This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
Ver. 6. And with his finger wrote on the ground] That he wrote downward (as the Syrians then did, and as the Chinese now do, and so their lines at the top do begin again) is very probable. a But what he wrote (whether those words, Jeremiah 22:29, or those Mat 7:3) nothing certain can be determined; the Scripture is silent; and where the Scripture hath not a tongue, we need not have ears; write he did (like himself we may be sure, as Quintilian saith of Julius Caesar, illum eodem animo scripsisse, quo bellavit, that he wrote with the same spirit he sought,) and perhaps he thus wrote on the ground to show that sin, which is written before God, Isaiah 65:6, and graven as it were with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond, Jeremiah 17:1, is pardoned and blotted out by Christ as easily as a writing slightly made in the dust.
a Maslus in Gram. Syr.