What Could Jesus Have Possibly Written With His Finger?
I have puzzled more than once about that moment when Jesus was faced with a question about punishment for the adulterous woman, and stooped to write in the sand before answering. What could He possibly have written. Did He just doodle? Why did His simple statement, “Who is without sin, let him cast the first stone” have so much impact on the proud Pharisees and Sadducees? Didn’t they think they were keeping the law, reading the Torah, and thus guiltless?
I have felt there must be more to this story. And the answer may lie in how the Lord often connected His actions with events in the Torah. He took thousands into the desert where He as pre-mortalJehovah had given manna from heaven, then fed Israel, again,miraculously with food. Then He connected the miracle to ancient Israel. “Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead.... I am the living bread which came down from heaven.” (Compare Exodus 16 and John 6, especially verses 49, 51).
Thousands followed Him up to a Mountain. And there, as He had done to ancient Israel, He gave them a New Law- but a Higher Law. And here He first revealed to them His New Covenant. (Compare Moses on Mt. Sinai and Jesus at Sermon on the Mount).
So it is likely He was connecting this event with the adultress to something from the past, something they would recognize, and which would penetrate their heart so much that even they would recognize their sin?
There was one thing He might have connected with. And it bore two strong elements which the Pharisees and Sadducees should not have missed.
The writing with the finger, and the sin.
1. Jehovah had once before written with His finger --- only it was upon two stone tablets.
2. The first thing Jehovah had written with his finger was this. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The prophets had made it clear the sin for not worshipping Jehovah was adultery. This was the very sin of which they had accused the woman.
So is this what He wrote with His finger? "Thou Shalt have no other gods before me?" And did He write it in such a way that the Pharisees and Sadducees recognized its significance?
We cannot know for certain until God reveals the truth. But consider that this was what Jesus did write. The Pharisees and Sadducees, who were trying to prove Jesus was a fraud, would have connected His writing with His finger and WHAT He was writing with Jehovah and the Ten Commandments. This very act could have shaken them to the core. What wisdom! He and they knew that the sin of not worshipping Yeshua was considered adultery. So when He said, “Who is without sin, let him cast the first stone,”He was not only suggesting that there was no one there without sin, but that they too were adulterers!
He had not only bested them, He had penetrated their very hard hearts --- in more ways than one!