Augustine wrote: “I think this narrative was omitted so as not to give light-mindedness an occasion for violating marriage,” De adult. coniug. 2.7. St. Ambrose said the same.

Nikon the Armenian wrote directly that in the Armenian Church this story was not read because of its scandalous character. Blessed Jerome testified: “In the Gospel of John, according to many Greek and Latin copies, there is a narrative about an adulterous woman who was accused before Jesus,” adv. Pelag. 2.6.

In the scholia it was noted: “It is in the ancient copies.” Among presently known manuscripts, it is absent from incomplete copies, but it is present in the best and most ancient Cambridge manuscript and in others like it.

The content of the story fully agrees with the spirit of John’s Gospel. Only those who did not understand the spirit of Christ considered it scandalous and, by such an unjust thought, did not read it. Yet nothing can explain why anyone would have wanted to insert it into the Gospel.

Verses 1 and 2. The last, great day of the feast was Wednesday, October 22, the twenty-fifth of Tishri. The hatred of the Sanhedrin forced the Savior to leave Jerusalem for a time. He withdrew to the Mount of Olives.

On the first Sabbath after the feast, early in the morning, He again appeared in the court of the temple to teach the people. And the people came to Him in crowds.

The Savior recalled this thirst of the people to hear Him, and His own readiness to satisfy it, when His enemies came by night to arrest Him, Mt 26:55.

The aim of the Pharisees is clear. If the Lord condemned her, they would raise an outcry over His hardness of heart. They would accuse Him before the Romans of demanding the enforcement of Mosaic death penalties.

Yet Rome had taken from the Jews the right of life and death. See the introduction and chapter 18:31. If the Lord acquitted her, another accusation would arise: that “He perverts the people” (Lk 23:2) and encourages adultery.

But the Lord, as on another occasion concerning the coin bearing Caesar’s image, Mt 23:15-22, put the crafty questioners to shame. He reveals before the people the blackness and guile in the hearts of these teachers of Israel.

He also lifts the veil of an all-embracing and all-forgiving Mercy toward the one who repents before the Lord.

The trembling adulteress knew that death was appointed for her by the law. She was not certain that this penalty would not be carried out, despite the authority of the Romans. At that moment she undoubtedly wept bitterly over her fall.

More than this, she had been brought before One whom she perhaps saw for the first time. Yet she had heard the people’s report of Him as the Christ.

She could not remain without repentance, feeling that she stood not before an ordinary judge, but before the Knower of hearts. The Lord, so far as we may judge, read true repentance in her heart, apart from fear and grief.

Then the Lord saves the offender by a word of mercy and commands her to sin no more. We do not know what became of this adulteress afterward.

Yet we know that, apart from Judas, hardly anyone who had the happiness of experiencing the Lord’s mercy during His earthly life could remain undrawn to Him in heart, or fail later to enter the community of Christ.

In His deeds and divine words, the Lord points to the universal law by which the moral world is governed. It is expressed in the words of the Apostle James: “mercy triumphs over judgment” (Jas 2:13).

It is also expressed in the words of the Apostle Paul concerning the coming of the Lord: “grace reigned through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5:21).

The Lord came not to punish the sins of mankind, “for God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him” (Jn 3:17).

The Lord came to regenerate man and make him holy and pure, not by fear of punishment, but by faith and love.

A man morally reborn by water and the Spirit recognizes the abomination of sin and the vanity of earthly joys. He knows that there is a higher good, before which the fleeting span of earthly life is nothing.

And the sinful woman heard the merciful words of the Lord: “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more” (v. 11). She fell as a human being, and the Lord restored her.

Faith and love undoubtedly caught fire in her heart. The Pharisees and scribes did not fall in this way. They fell like the devil, imagining in their satanic pride that they were without error.

But by one word of the Lord they are cast down and exposed in uncleanness, hypocrisy, and their vile design against the Lord.

They are struck by the majesty and love for mankind in the Lord’s answer. They are convicted of sins greater and more vile than the sins of the adulteress.

For these sins are covered by hypocrisy and an outward show of righteousness. They depart, carrying within themselves the secret awareness that they are truly like “whitewashed tombs” (Mt 23:27).

But they depart not with repentance, but with increased malice and a thirst for revenge over the humiliation of their pride.

We cannot pass over the fact that in some ancient manuscripts verses 7 through 8 are omitted. Thus in the Sinaitic Codex, Aleph, kept in the St. Petersburg Public Library, this passage is absent.

In the Alexandrian Codex chapter 7 and most of chapter 8 are omitted. In the Vatican, Parisian, and other codices, the episode of the adulteress is omitted.

There is no ground to doubt that the account of the adulteress was written by the Evangelist as an eyewitness of the event.

Yet there are many reasons to think that this account was omitted in readings in the ancient churches. This was done so as not to give many sinners the occasion to think that fleshly sin is among the lighter sins.

The inhabitants of hot countries have always been so inclined. Blessed Augustine indicates that this passage was intentionally omitted in the second book of his treatise On Adulterous Marriages, De adulterinis conjugiis, book 2, section 7.

He says that this event is omitted from Latin manuscripts “because certain people weak in faith, or one might say hostile to the right faith, saw in it a scandal.”

It seems that St. John Chrysostom had before him a copy of the Gospel that did not contain the account of the adulteress. In his homilies on the Gospel of John, he passes directly from the Pharisees’ words to Nicodemus (Jn 7:52).

He then proceeds to the Lord’s words (Jn 8:12): “I am the light of the world.” It is noteworthy that Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria has no interpretation of the account of the adulteress in John’s Gospel.

It must also be said that in certain ancient Greek manuscripts the account of the adulteress is placed elsewhere in the Gospels. For example, it appears at the end of John’s Gospel or at the end of chapter 21 of Luke’s Gospel.

“But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and sitting down, He taught them.”

We are probably not mistaken in pointing out that this very time is described in Lk 21:37-38. The Evangelist says, “By day He was teaching in the temple, but at night He went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet.”

“And all the people came early in the morning to Him in the temple to hear Him.” It is therefore understandable that the account of the Lord’s forgiveness of the adulteress could be read after Luke chapter 21.

It found a place there in certain manuscripts. Where the Lord spent the nights we do not know. Most likely He spent them in the garden of Gethsemane beyond the Kidron, on the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives.

For in John 18 it is said of this garden: “Judas, who betrayed Him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with His disciples.” In that garden there is a cave recognized as the tomb of the Theotokos.