New Testament in a Year
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[a] and comes from Beit-Lechem,[b] 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!” [c] 53 Then they all left, each one to his own home.
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.