The woman, swindled at the hands of cunning men
The focus of the text is mainly upon the act of adultery and the accused woman. The hermeneutical tools employed in the text reveals the intense play of patriarchy and the use of power relations in convicting a woman. The text speaks that the woman was caught in the act of adultery. Now where is the man involved in the act of adultery? Leviticus 20: 10 orders that the man and the woman who involved in adultery are to be put to death. The system of law which the crowd upholds sees the woman as a ‘sinner’ and to see the woman as a ‘sinned against’ is to didder the foundations of their patriarchal society. A community which convicts this woman as an adulteress easily escapes from accepting their corporate sin of the presence of adultery in their society. This community sees the woman as a sinner once she was ‘caught’ and when the ‘secrecy of sin’ was lost. Until the woman was caught, the act of adultery was not an issue for them.
The Scribes and Pharisees bring this woman to Jesus explaining that the woman was caught in the act of adultery. The word used for adultery in Greek here, Moikeuomene is the participle present passive nominative feminine singular of the verb moikeuo which means to commit adultery. The word Moikeuomene has a shade of meaning as ‘herself suffering adultery’. So it implies that the act of adultery was not the willful choice of this woman, rather a forced ‘play of power’ over her. From this vantage point we see the woman as not an adulterous but a victim of the abuses of the society.
The Greek word used to refer the woman is gunaika which refers to a married woman. The husband of this woman may have slyly arranged to abandon her by carefully prearranging that there are witnesses for her committing adultery.
The Greek word used in v.3 in bringing the woman to Jesus is agousin which means to “bring forcefully.” It itself shows how unlawfully is dealt with the woman, since they had a court for the trial for such a case and to bring her to Jesus just for a judgment and not to hear from her. She’s denied her right to have a just trial. Had there been such an instance the man who committed adultery along with her and her husband, also would have been revealed. But in that unjust system there was no chance for this.
In the passage we see Jesus saying “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”. ‘Sin’, in John’s Gospel is described in terms of the response to the ‘Light’, ‘Life’, and ‘the Gospel’. Here Jesus identifies a definite sin, in the intent of the crowd, which exclaims for the death of the woman. Their wretched response to the truth, about the compelling factors that dragged her to the ‘very act of adultery’, shows their treasonous approach to the ‘Light’ that came to them. Their claim to take the life of the woman, shows the absolute negation of the ‘Life’, and the thrust of the ‘Gospel’. In this appraise the husband of the woman who denied her an esteemed way of life, the witnesses who found her being in ‘the act of adultery’ but refused to admit the presence of a man in the same, and the judges who denied the woman a lawful trial, were all ‘sinners’. Even their self-righteousness couldn’t promote them to throw ‘the first stone’ against her
Jesus tells the woman in v.11 “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and from now on do not sin again”. The mutilated self respect of the woman is restored by Jesus when he assures that even he is not in a position to judge her. The Jewish law is created in the patriarchal society which condemns this woman as a sinner. This patriarchally constructed law dictates what sin is and what is not. Jesus here is not referring anything to the forgiveness of sin. Rather he says not to sin again. This means that Jesus is exhorting her not to make herself exposed to be convicted by this biased law as a sinner and further to resist the powers which try to make her a sinner. So Jesus finds a committed comrade who could be of much use to resist the powers that discriminate people as sinners and unjustly convicts them.
Gospel according to this unnamed woman.
Like many of the female characters of the Bible this woman also is unnamed. She is unnamed, voiceless and facing death closely in the initial verses of the pericope. She was never addressed by anyone in the crowd asking her response. Only a cruel death was talking to her all through those minutes. But the intervention of Jesus brought to her rather forgetful life, a ray of hope of remembrance. Jesus confronts the patriarchal law keepers and makes themselves their judges. This opens a way for critiquing the judgmental attitudes standing fast on the very attitudes they hold on to.
Jesus is the first person to address this woman. He breaks the conventional morality of a man not speaking to a woman in public and speaks to her. So the gospel according to this woman is that Jesus is ready to speak publicly to anyone whom the society may consider immoral or a sinner. And that Jesus counts on those people to enable those who are discriminated to stand up for their cause and fight for justice.
Social implications of the reading.
Men and women in the society need to be identified as dignified human beings, without the designation of the sin, in order to situate the constitutional sin. We need to free the society from the judgmental attitude, to assert that the society is self critiquing in its nature.
Even today in a patriarchal system we can anticipate the same response as that of that Jewish community, when such an issue arises. The same heat will be felt when it is a matter of ‘adultery’, and that same sex will be condemned to safeguard the esteem of the society. But today the Christian response to this ‘moral issue’ needs to be distinct, as Christ differed from the Jews. We need to re-consider the credibility of the accusations regarding morality when the condemned act is associated with the livelihood. What is wrong when the human body becomes a capital to earn the livelihood in a world where everything else could?
Unless and until a woman is in a position, to justify herself for what she indulges, she won’t be free from condemnation in a patriarchal society. One could not become a saint in a system where ‘the others’ determines the norms of morality. Can the freedom of Christian ethics authorize a sex worker to have the self-justification, which gives no room for any other moralizing intruders who condemn her?
As we see, when the environment of the condemned woman has got modified, when the condemning voices descended, she came to a position to take a decision, which was assisted by the reminder from Jesus ‘let your actions not be condemned to be sin anymore’. Are we prepared to modify the environment of our sisters who are under condemnation, to free them from the threat of accusation, to enable them to take their own decision?
[This Bible study was prepared by: Ajay T Oommen, Binu John, Dasari Kamalakaran, Georvin Joseph, Liju Raju, Nirmal Soren & Shaijukumar K. S , BD IV students of Gurukul Lutheran Theolgical College an Research Institute ,Chennai, India]
