Proverbs 26:4; John 8:1-6
Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): It is surprising to see what a variety of ways the wickedness of the human heart will betray itself: sometimes in the commission of gross iniquity, and sometimes in apparent indignation against it: sometimes in open hostility against Christ, and sometimes in hypocritical professions of regard for Him. Who that had seen the zeal of the Scribes and Pharisees against an adulterous woman, would not have thought them the purest of the human race? Who that had heard their citations of Moses’ law, and their respectful application to Christ as an authorized expositor of that law, would not have supposed that they truly feared God, and desired to perform His holy will? Who would have imagined that the whole was only a murderous plot against the life of Christ?
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): The awful malignity of the Lord’s enemies is evident. They brought this adulterous woman to Christ not because they were shocked at her conduct, still less because they were grieved that God’s holy law had been broken. to exploit this woman’s sin and further their own evil designs. With coldblooded indelicacy they acted, employing the guilt of their captive to accomplish their evil intentions against Christ.
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): It is worthy of remark, that these sworn foes of Christ did not bring the Adulterer as well as the Adulteress. Had their designs in coming to Jesus been purely from a regard to the sanctity of God’s law, they would have been as anxious to punish the man, as the woman; for so the law enjoined, see Leviticus 22:10.
CHARLES SIMEON: These accusers had no indignation against the sin of adultery, nor any love to the law of Moses, nor any zeal for the honour of God: they were actuated solely by an inveterate hatred of Christ, and a determination to find, if possible, some occasion against Him, that they might accuse Him. Their professed object was, to punish the woman; but their real object was, to lay a snare for His life.
A. W. PINK: They were anxious to discredit our Lord before the people. They did not wait until they could interrogate Him in private, but, interrupting as He was teaching the people, they rudely challenged Him to solve what must have seemed to them an unsolvable enigma. The problem by which they sought to defy Infinite Wisdom was this: A woman had been taken in the act of adultery, and the law required that she should be stoned.
MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): Moses in the law, Leviticus 20:10, commanded that such malefactors should “be put to death;” but we read of no law commanding this kind of death. Their rule was, that when the law had set no kind of death for an offence, there the mildest kind of death was to be their punishment, which they counted strangling to be. But they ordinarily entitled Moses to their traditional additions to the law; and death being commanded by the law as the punishment, they took themselves to be at liberty to determine the kind of death, as prudence and reason of state ruled them; so probably, seeing that that sin grew very frequent amongst them, appointed stoning to be the kind of death such malefactors should be put to. The manner of which was this: The guilty person was carried up to some high place, and thrown down from there headlong by such as witnessed against him; then they threw stones at him till they had killed him, if not killed by the fall; or covered his body, if he were dead. This they tell our Saviour that Moses commanded, because he had commanded that such a person should die, and their Sanhedrim had determined this particular death to such malefactors. But they would know what our Saviour said to this.
A. W. PINK: “What sayest thou?” they asked. An insidious question, indeed.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): If they had asked this question in sincerity, with a humble desire to know his mind, it had been very commendable. Those that are entrusted with the administration of justice should look up to Christ for direction.
A. W. PINK: “What sayest thou?” they asked. An insidious question, indeed.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): If they had asked this question in sincerity, with a humble desire to know his mind, it had been very commendable. Those that are entrusted with the administration of justice should look up to Christ for direction.
ROBERT HAWKER: But the object they had was to entangle the Lord Jesus in a snare.
A. W. PINK: Had He said, “Let her go,” they could then accuse Him as being an enemy against the law of God, and His own word “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill,” Matthew 5:17. But if He answered, “Stone her,” they would have ridiculed the fact that He was the “friend of publicans and sinners.” On one hand, if He ignored the charge they brought against this guilty woman, they could accuse Him of compromising with sin; on the other hand, if He passed sentence on her, what became of His own word, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved,” John 3:17.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Their intention was, to constrain Christ to depart from his office of preaching grace, that he might appear to be fickle and unsteady.
A. W. PINK: Here, then, was the dilemma: if Christ palliated the wickedness of this woman, where was His respect for the holiness of God and the righteousness of His law; but if He condemned her, what became of His claim that He had come here to “seek and to save that which was lost?”
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): But there is something more than that here.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Observe further, that the Jewish Sanhedrim sat by licence from the Roman governor; and though they had a right to try capital causes, it was necessary that the sentence which they passed should be recognized and allowed by the Roman governor, before it could be carried into execution.
MATTHEW POOLE: If He had directed to send her to be punished by the Roman governors, who administered justice in capital causes, the people would be fired with indignation; for they looked upon them as invaders of the rights of government that belonged to the Israelites. If He had advised them to put her to death by their own power, they would have accused Him of sedition, as an enemy of the Roman authority. If He had dismissed her as not worthy of death, they would have accused him to the Sanhedrim, as an infringer of the law of Moses, and a favourer of dissoluteness.
A. W. PINK: No doubt they were satisfied that they had Him completely cornered.
MATTHEW POOLE: This malicious design, so craftily concerted, our Saviour easily discovered and defeated—He seemed not at all to attend to what they said, but, stooping down, wrote on the ground.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): Our Lord knew the hearts of the malicious questioners before Him, and dealt with them with perfect wisdom—He refused to be “a judge” and lawgiver among them, and specially in a case which their own law had already decided. He gave them, at first, no answer at all.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.” Sometimes a fool, or a wicked man, is not to be answered at all—as Christ to the Scribes and Pharisees.
