Having announced His departure Jesus proceeded to offer the Holy Spirit for those who believed on Him (cf. chs. 14-16).
7:37 The feast of Tabernacles lasted seven days (cf. Deut. 16:13). However the day following the feast was a day of convocation that the people popularly regarded as part of the feast (cf. Lev. 23:36). Probably John meant the eighth day when he referred to the last, great day since that was the very last day of the festival.
Jesus used the occasion to make another important public proclamation (cf. v. 28). Probably Jesus laid low until this day to avoid arrest and then presented Himself again publicly. He invited anyone who was thirsty spiritually to come to Him and take what would satisfy and sustain him or her (cf. 4:10, 14).
Early each of the seven mornings of the feast the high priest would lead a procession from the Pool of Siloam to the temple. Another priest would first fill a golden ewer with water from the pool. He would then carry it through the Water Gate on the south side of the temple and into the temple courtyard. There he would ceremoniously pour the water into a silver basin on the west side of the brazen altar from which it would flow through a tube to the base of the altar. Many Jews would accompany these priests. Some of them would drink from the pool while others would chant Isaiah 55:1 and 12:3: "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. Joyously draw water from the springs of salvation."This was such a happy occasion that the Mishnah stated, "He that never has seen the joy of the Water-drawing has never in his life seen joy."283
The priest would then pour water into the basin at the time of the morning sacrifice. Another priest would also pour the daily drink offering of wine into another basin at the same time. Then they would pour the water and the wine out before the Lord. The pouring out of water represented God's provision of water in the wilderness in the past and His provision of refreshment and cleansing in the messianic age. The pouring out of wine symbolized God's bestowal of His Spirit in the last days. Every male present would simultaneously shake his little bundle of willow and myrtle twigs (his lulab) with his right hand and hold a piece of citrus fruit aloft with his left hand. The twigs represented stages of the wilderness journey marked by different kinds of vegetation, and the citrus fruit symbolized the fruit of the Promised Land.284Everyone would also cry, "Give thanks to the Lord!"three times. Worshippers in the temple courtyard would then sing the Hallel (Ps. 113-118).285
This "water rite"had become a part of the Israelites' traditional celebration of the feast of Tabernacles. Essentially it symbolized the fertility and fruitfulness that the rain brought. In the Old Testament, God likened His blessings in the messianic kingdom to the falling of rain (Ezek. 47:1-7; Zech. 13:1). The Jews regarded God's provision of water in the wilderness and rain in the land as harbingers of His great blessings on the nation under Messiah's reign. Thus the water rite in the feast of Tabernacles had strong messianic connotations.
Jesus stood to make His invitation. Normally rabbis sat when they taught. Therefore His standing position as well as His words stressed the importance of what He said. Jesus' claim was all the more impressive because on the eighth day no water was poured out. When Jesus called out His invitation, He was claiming to be the fulfillment of all that the feast of Tabernacles anticipated. He announced that He was the One who could provide messianic blessing, that He was the Messiah. His words compared Himself to the rock in the wilderness that supplied the needs of the Israelites.
7:38 Some commentators believed that the end of Jesus' statement did not occur at the end of this verse but after "Me."286They saw Jesus saying, "If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me, and drink he who believes in Me."This view results in the antecedent of "his innermost being"or "him"being Jesus rather than the believer. This view makes Jesus the source of the living water, which is biblical. However the punctuation in the NASB and NIV probably represents the better translation.287
The antecedent of "his innermost being"or "him"is probably the believer rather than Jesus. This does not mean that Jesus was saying that the believer was the source of the living water. The living water is a reference to the Holy Spirit elsewhere in John, and it is Jesus who pours out the Spirit as living water (4:14). Jesus spoke elsewhere of the living water welling up within the believer (4:14). The idea is not that the Spirit will flow out of the believer to other believers. We are not the source of the Spirit for others. It is rather that the Spirit from Jesus wells up within each believer and gives him or her satisfying spiritual refreshment. Water satisfies thirst and produces fruitfulness, and similarly the Spirit satisfies the inner person and enables us to bear fruit. The Greek expression is ek tes doilias autou(lit. from within his belly). The belly here pictures the center of the believer's personality. It may imply the womb, the sphere of generation.288
There is no specific passage in the Old Testament that contains the same words that Jesus mentioned here. Consequently He must have been summarizing the teaching of the Old Testament (cf. Exod. 16:4; 17; Num. 20; Neh. 8:5-18; Ps. 78:15-16; Isa. 32:15; 44:3; Ezek. 39:29; Joel 2:28-32; Zech. 14:8).289There the ideas of the Spirit and the law sustaining God's people as manna and water converge. Jesus claimed that He alone could provide the satisfying Spirit. This was an offer of salvation.
7:39 John helped his readers understand that Jesus was referring to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that happened after Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension, on the day of Pentecost (cf. 15:26; 16:7; Acts 1:5, 8; 2). That outpouring was something that God had not done before. It was similar to what Joel predicted He would do in the last days (Joel 2:28-32; cf. Acts 2:16-21). "Those who believed in Him"includes subsequent believers as well as believers on the day of Pentecost (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13). Jesus announced that the Holy Spirit would come on believers in a new way, namely to baptize, seal, and indwell them. John frequently spoke of Jesus' death, resurrection, ascension, and exaltation as all part of His glorification (11:4; 12:16, 23; 13:31; cf. Phil. 2:8-9).290
7:40-42 Jesus' spectacular offer led some people to conclude that He was the promised Prophet (Deut. 18:15, 18; cf. Acts 3:22) or possibly the Messiah (Christ). Evidently it was His claim to provide living water as Moses provided physical water that led to their associating Jesus with one of those predicted individuals. Formerly Jesus had provided bread as Moses had provided manna (6:14). Apparently these Jews did not equate the Prophet with Messiah. They apparently looked for two separate individuals to come as they seem to have anticipated a suffering servant and a triumphant Messiah in two different people. Others doubted that Jesus was the Messiah because of His apparently Galilean origins. One indication that the Jews expected Messiah to appear soon is the fact that these people could refer to messianic predictions spontaneously.
"Perhaps this is another illustration of Johannine irony, for Jesus wasborn in Bethlehem. The very passage that convinced his critics that he could not be the Messiah was one of the strongest to prove that he was."291
7:43-44 These opinions divided the people then as they still do today. Some of them wanted to arrest Jesus (cf. vv. 30, 32; 8:20; 10:39), but no one did, undoubtedly because such action was contrary to the Father's sovereign will.
This concludes John's account of Jesus' teaching on this occasion.
