.I simply adore this painting.
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I have many favorite stories in God's word but I reallly love and admire the way that Y'shua handled the "righteous" men who thought they were doing "a good thing" by dragging this adulteress before Y'shua Jesus. I imagine the scene, a reverent quiet afternoon in the courtyard of the temple as men gathered to worship YHVH. Perhaps it was on the sabbath.
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I can see the crowd of worshippers turn as a commotion ensues. There, before them all, a woman is drug into their prescence. Her clothes rumpled and not proper. Her face ashen white, frightened.
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Perhaps she kept her head down and eyes adverted as she tried in vain to cover her face to hide her shame.
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C A U G H T.
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I imagine how violated she must have felt. Being grabbed by men unknown to her, right in the very act. Something one does not expect when one is naked and in the throes of illicit passion, in the embrace of a man whom she had trusted enough to let her guard down. I wonder what had gone through her head. Total fear.
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From a dimly lit bedroom thrust onto the world's stage, drug through the midday sun, past the marketplace, and through the crowded streets, up the many steps of the Temple of the God of Israel. Still smelling of sexual activity, she was manhandled. Harlot. Whore. Prostitute. Adulteress.
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I wonder if she was trying to support her family. Perhaps her own husband had left her and she was doing the only job that would afford her a roof over her head. Maybe this was her first time as an adulteress. Maybe she was an old pro.
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Maybe she once had a good reputation in small town, but something had happened in her life which led her down the slippery, spiralling path of sin and she moved to the big city of Jerusalem where it would be easier to hide among the shadows and forget the pain she had known.
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Regardless, she was covered with the sweat of a man who had willingly chose to commit adultery with her.
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The "religious" men of the day, the scribes and Pharisees brought her before Y'shua that day.
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"Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commmanded us that such should be stoned, but what do you say?"
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I love how Y'shua Jesus responded to their inquiry.
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He acted as if He had not heard them.
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Instead of answering the mob, he simply stooped down to the ground and began writing in the sand.
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Writing. Drawing. Doodling. Oblivious.
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I think of Him thinking about the circumstances of her life which had brought her to this very act and to His feet in the temple court. I imagine Him scanning the hearts of everyone in the vicinity.
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Like a laser, reading their motives and intent.
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Y'shua Jesus knew the hearts of the scribes and pharisees. He knew the heart of this woman standing before him, perhaps with snot and tears running down her face as she stifled the sobs welling up within her.
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He knew the heart of the adulterous man who had also been in the very act as well,
for it takes two to tango, so-to-speak, and yet obviously he was not CAUGHT.
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I wonder why the guilty man was not caught also.
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Y'shua Jesus knew. And so He ignored them.
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I love that when Moses brought the stone tablets to the mountaintop, that the very finger of God wrote His ten commandments upon them. Writing is cool. I dig that YHVH is into writing.
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And here, in the temple courtyard, He wrote with His finger again.
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Tracing Hebrew letters upon the very same dirt from which He first formed the first man, Adam. I imagine Him being right-handed being, pushing and moving the dust with His index finger, aware of the woman and her fear as her heart pounded in her chest. Around her, the crowd murmuring about her. In whistpers and taunts, scoffing at her.
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Turning their noses up at her. Speaking ill of her and her kind. Rumours about her multiplying. A bit like the game of telephone, the story passed on from one hebrew to another, until it bore no resemblance to the truth anymore.
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I want to know what Y'shua Jesus wrote there. For all to see.
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Unshaken. Stoic. With such purpose, He simply and merely wrote upon the earth.
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The lynch mob continued to assail Him, asking Him over and over about what should bedone to her.
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At last, He spoke...
"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
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And then, saying His peace, He stooped down again, and wrote on the ground.
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The mob stood as His words echoed in their ears. Most likely this was not what they expected Him to say. I imagine their brains were temporarily short-circuited by this exchange. Say what?
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Y'shua Jesus wrote.
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Perhaps He wrote His ten commandments which the group of scribes and pharisees read, and when convicted, dropped the stones that they had so greedily picked up, eager to kill this woman for breaking the law and sinning against the Most High God.
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Why were they so anxious to stone this particular woman?
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Why were they not so adamant in their desire to stone the other offender, the man who was also caught in the very same act of adultery but not drug before the temple court for all to see?
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Sin is sin. Sin is death. Deuteronomy 22:22-24
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Did the scribes and pharisees have it in for this woman? Was the man who willingly knew this woman in the biblical sense, albeit adulterous, an inside-man who set her up? Perhaps, like they would one day pay Judas to betray the Messiah with a kiss, they had paid this very same adulterous man a good fee from the temple treasury.
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Hmmm.
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Things that make you go Hmmmm.
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The stones dropped, one by one, beginning with the eldest, until the mob was gone.
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Vanished.
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There own sin admitted to in their own hearts.
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Each one realizing that they were not without sin.
That each of them had also broken the law,
for if one breaks the law in any way, he has broken all.
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What love, kindness, and compassion Y'shua Jesus has shown this woman and women like her.
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Rahab the well-known and prosperous harlot of Jericho obtained mercy from YHVH and was grafted into God's people. Even marrying and conceiving a son named Boaz who later married the young Moabitess woman who was the daughter-in-law of Naomi, saying, "Let your people be my people and your God my God."
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The mercies of YHVH are new every morning. So vast is His love.
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So ready to forgive.
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So intimate is He with all our sin....
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for He felt and experienced them all to the Nth degree..
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as He died as a propitiation for our sin upon a tree.
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Cursed before God, his Father YHVH.
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Every sin laid upon Him.
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Washed in His atoning blood as the Lamb of God chosen before the foundation of the world.
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To the woman caught in adultery,
He said,
"Woman, where are your accusers?
Has no man condemned thee?"
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To which she responded, "No man, Lord."
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To which He said,
"Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more."
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I imagine her standing there, tear-stained face. Still in shock.
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The crowd silenced by the display they just witnessed.
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I imagine her desire to return home quickly so that she may wash herself clean, removing the horrible reminder of that day from her body, the co-mingled sweat from the illicit union of which she has been a willing participant for whatever reason.
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I imagine the exhileration that she also might have felt, knowing that she was not going to be stoned to death and was given a new lease on life by this man some called the Messiah, and others a prophet.
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I also imagine that no one in the religious crowd wanted anything to do with her, and so this woman walked home alone.
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Alone.
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Pondering all that had transpired that day.
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Step by glorious step..
ALIVE.
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FORGIVEN.
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Cristella Alexander is an artist originally from New Jersey and is a motorcycle instructor in South Florida. She is also a volunteer for Beauty From Ashes™ Ministries and a thriving over-comer.
