At the Feast of Tabernacles

162:3.1It was dur­ing this visit to Je­ru­sa­lem that Je­sus dealt with a cer­tain woman of evil re­pute who was brought into his pres­ence by her ac­cusers and his en­e­mies. The dis­torted rec­ord you have of this episode would sug­gest that this woman had been brought be­fore Je­sus by the scribes and Phar­isees, and that Je­sus so dealt with them as to in­di­cate that these re­li­gious lead­ers of the Jews might them­selves have been guilty of im­moral­ity. Je­sus well knew that, while these scribes and Phar­isees were spir­i­tu­ally blind and in­tel­lec­tu­ally prej­u­diced by their loy­alty to tra­di­tion, they were to be num­bered among the most thor­oughly moral men of that day and gen­er­a­tion.

162:3.2What re­ally hap­pened was this: Early the third morn­ing of the feast, as Je­sus ap­proached the tem­ple, he was met by a group of the hired agents of the San­hedrin who were drag­ging a woman along with them. As they came near, the spokesman said: “Mas­ter, this woman was taken in adul­tery—in the very act. Now, the law of Moses com­mands that we should stone such a woman. What do you say should be done with her?”

162:3.3It was the plan of Je­sus’ en­e­mies, if he up­held the law of Moses re­quir­ing that the self-con­fessed trans­gres­sor be stoned, to in­volve him in dif­fi­culty with the Ro­man rulers, who had de­nied the Jews the right to in­flict the death penalty with­out the ap­proval of a Ro­man tri­bu­nal. If he for­bade ston­ing the woman, they would ac­cuse him be­fore the San­hedrin of set­ting him­self up above Moses and the Jew­ish law. If he re­mained silent, they would ac­cuse him of cow­ardice. But the Mas­ter so man­aged the sit­u­a­tion that the whole plot fell to pieces of its own sor­did weight.

162:3.4This woman, once comely, was the wife of an in­fe­rior cit­i­zen of Naz­a­reth, a man who had been a trou­ble­maker for Je­sus through­out his youth­ful days. The man, hav­ing mar­ried this woman, did most shame­fully force her to earn their liv­ing by mak­ing com­merce of her body. He had come up to the feast at Je­ru­sa­lem that his wife might thus pros­ti­tute her phys­i­cal charms for fi­nan­cial gain. He had en­tered into a bar­gain with the hire­lings of the Jew­ish rulers thus to be­tray his own wife in her com­mer­cial­ized vice. And so they came with the woman and her com­pan­ion in trans­gres­sion for the pur­pose of en­snar­ing Je­sus into mak­ing some state­ment which could be used against him in case of his ar­rest.

162:3.5Je­sus, look­ing over the crowd, saw her hus­band stand­ing be­hind the oth­ers. He knew what sort of man he was and per­ceived that he was a party to the de­spi­ca­ble trans­ac­tion. Je­sus first walked around to near where this de­gen­er­ate hus­band stood and wrote upon the sand a few words which caused him to de­part in haste. Then he came back be­fore the woman and wrote again upon the ground for the ben­e­fit of her would-be ac­cusers; and when they read his words, they, too, went away, one by one. And when the Mas­ter had writ­ten in the sand the third time, the woman’s com­pan­ion in evil took his de­par­ture, so that, when the Mas­ter raised him­self up from this writ­ing, he be­held the woman stand­ing alone be­fore him. Je­sus said: “Woman, where are your ac­cusers? did no man re­main to stone you?” And the woman, lift­ing up her eyes, an­swered, “No man, Lord.” And then said Je­sus: “I know about you; nei­ther do I con­demn you. Go your way in peace.” And this woman, Hildana, for­sook her wicked hus­band and joined her­self to the dis­ci­ples of the king­dom.