Walking With Christ

John 8:6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.(ESV)

I have to start with a full caveat here. There is absolutely no historical evidence concerning what Jesus wrote or drew in the dirt in this story. Anyone who claims that they know for sure, even through divine revelation, what Jesus was doing in these verses should be responded to with a fair degree of skepticism.

We don’t know why Jesus wrote in the dirt. We do know for sure that it was significant enough for John to put it down on paper. This is the only recorded instance of Jesus writing anything, ever. Despite not having proof of what He wrote or why, we do have some contextual clues that can help us to pick up on the biblical clues.

Jeremiah 17:13 O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you[c] shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.(ESV)

Jeremiah speaks about people being written in the dust of the earth as a sign of their rejection of God. Jesus loved to point back to Old Testament writings. This may have been a moment of silent rebuke–suggesting that the Pharisees were guilty before God, not just the woman.

Exodus 31:18 And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.(ESV)

The finger of God wrote the first two tablets of the Ten Commandments, the foundation of the Law. The Pharisees were using the Law of Moses to condemn the woman. It’s possible that by writing in the dirt, Jesus was symbolizing that He is the same God who wrote the Law–only now, He was about to fulfill it in a new way.

I, personally, don’t think this symbolism would have served any purpose for those present because they were incapable of accepting that Jesus is who He said He is. My personal theory is that since Jesus is God and therefore capable of seeing the past, present, and future all at once, He actually was interacting with our past in that moment. I like to think that He was either carving the Ten Commandments for Moses in that moment, or His hand was the disembodied hand in Daniel 5:5 writing on the wall in Babylon.

Regardless of what He wrote and the reason why, we do know that Jesus was silently challenging every accuser. The situation was not accidental. Jesus knew that this situation was set as a trap to snare Jesus rather than an exercise in true justice. Deuteronomy 19:16-19 states that a witness who falsely accuses someone must receive the same punishment they intended for the accused. If these men were setting a trap for Jesus rather than truly seeking justice, they themselves were guilty under the very same law they were citing. When Jesus said for any without sin to cast the first stone, it wasn’t just about personal sin–it was about their legal standing under the Law.

Then I take a step back and the child in me imagines Jesus just drawing stick figures in the dirt. When I’m tired, I can imaging Him making them dance and interact with each other while giving them different voices and the story unfolds.

No, I don’t plan on growing up.