3 There was a man among the P’rushim, named Nakdimon, who was a ruler of the Judeans. ² This man came to Yeshua by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know it is from God that you have come as a teacher; for no one can do these miracles you perform unless God is with him.” ³ “Yes, indeed,” Yeshua answered him, “I tell you that unless a person is born again from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

⁴ Nakdimon said to him, “How can a grown man be ‘born’? Can he go back into his mother’s womb and be born a second time?” ⁵ Yeshua answered, “Yes, indeed, I tell you that unless a person is born from water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. ⁶ What is born from the flesh is flesh, and what is born from the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Stop being amazed at my telling you that you must be born again from above! ⁸ The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going. That’s how it is with everyone who has been born from the Spirit.”

⁹ Nakdimon replied, “How can this happen?” ¹⁰ Yeshua answered him, “You hold the office of teacher in Isra’el, and you don’t know this? ¹¹ Yes, indeed! I tell you that what we speak about, we know; and what we give evidence of, we have seen; but you people don’t accept our evidence! ¹² If you people don’t believe me when I tell you about the things of the world, how will you believe me when I tell you about the things of heaven? ¹³ No one has gone up into heaven; there is only the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴ Just as Moshe lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up; ¹⁵ so that everyone who trusts in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only and unique Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may have eternal life, instead of being utterly destroyed. ¹⁷ For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but rather so that through him, the world might be saved. ¹⁸ Those who trust in him are not judged; those who do not trust have been judged already, in that they have not trusted in the one who is God’s only and unique Son.

¹⁹ “Now this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, but people loved the darkness rather than the light. Why? Because their actions were wicked. ²⁰ For everyone who does evil things hates the light and avoids it, so that his actions won’t be exposed. ²¹ But everyone who does what is true comes to the light, so that all may see that his actions are accomplished through God.”

²² After this, Yeshua and his talmidim went out into the countryside of Y’hudah, where he stayed awhile with them and immersed people. ²³ Yochanan too was immersing at Einayim, near Shalem, because there was plenty of water there; and people kept coming to be immersed. ²⁴ (This was before Yochanan’s imprisonment.)

²⁵ A discussion arose between some of Yochanan’s talmidim and a Judean about ceremonial washing; ²⁶ and they came to Yochanan and said to him, “Rabbi, you know the man who was with you on the other side of the Yarden, the one you spoke about? Well, here he is, immersing; and everyone is going to him!” ²⁷ Yochanan answered, “No one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from Heaven. ²⁸ You yourselves can confirm that I did not say I was the Messiah, but that I have been sent ahead of him. ²⁹ The bridegroom is the one who has the bride; but the bridegroom’s friend, who stands and listens to him, is overjoyed at the sound of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine is now complete. ³⁰ He must become more important, while I become less important.

³¹ “He who comes from above is above all. He who is from the earth is from the earth and talks from an earthly point of view; he who comes from heaven is above all. ³² He testifies about what he has actually seen and heard, yet no one accepts what he says! ³³ Whoever does accept what he says puts his seal on the fact that God is true, ³⁴ because the one whom God sent speaks God’s words. For God does not give him the Spirit in limited degree — ³⁵ the Father loves the Son and has put everything in his hands. ³⁶ Whoever trusts in the Son has eternal life. But whoever disobeys the Son will not see that life but remains subject to God’s wrath.”

4 When Yeshua learned that the P’rushim had heard he was making and immersing more talmidim than Yochanan ² (although it was not Yeshua himself who immersed but his talmidim), ³ Yeshua left Y’hudah and set out again for the Galil. ⁴ This meant that he had to pass through Shomron.

⁵ He came to a town in Shomron called Sh’khem, near the field Ya‘akov had given to his son Yosef. ⁶ Ya‘akov’s Well was there; so Yeshua, exhausted from his travel, sat down by the well; it was about noon. ⁷ A woman from Shomron came to draw some water; and Yeshua said to her, “Give me a drink of water.” ⁸ (His talmidim had gone into town to buy food.) ⁹ The woman from Shomron said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for water from me, a woman of Shomron?” (For Jews don’t associate with people from Shomron.) ¹⁰ Yeshua answered her, “If you knew God’s gift, that is, who it is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink of water,’ then you would have asked him; and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ She said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket, and the well is deep; so where do you get this ‘living water’? ¹² You aren’t greater than our father Ya‘akov, are you? He gave us this well and drank from it, and so did his sons and his cattle.” ¹³ Yeshua answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I will give him will never be thirsty again! On the contrary, the water I give him will become a spring of water inside him, welling up into eternal life!”

¹⁵ “Sir, give me this water,” the woman said to him, “so that I won’t have to be thirsty and keep coming here to draw water.” ¹⁶ He said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷ She answered, “I don’t have a husband.” Yeshua said to her, “You’re right, you don’t have a husband! ¹⁸ You’ve had five husbands in the past, and you’re not married to the man you’re living with now! You’ve spoken the truth!”

¹⁹ “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet,” the woman replied. ²⁰ “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you people say that the place where one has to worship is in Yerushalayim.” ²¹ Yeshua said, “Lady, believe me, the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Yerushalayim. ²² You people don’t know what you are worshipping; we worship what we do know, because salvation comes from the Jews. ²³ But the time is coming — indeed, it’s here now — when the true worshippers will worship the Father spiritually and truly, for these are the kind of people the Father wants worshipping him. ²⁴ God is spirit; and worshippers must worship him spiritually and truly.”

²⁵ The woman replied, “I know that Mashiach is coming” (that is, “the one who has been anointed”). “When he comes, he will tell us everything.” ²⁶ Yeshua said to her, “I, the person speaking to you, am he.”

²⁷ Just then, his talmidim arrived. They were amazed that he was talking with a woman; but none of them said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” ²⁸ So the woman left her water-jar, went back to the town and said to the people there, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done. Could it be that this is the Messiah?” ³⁰ They left the town and began coming toward him.

³¹ Meanwhile, the talmidim were urging Yeshua, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³² But he answered, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” ³³ At this, the talmidim asked one another, “Could someone have brought him food?” ³⁴ Yeshua said to them, “My food is to do what the one who sent me wants and to bring his work to completion. ³⁵ Don’t you have a saying, ‘Four more months and then the harvest’? Well, what I say to you is: open your eyes and look at the fields! They’re already ripe for harvest! ³⁶ The one who reaps receives his wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the reaper and the sower may be glad together — ³⁷ for in this matter, the proverb, ‘One sows and another reaps,’ holds true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you haven’t worked for. Others have done the hard labor, and you have benefited from their work.”

³⁹ Many people from that town in Shomron put their trust in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all the things I did.” ⁴⁰ So when these people from Shomron came to him, they asked him to stay with them. He stayed two days, ⁴¹ and many more came to trust because of what he said. ⁴² They said to the woman, “We no longer trust because of what you said, because we have heard for ourselves. We know indeed that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

⁴³ After the two days, he went on from there toward the Galil. ⁴⁴ Now Yeshua himself said, “A prophet is not respected in his own country.” ⁴⁵ But when he arrived in the Galil, the people there welcomed him, because they had seen all he had done at the festival in Yerushalayim; since they had been there too.

⁴⁶ He went again to Kanah in the Galil, where he had turned the water into wine. An officer in the royal service was there; his son was ill in K’far-Nachum. ⁴⁷ This man, on hearing that Yeshua had come from Y’hudah to the Galil, went and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. ⁴⁸ Yeshua answered, “Unless you people see signs and miracles, you simply will not trust!” ⁴⁹ The officer said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” ⁵⁰ Yeshua replied, “You may go, your son is alive.” The man believed what Yeshua said and left. ⁵¹ As he was going down, his servants met him with the news that his son was alive ⁵² So he asked them at what time he had gotten better; and they said, “The fever left him yesterday at one o’clock in the afternoon.” ⁵³ The father knew that that was the very hour when Yeshua had told him, “Your son is alive”; and he and all his household trusted. ⁵⁴ This was a second sign that Yeshua did; he did it after he had come from Y’hudah into the Galil.

5 After this, there was a Judean festival; and Yeshua went up to Yerushalayim. ² In Yerushalayim, by the Sheep Gate, is a pool called in Aramaic, Beit-Zata, ³ in which lay a crowd of invalids — blind, lame, crippled. ^{4 [a] 5} One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶ Yeshua, seeing this man and knowing that he had been there a long time, said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” ⁷ The sick man answered, “I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is disturbed; and while I’m trying to get there, someone goes in ahead of me.” ⁸ Yeshua said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk!” ⁹ Immediately the man was healed, and he picked up his mat and walked.

Now that day was Shabbat, ¹⁰ so the Judeans said to the man who had been healed, “It’s Shabbat! It’s against Torah for you to carry your mat!” ¹¹ But he answered them, “The man who healed me — he’s the one who told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” ¹² They asked him, “Who is the man who told you to pick it up and walk?” ¹³ But the man who had been healed didn’t know who it was, because Yeshua had slipped away into the crowd.

¹⁴ Afterwards Yeshua found him in the Temple court and said to him, “See, you are well! Now stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you!” ¹⁵ The man went off and told the Judeans it was Yeshua who had healed him; ¹⁶ and on account of this, the Judeans began harassing Yeshua because he did these things on Shabbat.

¹⁷ But he answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I too am working.” ¹⁸ This answer made the Judeans all the more intent on killing him — not only was he breaking Shabbat; but also, by saying that God was his own Father, he was claiming equality with God. ¹⁹ Therefore, Yeshua said this to them: “Yes, indeed! I tell you that the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; whatever the Father does, the Son does too. ²⁰ For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he does; and he will show him even greater things than these, so that you will be amazed. ²¹ Just as the Father raises the dead and makes them alive, so too the Son makes alive anyone he wants. ²² The Father does not judge anyone but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, ²³ so that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father. Whoever fails to honor the Son is not honoring the Father who sent him. ²⁴ Yes, indeed! I tell you that whoever hears what I am saying and trusts the One who sent me has eternal life — that is, he will not come up for judgment but has already crossed over from death to life! ²⁵ Yes, indeed! I tell you that there is coming a time — in fact, it’s already here — when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who listen will come to life. ²⁶ For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son life to have in himself. ²⁷ Also he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. ²⁸ Don’t be surprised at this; because the time is coming when all who are in the grave will hear his voice ²⁹ and come out — those who have done good to a resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to a resurrection of judgment. ³⁰ I can’t do a thing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is right; because I don’t seek my own desire, but the desire of the one who sent me.

³¹ “If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not valid. ³² But there is someone else testifying on my behalf, and I know that the testimony he is making is valid — ³³ you have sent to Yochanan, and he has testified to the truth. ³⁴ Not that I collect human testimony; rather, I say these things so that you might be saved. ³⁵ He was a lamp burning and shining, and for a little while you were willing to bask in his light.

³⁶ “But I have a testimony that is greater than Yochanan’s. For the things the Father has given me to do, the very things I am doing now, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.

³⁷ “In addition, the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. But you have never heard his voice or seen his shape; ³⁸ moreover, his word does not stay in you, because you don’t trust the one he sent. ³⁹ You keep examining the Tanakh because you think that in it you have eternal life. Those very Scriptures bear witness to me, ⁴⁰ but you won’t come to me in order to have life!

⁴¹ “I don’t collect praise from men, ⁴² but I do know you people — I know that you have no love for God in you! ⁴³ I have come in my Father’s name, and you don’t accept me; if someone else comes in his own name, him you will accept. ⁴⁴ How can you trust? You’re busy collecting praise from each other, instead of seeking praise from God only.

⁴⁵ “But don’t think that it is I who will be your accuser before the Father. Do you know who will accuse you? Moshe, the very one you have counted on! ⁴⁶ For if you really believed Moshe, you would believe me; because it was about me that he wrote. ⁴⁷ But if you don’t believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

6 Some time later, Yeshua went over to the far side of Lake Kinneret (that is, Lake Tiberias), ² and a large crowd followed him, because they had seen the miracles he had performed on the sick. ³ Yeshua went up into the hills and sat down there with his talmidim. ⁴ Now the Judean festival of Pesach was coming up; ⁵ so when Yeshua looked up and saw that a large crowd was approaching, he said to Philip, “Where will we be able to buy bread, so that these people can eat?” ⁶ (Now Yeshua said this to test Philip, for Yeshua himself knew what he was about to do.) ⁷ Philip answered, “Half a year’s wages wouldn’t buy enough bread for them — each one would get only a bite!” ⁸ One of the talmidim, Andrew the brother of Shim‘on Kefa, said to him, ⁹ “There’s a young fellow here who has five loaves of barley bread and two fish. But how far will they go among so many?”

¹⁰ Yeshua said, “Have the people sit down.” There was a lot of grass there, so they sat down. The number of men was about five thousand. ¹¹ Then Yeshua took the loaves of bread, and, after making a b’rakhah, gave to all who were sitting there, and likewise with the fish, as much as they wanted. ¹² After they had eaten their fill, he told his talmidim, “Gather the leftover pieces, so that nothing gets wasted.” ¹³ They gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

¹⁴ When the people saw the miracle he had performed, they said, “This has to be ‘the prophet’ who is supposed to come into the world.” ¹⁵ Yeshua knew that they were on the point of coming and seizing him, in order to make him king; so he went back to the hills again. This time he went by himself.

¹⁶ When evening came, his talmidim went down to the lake, ¹⁷ got into a boat and set out across the lake toward K’far-Nachum. By now it was dark, Yeshua had not yet joined them, ¹⁸ and the sea was getting rough, because a strong wind was blowing. ¹⁹ They had rowed three or four miles when they saw Yeshua approaching the boat, walking on the lake! They were terrified; ²⁰ but he said to them, “Stop being afraid, it is I.” ²¹ Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and instantly the boat reached the land they were heading for.

²² The next day, the crowd which had stayed on the other side of the lake noticed that there had been only one boat there, and that Yeshua had not entered the boat with his talmidim, but that the talmidim had been alone when they sailed off. ²³ Then other boats, from Tiberias, came ashore near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had made the b’rakhah. ²⁴ Accordingly, when the crowd saw that neither Yeshua nor his talmidim were there, they themselves boarded the boats and made for K’far-Nachum in search of Yeshua.

²⁵ When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” ²⁶ Yeshua answered, “Yes, indeed! I tell you, you’re not looking for me because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the bread and had all you wanted! ²⁷ Don’t work for the food which passes away but for the food that stays on into eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For this is the one on whom God the Father has put his seal.”

²⁸ So they said to him, “What should we do in order to perform the works of God?” ²⁹ Yeshua answered, “Here’s what the work of God is: to trust in the one he sent!”

³⁰ They said to him, “Nu, what miracle will you do for us, so that we may see it and trust you? What work can you perform? ³¹ Our fathers ate man in the desert — as it says in the Tanakh, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’^{[b] 32} Yeshua said to them, “Yes, indeed! I tell you it wasn’t Moshe who gave you the bread from heaven. But my Father is giving you the genuine bread from heaven; ³³ for God’s bread is the one who comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world.”

³⁴ They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread from now on.” ³⁵ Yeshua answered, “I am the bread which is life! Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever trusts in me will never be thirsty. ³⁶ I told you that you have seen but still don’t trust. ³⁷ Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will certainly not turn away. ³⁸ For I have come down from heaven to do not my own will but the will of the One who sent me. ³⁹ And this is the will of the One who sent me: that I should not lose any of all those he has given me but should raise them up on the Last Day. ⁴⁰ Yes, this is the will of my Father: that all who see the Son and trust in him should have eternal life, and that I should raise them up on the Last Day.”

⁴¹ At this the Judeans began grumbling about him because he said, “I am the bread which has come down from heaven.” ⁴² They said, “Isn’t this Yeshua Ben-Yosef? We know his father and mother! How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” ⁴³ Yeshua answered them, “Stop grumbling to each other! ⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless the Father — the One who sent me — draws him. And I will raise him up on the Last Day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the Prophets, ‘They will all be taught by Adonai.’^[c] Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. ⁴⁶ Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God — he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷ Yes, indeed! I tell you, whoever trusts has eternal life: ⁴⁸ I am the bread which is life. ⁴⁹ Your fathers ate the man in the desert; they died. ⁵⁰ But the bread that comes down from heaven is such that a person may eat it and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread that has come down from heaven; if anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. Furthermore, the bread that I will give is my own flesh; and I will give it for the life of the world.”

⁵² At this, the Judeans disputed with one another, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³ Then Yeshua said to them, “Yes, indeed! I tell you that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. ⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life — that is, I will raise him up on the Last Day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in him. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me, and I live through the Father, so also whoever eats me will live through me. ⁵⁸ So this is the bread that has come down from heaven — it is not like the bread the fathers ate; they’re dead, but whoever eats this bread will live forever!” ⁵⁹ He said these things as he was teaching in a synagogue in K’far-Nachum.

⁶⁰ On hearing it, many of his talmidim said, “This is a hard word — who can bear to listen to it?” ⁶¹ But Yeshua, aware that his talmidim were grumbling about this, said to them, “This is a trap for you? ⁶² Suppose you were to see the Son of Man going back up to where he was before? ⁶³ It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life, ⁶⁴ yet some among you do not trust.” (For Yeshua knew from the outset which ones would not trust him, also which one would betray him.) ⁶⁵ “This,” he said, “is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has made it possible for him.”

⁶⁶ From this time on, many of his talmidim turned back and no longer traveled around with him. ⁶⁷ So Yeshua said to the Twelve, “Don’t you want to leave too?” ⁶⁸ Shim‘on Kefa answered him, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the word of eternal life. ⁶⁹ We have trusted, and we know that you are the Holy One of God.” ⁷⁰ Yeshua answered them, “Didn’t I choose you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is an adversary.” ⁷¹ (He was speaking of Y’hudah Ben-Shim‘on, from K’riot; for this man — one of the Twelve! — was soon to betray him.)

7 After this, Yeshua traveled around in the Galil, intentionally avoiding Y’hudah because the Judeans were out to kill him. ² But the festival of Sukkot in Y’hudah was near; ³ so his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go into Y’hudah, so that your talmidim can see the miracles you do; ⁴ for no one who wants to become known acts in secret. If you’re doing these things, show yourself to the world!” ⁵ (His brothers spoke this way because they had not put their trust in him.) ⁶ Yeshua said to them, “My time has not yet come; but for you, any time is right. ⁷ The world can’t hate you, but it does hate me, because I keep telling it how wicked its ways are. ⁸ You, go on up to the festival; as for me, I am not going up to this festival now, because the right time for me has not yet come.” ⁹ Having said this, he stayed on in the Galil.

¹⁰ But after his brothers had gone up to the festival, he too went up, not publicly but in secret. ¹¹ At the festival, the Judeans were looking for him. “Where is he?” they asked. ¹² And among the crowds there was much whispering about him. Some said, “He’s a good man”; but others said, “No, he is deceiving the masses.” ¹³ However, no one spoke about him openly, for fear of the Judeans.

¹⁴ Not until the festival was half over did Yeshua go up to the Temple courts and begin to teach. ¹⁵ The Judeans were surprised: “How does this man know so much without having studied?” they asked. ¹⁶ So Yeshua gave them an answer: “My teaching is not my own, it comes from the One who sent me. ¹⁷ If anyone wants to do his will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or I speak on my own. ¹⁸ A person who speaks on his own is trying to win praise for himself; but a person who tries to win praise for the one who sent him is honest, there is nothing false about him. ¹⁹ Didn’t Moshe give you the Torah? Yet not one of you obeys the Torah! Why are you out to kill me?” ²⁰ “You have a demon!” the crowd answered. “Who’s out to kill you?” ²¹ Yeshua answered them, “I did one thing; and because of this, all of you are amazed. ²² Moshe gave you b’rit-milah — not that it came from Moshe but from the Patriarchs — and you do a boy’s b’rit-milah on Shabbat. ²³ If a boy is circumcised on Shabbat so that the Torah of Moshe will not be broken, why are you angry with me because I made a man’s whole body well on Shabbat? ²⁴ Stop judging by surface appearances, and judge the right way!”

²⁵ Some of the Yerushalayim people said, “Isn’t this the man they’re out to kill? ²⁶ Yet here he is, speaking openly; and they don’t say anything to him. It couldn’t be, could it, that the authorities have actually concluded he’s the Messiah? ²⁷ Surely not — we know where this man comes from; but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he comes from.” ²⁸ Whereupon Yeshua, continuing to teach in the Temple courts, cried out, “Indeed you do know me! And you know where I’m from! And I have not come on my own! The One who sent me is real. But him you don’t know! ²⁹ I do know him, because I am with him, and he sent me!”

³⁰ At this, they tried to arrest him; but no one laid a hand on him; because his time had not yet come. ³¹ However, many in the crowd put their trust in him and said, “When the Messiah comes, will he do more miracles than this man has done?”

³² The P’rushim heard the crowd whispering these things about Yeshua; so the head cohanim and the P’rushim sent some of the Temple guards to arrest him. ³³ Yeshua said, “I will be with you only a little while longer; then I will go away to the One who sent me. ³⁴ You will look for me and not find me; indeed, where I am, you cannot come.” ³⁵ The Judeans said to themselves, “Where is this man about to go, that we won’t find him? Does he intend to go to the Greek Diaspora and teach the Greek-speaking Jews? ³⁶ And when he says, ‘You will look for me and not find me; indeed, where I am, you cannot come’ — what does he mean?”

³⁷ Now on the last day of the festival, Hoshana Rabbah, Yeshua stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him keep coming to me and drinking! ³⁸ Whoever puts his trust in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow from his inmost being!” ³⁹ (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who trusted in him were to receive later — the Spirit had not yet been given, because Yeshua had not yet been glorified.)

⁴⁰ On hearing his words, some people in the crowd said, “Surely this man is ‘the prophet’”; ⁴¹ others said, “This is the Messiah.” But others said, “How can the Messiah come from the Galil? ⁴² Doesn’t the Tanakh say that the Messiah is from the seed of David^[d] and comes from Beit-Lechem,^[e] the village where David lived?” ⁴³ So the people were divided because of him. ⁴⁴ Some wanted to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him.

⁴⁵ The guards came back to the head cohanim and the P’rushim, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” ⁴⁶ The guards replied, “No one ever spoke the way this man speaks!” ⁴⁷ “You mean you’ve been taken in as well?” the P’rushim retorted. ⁴⁸ “Has any of the authorities trusted him? Or any of the P’rushim? No! ⁴⁹ True, these ‘am-ha’aretz do, but they know nothing about the Torah, they are under a curse!”

⁵⁰ Nakdimon, the man who had gone to Yeshua before and was one of them, said to them, ⁵¹ “Our Torah doesn’t condemn a man — does it? — until after hearing from him and finding out what he’s doing.” ⁵² They replied, “You aren’t from the Galil too, are you? Study the Tanakh, and see for yourself that no prophet comes from the Galil!” ^{[f] 53} Then they all left, each one to his own home.