1. The Biblical holiday that is familiar to most people as the Feast of Tabernacles is also known as the Feast of Booth’s or Succoth.

2. What is interesting about these verses (Matthew 5:14-15, Luke 11:33, and John 18:20) is that Jesus’ brothers, it seems, were trying to throw what He had previously said back at Him at this point.

3. When Jesus said that He was not going to this feast because it was not His time, it was because He was not going up to the feast the way His brothers were trying to get Him to go – to "show [Himself] to the world (John 7:4)." It was not His time for that. That would not be until the feast of Passover, when He was crucified.

He did go up to this feast shortly after His brother’s said this, but it was not as His brother were trying to get Him to go. Remember, their prompting was to get Him to reveal Himself at the feast, and it is to this that Jesus said, "It is not My time yet. . . ."

4. The Greek literally reads, "how does this one know letters with not studying (the italicized word being implied)?"

5. I had once been an attendee of a congregation where the shepherd serving there had taught the "Old Testament" in a way they really showed forth the glory of God and the marvelous deity of the Messiah. He would speak of the law of God in a positive sense. This got me questioning beliefs of mine that I really could not substantiate with Scripture.

But the conflict in my mind remained. "How could this man of God speak so fondly of the law of God, especially since I had believed the Bible condemned the law of God as almost a plague to avoid?"

Then this shepherd said something one day that really opened my eyes to the consistency of Scripture. He said, "Jesus was not arguing against the Pharisees because of their obedience to the law of God; He was arguing against their misinterpretation of God’s law (author’s paraphrase)." God’s law was never meant for someone to attain a righteousness that can only be gained through faith (Hebrews 10:1), as the Pharisees were so presumptuously and hypocritically trying to do.

And that would fully explain Jesus’ comment here in John 7:19, when He said to the Pharisees, ". . . none of you do the law (author’s paraphrase)." Though they made an appearance of doing the law they really didn’t. And that is what Jesus was rebuking them for – not because they were obeying the law in its true form and intention.

6. The word "demon" literally means "accuser." It is the same word that is translated "devil" in other places. (Also see endnote 4:22).

7. There is a very subtle and interesting parallel between Jesus’ first and second coming, and how there was so much dispute – contrary to the proclamation of Scripture – as to anyone knowing anything definite about the Messiah or "where He is from." This is seen in the statement, "when the Messiah comes, no one knows where He is from." The confusion came about because there is one verse that says how He will be from Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), and another that says that He will "come out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1)."

And so with at least these two verses you can see, if you know anything today about how people try to interpret scripture, that they had three camps: One that said the Messiah was going to be from Egypt (Hosea 11:1). Another that said He would be from Bethlehem (Michah 5:2). (Both of them probably having a whole argument developed and verses to back it up.) And the third view being that "since there are so many different interpretations, we don’t know which one is right – no one knows where He is from."

We hear these exact same comments today when it comes to interpreting end-time prophecies in the Bible. Some say it is before the seventh week of Daniel (so called "Pre-trib"), some who say that it is in the middle or at the end of the seventh week of Daniel (so called "mid-trib" and "post-trib"), and those who say it will all pay out in the end.

But you know what? Even in His first coming there were those who did understand scripture and consequently recognized Jesus as the Messiah. Similarly, with His second coming there are the "pre-wrath" believers who understand that Scripture teaches that the Second coming of Jesus has to be after the Great Tribulation that begins in the middle of Daniel’s seventieth week and ends at some unknown point before the end of Daniel’s seventieth week – and just before God’s wrath begins. (Also see endnote 7:80)

8. The Greek simply says "officers." However, this particular group of people was not the Roman soldiers. They were security officers appointed by the Sanhedrin – the Jews.

The Romans had given the Jewish Religious-order autonomy to rule themselves to some extent. And these offices were the ones the Jewish leaders had appointed to assure an orderly society under their autonomy.

9. The word "come" is very interestingly in the aorist, active, infinitive tense. What that means is that it was something that began in the past, is still going on, and will continue to go on into the future.

But even more interesting is what Jesus was referring to. He was referring to the place He was presently at, at the time, even though He was standing right next to the people there. But then He says they cannot come. Where was it?

Well, it seems to be that Jesus was referring to the fact that though He was on earth in an earthly body, since He had access to the Father, also – at the same time – in the heavenly realms.

10. The Greek plainly says ". . . to the hellenists. . . ." Hellenists, as we know today, were Jewish people that had been "Hellenized" as a result of their dispersion into Greek culture that was so prevalent throughout the Roman Empire. More literally, they were Jewish people that had adopted the Greek culture and adapted to their lifestyle. But it became a term for Jews in Israel to refer to their fellow Jews that were dispersed throughout the world as a result of the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities that began at around 500BC. This could also possibly include the "God-fearing Greeks" that existed throughout Rome.

11. Consider the following verses:

12. The Feast of Tabernacles (a.k.a Feast of Booths, pronounced Succoth in Hebrew) is also known as "the Feast of the Ingathering" at other places in Scripture because of its time of celebration during the harvest. It is in reference to the gathering-in of the harvested crops (Exodus 23:16; 34:22).

Therefore, due to its close association to the need for rain (It only rains during the winter in Israel; and if it does not rain enough any year following the harvest, there will not be enough water for the next year’s crops), the Jews included into this celebration of seven days for the feast a daily demonstration of prayer. Each morning the priest, accompanied by a joyous singing, would take a pitcher and walk down to the pool of Siloam (which means "sent"), fill it up, and bring it back to the Temple to be poured as an offering on the altar.

While he poured out the drink offering, all the priests would simultaneously declare Isaiah 12:3, saying, "Therefore, with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation (NKJV)." They would do this all seven days. But on the seventh, it was accompanied by a much bigger celebration, with huge messianic implications. Consequently, it was called, "the great day of the feast (John 7:37)"

It was on this day, during the celebration, that Jesus stood up and "cried in a loud voice, saying, ‘If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He, who believes in Me, as the Scripture have said, "From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water (J 7:37-38)."’"

Talk about radical!

13. See endnote 6:8.

14. The original text says, "the officers came to the Chief priest and the Pharisees, and said, ‘why didn’t you bring Him [Jesus] with you?’" But to aid the reader, the word "they" is extended into the words, "the Chief priest and the Pharisees. . . ." This is done with confidence knowing that it would be illogical for the "they" to be the officers. For why would the officers, since they were the ones who were supposed to bring Jesus back, say, "why didn’t you bring Jesus here with you?"

15. There is a very interesting connection made here that needs to be especially pointed out. That is, this is Nicodemus’ first demonstration of his genuine response to Jesus. And it is after his encounter with Him on the topic about how a person needs to be born again to see the Kingdom of God (John 3:1-21).

If you notice, the Pharisees who had asked the security officers why they did not arrest Jesus responded to the officer’s answer with the words, "none of the Pharisees  .  .  . believe in Him [Jesus] (author’s paraphrase)." To this Nicodemus then stands up to defend Jesus. This is the first time Nicodemus expresses his beliefs contrary to the rest of the Pharisees.

This is also the same Nicodemus we then see at the tomb after Jesus’ crucifixion, who we are then told how he had originally come to Jesus in the darkness of night (John 19:39), which implies that he was now fully in the open.

16. There are those who propose that since this portion in not found in what they consider to be the most reliable manuscripts (referring to the Greek manuscripts of The Gospels and The Epistles), it may be a later addition, and, therefore, it was not originally included in John’s gospel. However, as usual, I am not so sure. . . . 

That is, I used to have doubts myself until a friend of mine showed me Jeremiah 17:13, where it says,

What this verse says is that not only is this account legitimate, but it was also in fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy. Because not only does Jesus write in the dust as each one of them departs from Him (some people speculating that He was writing their names in the dirt), but He had even done this on the Feast of Booths (John 7:2). It is at the same point in His ministry when He stood up and proclaimed, "If anyone is thirsty, come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, just as the Scripture have said, ‘out of his inner-most being will flow rivers of living water (John 7:37-38).’"

Also see endnote 6:12.

17. Consider John 5:31 where Jesus says, "If I testify concerning Myself, My testimony is not true" It seems like they were trying to throw His own words back in His face at this point.

18. The Greek for, "Where I will be going, you cannot come," is in the present, active, indicative case. (Also see endnote 6:9.)

19. Ibid.

20. In John 12:47 Jesus said, "For I did not come into the world to judge the world but to save it" This could be taken as a contradiction. But we have to keep in mind that there are two kinds of judgments: The first kind is the one where you make a judgment about something, like an umpire in a game. And then there is the other judgment, where God will condemn sin and throw all those who want to identify themselves with it into the bottomless pit for eternal judgment.

At this point, what Jesus is doing is making a distinction between those who are sinners and would like freedom from it and those who don’t. He did not come to judge those who want freedom from their sin. He came to rescue them (Isaiah 42:3). However, those who say they are without sin, He is telling them that He has things to judge concerning them, showing them that they are headed for the final judgment unless they have a change of mind (John 8:26).

Being judgmental is a whole different matter.

21. There is a very interesting set of words in this particular text within the Greek, and it is this: The Greek literally reads, "Abraham your father rejoiced in order to see my day, and he was glad." This is interesting because of the two words that are put together. They are the words "rejoice (agalliao, ἀγαλλιάω)" and the words "in order that (ina, ἲνα)."

With the first two words put together like this, it presents a question. And the question is, "why did Abraham ‘rejoice in order to see that day’?" Well when we look for how this word is used in the Septuagint (an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Torah and the Prophets), we find verses such as this: "Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling (Psalms 2:11)," and also, "but let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: (Psalms 5:11)."

Therefore, in these verses what we see is the thoughts of rejoicing and obedience, or trust in God (which would include trusting what He has told us to do), as inseparable. Along with that, obedience to God is not an outward observance to a command but, rather, a change in character, which plays itself out as obedience to what God takes pleasure in – and it is in this that we rejoice.

Until you rejoice in doing something, you have really not done it at all, authentically.

Also, see endnote directly below.

22. This Greek word agalliao (αγαλλιαω), which is mostly translated as "rejoiced," also has the meaning of "to exult." The reason it is translated in this publication as, "Abraham exalted his character to see My day, and he saw it and rejoiced" is because of this second Greek word that is here translated as "rejoiced." Because when the two words are put together in the same verse, it becomes redundant. That is unless one of them would have a slightly different meaning than it would appear at first.

(Added to that, when we rejoice in the Lord our character is exalted. This is because when we take joy in the Lord, we are being obedient or taking pleasure in His every word. And God blesses obedience when our hearts take pleasure in it, rather than doing it grudgingly, or out of compulsion.)

The event Jesus is referring to in the Gospels is found in Genesis 22:8-14. And in the book of Hebrews we find a commentary on this event:

In other words, Abraham understood, or saw, that since God had promised the Messiah to come from "his seed (Galatians 3:16)" – that is from the line or descendant of Isaac (Hebrews 11:18 and Genesis 21:12) (the Hebrew and Greek words used here for the word "seed" being in the singular in both instances) – that God was able to raise the dead. And I believe Abraham understood that it was in this faith in God’s promise of the coming Messiah that led him to obey God in the sacrificing of his son, Isaac. That is what justified Abraham (Romans 4;3, James 2:18). And in seeing all this "as a type," Abraham rejoiced.

Abraham exalted his character in being obedient in what God told him to do, and he rejoiced because he saw the foreshadow of the Messiah’s resurrection."

(The English word, "exult" and "exalt" are very similar in meaning with one main difference. "Exult" means "to rejoice," and "exalt" means to rejoice as well as "to raise oneself up in character." And though the Greek word "agalliao (αγαλλιαω)" means "to exult," the context is indicating that Abraham has also exalted his character in this instance, and that is what has also made him rejoice.

Also see endnote directly above.

23. There are instances in Jesus' interaction with the Pharisees when He alludes to His equality with God, mostly by applying a Scripture that refers to God’s character to Himself. But, in this instance, it is with the words, "I AM" – referring back to the passage where God tells Moses His name (Exodus 3:14). We know this is what Jesus was doing due to the response of the Pharisees, and how they "picked up stones to stone Him" – they believed He was committing blasphemy.

Along with this, Jesus would have been committing blasphemy if He was not Yahweh in the flesh. Therefore, to say that He was not God, you would at the same time be saying that He was a blasphemer. And even the cults who deny Jesus’ deity do not believe this about Him – that He was a blasphemer. Or do they? They are if they deny His deity and have this verse in their Bibles.

Also see endnote 3:84.

24. The English word in the Gospels for "temple" is sometimes used in a generic sense. And when it is, it is not, necessarily, meaning the temple building itself. It can sometimes be referring to the whole mountain area on which the temple was built. This can be deduced from the fact that they took up stones to stone Jesus while He was "in the temple." For it is most likely that there were not stones – at least big enough to stone someone – in the courtyard within the temple structure (a place that would have been kept clean). And the temple mount being a very large area, the people were probably in the area of the main – much larger – courtyard.

This, however, is not conclusive enough on its own, especially considering the fact that they could have kept a pile of stones ready to the side just in case they needed to stone someone. But if we look into the Greek behind the word "temple," we find that there are two different words used, the word naos (ναὸς), meaning the temple building itself (two places where this word is used are in Matthew 23:16-17 and Matthew 26:61 where Jesus is obviously talking about the Holy Place of the Temple) and the second word is "heron (ἱερόν)," which is used in the places where it is obviously referring to the whole temple-mount area – or at least an area that is not within the main temple building itself. (A couple of examples would be in Mark 11:15-16 and Acts 3:1-3.)

25. When the Greek word for Siloam (σιλωάμ) is looked up in the Septuagint, in Isaiah 8:6 for instance, we see that it uses a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew word "shiloach (חלש)," which means "sent."

26. In John 9:2 we see that Jesus disciples were the ones that had asked Him whose fault it was that this man was born blind. However, in John 9:15, we see that the Pharisees had then asked this same question. And so, from this, the phrase "but this time by the Pharisees" was added.

27. The Greek word used here is the word homologeo (ὁμολογέω). It is a compound word meaning, "to speak the same." It is a word that is popularly translated as "confess."

But it also has a deeper meaning. It also has the meaning of acknowledging to oneself something that is true outside of oneself – like the existence of God for example. And it is the preference in this publication to use the word "acknowledge," because it has more the meaning of this word than does our English word "confess."

I say this because you can confess something false. And that is not good. On the other hand, to genuinely confess you have to acknowledge that what God says about you – that we are sinners, totally separated from God until He opens our eyes – is true. And once God reveals something to us about ourselves, it is then our responsibility to acknowledge this. Then we should confess that what He says about us is true.

First we acknowledge something by agreeing that it is true, after which we then verbally confess it to someone else – that is what this word really means.

28. This could also be translated, "student." The word "disciple" has more of the meaning of one being a student. But even our word "student" does not fully capture the meaning of this word. The word "apprentice," however, would.

But even that does not give us the proper understanding because the word "disciple" describes a student that is much more committed than a regular student would be. It is more like one who is the subject of a mentor – a person who learns from a teacher’s way of life, rather than just his knowledge of skill.

29. Or ". . . disciples of Moses."

30. It is said that the miracles Jesus had done, like healing the sight of the blind, were miracles that only the Messiah – as understood by the Jews – would be able to do.

31. In those days, there were many benefits that went along with being a member of a synagogue; including the respect of that society. But due to the nature of this man’s condition, being that he was crippled, and the Jew’s belief in his condition (John 9:2) – that it meant he was a sinner beyond respect – for this man these benefits were probably already in jeopardy.

But, anyway, being kicked out of the synagogue did not mean to just be kicked out of a building. What it meant was to be kicked out of the membership along with its benefits. It was much more serious in that culture.

32. This could also be translated "Do you believe. . . . " I used the word trust because it communicates something more along the lines of relying on something, rather than just acknowledging or believing something. To believe in the Bible never just means to acknowledge something; it always means to have a committed belief about something, a belief that would make a difference in one’s life (James 2:18 and 26).

33. See endnotes 3:76.

34. I have never seen it for myself, but I have heard that even today, in Israel, you can see that when a stranger calls someone’s sheep – even with the same call their shepherd had used to call them – they will not even acknowledge him. But if their own shepherd calls them, then they will follow.

35. When He says ". . . this sheep’s pen," He is referring to those who believe in Him from Israel.

36. Consider the following verse: "For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more shall these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree (Romans 11:24)?"

The "cultivated olive tree," being the common wealth and promises of Israel, which are in the Messiah, Jesus: