Most people, even non-believers, have heard the story of the woman accused of adultery who was brought before Yeshua.
Without saying anything, he bent down and began to write something on the ground; getting up, he said that the one who was without sin was to throw the first stone. He wrote some more on the ground, and then the accusers just walked away.
So…what did he write that caused the accusers to leave?
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First off, whether or not anyone had sinned was irrelevant because the Torah states the adulterer is being tried, not the accuser. What Yeshua said reminds us that no one is without sin, but still and all, it wasn’t really relevant to the situation.
I’m sorry, I have to take a moment because I just remembered an old joke:
The adulteress is brought before Yeshua, and after writing in the sand, he gets up and says, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
The men all look around at each other, then suddenly from the midst of the crowd a stone is flung, hitting the woman in the head and knocking her down.
Yeshua looks around, and as the crowd opens up to reveal the one who threw the stone,
Yeshua says, “Aw, gee, Ma- I’m trying to work here!“
Alright, let’s get serious, again.
The Torah is strongly against adultery: first and foremost, it is a violation of the 7th Commandment. That identifies it as a sin, but does not tell us the what the punishment is for that crime. That comes later, in both Lev. 20:10, and again in Deut. 22:22.
Here’s an important fact: the Torah calls for both the woman AND the man to be stoned to death.
OK, so here’s the first sign Yeshua had that he was being set-up: they only brought the woman, saying she was caught in the very act of adultery, but where was the man? It seems if she was caught in the act, red-handed (so to speak), then the man was certainly present at the scene of the crime.
But they only brought her.
So, I believe that what Yeshua wrote the first time was the 9th Commandment, which states no one should bear false witness. If these men brought only one of the guilty parties, they neglected to act correctly and it is sort of like accusing someone of murder, but not having the dead person’s body to prove a murder was committed.
Because there was no partner to a crime that requires a partner, the charges being brought are similar to bearing false witness. One person cannot commit adultery, and without both parties there, it is a baseless charge. A false witness.
Reminding them of that sin, it seems to me that might start them thinking, “Hey, wait a minute here! Are we sinning by doing this?”
Next, Yeshua continued to write and after that, they all began to leave. So, what else did he write?
I think the next thing he wrote was the punishment for bearing false witness, which is defined in Deut.19:15–21. Essentially, it says that someone who brings false charges against another person is to receive the same punishment the accused was to receive.
That had to get some of them thinking, “Oy veys mir! If we are guilty of bearing false witness because we all know this is a set-up, then we’re gonna get stoned to death!”
Of course, if this is what happened, it is not surprising that they all began to leave. I’m surprised they only wandered off, and didn’t run for their lives.
Finally, why did Yeshua let the woman go with just a warning?
Again, it is because the laws in the Torah regarding capital punishment state that no one is to be punished solely on the witness of a single person, and that especially in the case of a capital crime (which adultery was), there must be at least two or three witnesses. When all the accusers left, there were no witnesses, so Yeshua- being 100% Torah observant, 100% of the time- had to let her go.
Well, that’s what I think happened, especially considering that Yeshua wrote something twice, with just a little bit of time in between for the accusers to think about what they were doing.
Again, I really don’t think saying that the one without sin should throw the first stone had any significance here, because (as I said before) the Torah doesn’t require a sinless person to make a charge.
I think he said that to let the accusers know that he was on to them.
I really believe I have been given an insight as to what happened, answering a question that people have asked for centuries. I think it makes total sense, being both in accordance with the Torah and showing Yeshua’s ability to know what the men were thinking.
So, nu? What do you think?
Thank you for being here, and please don’t forget to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. After all, you can never tell how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.
That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
