³³Jesus said, “I will still be with you for a little while. Then I’ll go to the one who sent me. ³⁴You will look for me, but you won’t find me. You can’t go where I’m going.”

³⁵The Jews said among themselves, “Where does this man intend to go so that we won’t find him? Does he mean that he’ll live with the Jews who are scattered among the Greeks and that he’ll teach the Greeks? ³⁶What does he mean when he says, ‘You will look for me, but you won’t find me,’ and ‘You can’t go where I’m going’?”

³⁷On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus was standing ⸤in the temple courtyard⸥. He said loudly, “Whoever is thirsty must come to me to drink. ³⁸As Scripture says, ‘Streams of living water will flow from deep within the person who believes in me.’ ” ³⁹Jesus said this about the Spirit, whom his believers would receive. The Spirit was not yet evident, as it would be after Jesus had been glorified.

⁴⁰After some of the crowd heard Jesus say these words, they said, “This man is certainly the prophet.” ⁴¹Other people said, “This man is the Messiah.” Still other people asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? ⁴²Doesn’t Scripture say that the Messiah will come from the descendants of David and from the village of Bethlehem, where David lived?” ⁴³So the people were divided because of Jesus. ⁴⁴Some of them wanted to arrest him, but they couldn’t.

⁴⁵When the temple guards returned, the chief priests and Pharisees asked them, “Why didn’t you bring Jesus?”

⁴⁶The temple guards answered, “No human has ever spoken like this man.”

⁴⁷The Pharisees asked the temple guards, “Have you been deceived too? ⁴⁸Has any ruler or any Pharisee believed in him? ⁴⁹This crowd is cursed because it doesn’t know Moses’ Teachings.”

⁵⁰One of those Pharisees was Nicodemus, who had previously visited Jesus. Nicodemus asked them, ⁵¹“Do Moses’ Teachings enable us to judge a person without first hearing that person’s side of the story? We can’t judge a person without finding out what that person has done.”

⁵²They asked Nicodemus, “Are you saying this because you’re from Galilee? Study ⸤the Scriptures⸥, and you’ll see that no prophet comes from Galilee.”^a

⁵³Then each of them went home.

Read in Logos

John 7:37–38: On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‛Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”

Footnotes

a 7:52 John 7:53–8:11 is not found in many manuscripts and some translations. Some manuscripts place these verses between 7:36 and 7:37. Other manuscripts place them between 7:44 and 7:45. Others place them after 21:25, and some place them between Luke 21:38 and 22:1.