Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comAdam Clarke Commentary - John 8:5 - 8:5
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
That such should be stoned - It is not strictly true that Moses ordered adultery in general to be punished by stoning. The law simply says that the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. Lev 20:10; Deu 22:22. The rabbins say they were strangled. This they affirm was the ordinary mode of punishment, where the species of death was not marked in the law, If the person guilty of an act of this kind had been betrothed, but not married, she was to be stoned: Deu 22:23. But if she was the daughter of a priest, she was to be burned alive: Lev 16:9. It appears, from Eze 16:38, Eze 16:40, that adulteresses in the time of that prophet were stoned, and pierced with a sword.
Selden and Fagius suppose that this woman’s case was the same with that mentioned, Deu 22:23. If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto a husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; then ye shall stone them with stones that they die, the damsel because she cried not, and the man because he hath humbled his neighbors wife. As the Pharisees spoke of stoning the woman, it is possible this was her case; and some suppose that the apparent indulgence with which our Lord treated her insinuates that she had suffered some sort of violence, though not entirely innocent. Therefore he said, I do not condemn thee, i.e. to death, because violence had been used. Sin no more. Nevertheless thou art in certain respects guilty; thou mightest have made more resistance.