Proverbs 26:5; John 8:6-9
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): “Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground.” This was the first thing that He here did.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): Most likely, Christ on purpose put Himself into this posture, as if He was busy about something else, and did not attend to what they said; and hereby cast some contempt upon them, as if they and their question were unworthy of His notice.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): This is the only mention made in the gospels of Christ’s writing.
MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): What He wrote, or how He could write upon the floor of the temple, which was of stone, are idle questions; the first not possible to be resolved, the second impertinent; for it is not said, that he made any impression upon the ground, though it be said, He wrote upon it. It appears plainly to have been but a divertive action, by which our Saviour signified that He gave no ear to them.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): Nor are we told precisely what He meant by that significant action.
A. W. PINK: That there was a symbolical significance to His action goes without saying, and what this is we are not left to guess. Scripture is its own interpreter. This was not the first time that the Lord had written “with His finger.” In Exodus 31:18, we read, “And He gave unto Moses, when He had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.”—Thus did He show these Pharisees that He had come here, not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. His writing on the ground, then, was symbolically a ratification of God’s righteous law. But so blind were His would-be accusers they discerned not the significance of His act.
MATTHEW HENRY: Some think they have a liberty of conjecture as to what He wrote here. Some Greek copies here read, He “wrote on the ground, the sins of every one of them;” and this He could do, for He “sets our iniquities before him,” Psalm 90:8.
JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): Perhaps He thus wrote on the ground to show that sin, which is written before God, Isaiah 65:6, and graven as it were “with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond, ” Jeremiah 17:1.
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): Now because they knew their Bibles, they must have known of the passage in Jeremiah 17:13, which says, “O LORD, the Hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.” It might be translated, “written on the ground.” See them gathered about Him, and He stoops down and writes on the ground. They turn one to the other, saying, “What is He doing, writing on the ground? Writing on the ground! Isn’t there something like that in our Bibles?” Yes, there is.
MATTHEW HENRY: Jerome and Ambrose suppose He wrote, “Let the names of these wicked men be written in the dust,” Jeremiah 17:13.
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): But this is mere conjecture.
JOHN TRAPP: Nothing certain can be determined.
A. W. PINK: It is evident that our Lord’s enemies mistook His silence for embarrassment. They no more grasped the force of His action of writing on the ground, than did Belshazzar understand the writing of that same Hand on the walls of his palace, Daniel 5:5-9, 25-31. Emboldened by His silence, and satisfied that they had Him cornered, they continued to press their question upon Him.
CHARLES BRIDGES (1794-1869): Silence may sometimes be mistaken for defeat. Unanswered words may be deemed unanswerable, and the fool becomes arrogant, more and more “wise in his own conceit.”
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): “When they continued asking,” our Lord silenced them with a withering and heart-searching reply—“He that is without sin among you,” He said, “let him first cast a stone at her.” He did not say that the woman had not sinned, or that her sin was a trifling and venial one. But He reminded her accusers that they were not the persons to bring a charge against her. Their own motives and lives were far from pure…What they really desired was not to vindicate the purity of God’s law, and punish a sinner, but to wreak their malice on Him.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): It is also evident that the accusers showed great partiality, from their apprehending the woman only, and not the man also, when the law condemned both; they must have favoured his escape, because they were both “taken in the fact.” It is plain, however, that our Lord’s certain knowledge of what the effect would be, at once vindicated the wisdom of His putting the matter upon this issue.
MATTHEW HENRY: “In the net which they spread is their own foot taken,” Psalm 9:15. They came with design to accuse Him, but they were forced to accuse themselves. Christ owns it was fit the prisoner should be prosecuted, but appeals to their consciences whether they were fit to be the prosecutors.
CHARLES SIMEON: To give time for His word to operate on their consciences, He stooped down and wrote again: and behold, these accusers, self-condemned in their own minds, and fearful lest their own secret abominations should be exposed to public view, withdrew as privately as they could. The elder part among them, as being most fearful of exposure, retiring first, and gradually the younger following their example; so that in a little time not a single accuser was left.
MATTHEW HENRY: They went away by stealth, as “people being ashamed steal away when they flee in battle,” 2 Samuel 19:3. It is folly for those that are under convictions to get away from Jesus Christ, as these here did, for He is the only one that can heal the wounds of conscience, and speak peace to us. Those that are convicted by their consciences will be condemned by their Judge, if they be not justified by their Redeemer; and will they then go from Him? To whom will they go?
J. C. RYLE: We learn, for one thing, the power of conscience…Wicked and hardened as they were, they felt something within which made them cowards.
MATTHEW HENRY: Christ by this teaches us to be slow to speak when difficult cases are proposed to us, not quickly to shoot our bolt; and when provocations are given us, or we are bantered, to pause and consider before we reply; think twice before we speak once: “The heart of the wise studies to answer.”
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): After He fired that one red-hot shot, He waited until it had produced its due effect.
CHARLES SIMEON: And thus was the snare broken.
CHARLES BRIDGES: Oh! for wisdom to govern the tongue; to discover “the time to keep silence, and the time to speak,” Ecclesiastes 3:7; most of all to suggest the “word fitly spoken” for effective reproof! Proverbs 15:23, 25:1. How instructive is the pattern of our great Master! “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.” Proverbs 26:5. His silences, and His answers were equally worthy of Himself.
