³⁵So the Jews said to one another, “Where is this one going to go, that we will not find him? He is not going to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks, is he?^* ³⁶What is this saying that he said, ‘You will seek me and will not find me,^*ⁱ and where I am, you cannot come’?”

The Promise of the Spirit

³⁷Now on the last day of the feast—the great day—Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let him drink, ³⁸the one who believes in me.^j Just as the scripture said, ‘Out of his belly will flow rivers of living water.’ ”^k ³⁹(Now he said this concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were about to receive. For the Spirit was not yet given,^l because Jesus had not yet been glorified.)

Different Opinions About Jesus

⁴⁰Then, when they^* heard these words, some from the crowd began to say,^* “This man is truly the Prophet!” ⁴¹Others were saying, “This man is the Christ!” But others were saying, “No, for the Christ does not come from Galilee, does he?^* ⁴²Has not the scripture said that the Christ comes from the descendants of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” ⁴³So there was a division in the crowd because of him. ⁴⁴And some of them were wanting to seize him, but no one laid hands on him.

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

*Here the direct object is supplied from context in the English translation
hSome manuscripts explicitly state “me”
*The negative construction in Greek anticipates a negative answer here, indicated in the translation by the phrase “is he”
*Here the direct object is supplied from context in the English translation
iSome manuscripts explicitly state “me”
jAn alternative punctuation of vv. 37–38 reads: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and let him drink. 38 The one who believes in me, just as the scripture said, ‘Out of his belly will flow rivers of living water.’ ”
kA quotation from the Old Testament of uncertain origin; texts most often suggested are Isa 44:3; 55:1; 58:11; Zech 14:8
lA few manuscripts supply the participle “given” here; while it is unlikely this represents the original reading, many English versions nevertheless supply “given” to avoid the impression that the Spirit did not exist prior to this point
*Here “when” is supplied as a component of the participle (“heard”) which is understood as temporal
*The imperfect tense has been translated as ingressive here (“began to say”)
*The negative construction in Greek anticipates a negative answer here, indicated in the translation by the phrase “does he”