The works of the Reverend and learned John Lightfoot D. D., late Master of Katherine Hall in Cambridge such as were, and such as never before were printed : in two volumes : with the authors life and large and useful tables to each volume : also three maps : one of the temple drawn by the author himself, the others of Jervsalem and the Holy Land drawn according to the author's chorography, with a description collected out of his writings.

JOHN Chap. VIII.

A Woman taken in Adultery, &c.

IT is said in the conclusion of the former Chapter, that every one [of the Sanhedrin] went home, and here, Jesus went into the Mount of Olives: which joyns the story plain enough. Not that he lodged in mount Olivet in the open fields, but that he went to Bethany, and lodged in the House of Lazarus, of which we shall find confirmation in the next Secti∣on.

In the morning he comes to the Temple, and in the treasury, or the Court of the wo∣men, he sitteth down, and teacheth the people: For it was the custom for the Teachers of the people to sit when they taught, and those that were taught to stand about them. As he thus sits teaching, the Scribes and Pharisees bring a Woman to him taken in the act of Adultery, &c.

The Syriack wants this story: and Beza doubts it [a man always ready to suspect the text] because of the strangeness of Christs action, writing with his finger on the ground. Mihi ut ingenue loquar [saith he] vel ob hunc ipsum locum suspecta est haec historia. Whereas it speaks the style of John throughout, and the demeanor of the Scribes and Pharisees, and of Christ most consonantly to their carriage all along the Gospel. The snare that they laid for him in this matter, was various. That he should condemn the adul∣teress, but where was the adulterer? why brought they not him too? If he condemned her, he seemed to assume Judicial power: if he condemned her not, he seemed a contem∣ner

of the Law. But he in his divine wisdom used such a mean, as condemned their base∣ness▪ and confounded their machination against him. His writing with his finger upon the ground, may rather be construed from allusion to Numb. 5. 23. or from Jer. 17. 13. or from a passage in Tal. Jerus. in Megillah. fol 74. col. 2. or from several other illustra∣tions, then for that action roughly and rudely to deny the authentickness of the story. The censuring and judging of this Woman, belonged to a Judicial bench at the least of twenty three Judges, and it would have carried a fair accusation against him, had he gone about to judge in such a matter. The Woman was espoused and not yet married, as see Deut. 22. 24. for their Judicials punished him that lay with an espoused maid, with sto∣ning, Sanhedr. per. 7. halac. 4. but him that lay with a married wife, with strangling, Ibid. per 11. halac. 1.

Christs words at ver. 25. I am even the same that I said to you from the beginning, refer to his open and manifest asserting himself for the Messiah a year and a half ago before the San∣hedrin. Joh. 5.

Their words to him, ver. 57. Thou art not yet fifty years old, mean, Thou art not yet come within the compass of old age, no not to the first skirts of it, for fifty years was the be∣ginning of superannuation to the Levites at the Temple, Numb. 4. and the Jews had a common opinion, that whosoever died before fifty, or at least fifty two, died untimely, and as it were by cutting off.