Context Matters: New Testament BackgroundsSample

Topic 5: The Bible's water motifs

In John 7:37–38, Jesus loudly proclaimed, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” To modern readers, this comment seems to come out of nowhere. Why is Jesus suddenly talking about water? Understanding the first-century Jewish background, however, helps us put this story in context.

John notes in his Gospel that Jesus said this “on the last and greatest day of the festival.” This festival was the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles or Booths, one of the three pilgrimage festivals where Jews were to travel to Jerusalem to commemorate Israel’s years of wandering in the wilderness by living in temporary shelters for seven days.

Each day of the festival the priests would bring water from the pool of Siloam and pour it at the temple to memorialize God’s provision of water from the rock in the wilderness. On the final day of the festival—the day of Jesus’s proclamation—they would read from Ezekiel 47 and Zechariah 14.

In Ezekiel 47, the prophet has a vision in which water flows from the Temple and provides life throughout the world. Zechariah 14 speaks of a coming day of the Lord when “living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem.”

It’s in this setting that Jesus makes his statement, declaring himself to be the source of life-giving water and putting himself as the foundation of God’s new temple. The people’s reactions show us that they understood the implications of Jesus’s statement. Some recognized him as the Messiah or a prophet while others wanted him arrested.

Learn more about how the Gospel of John uses water in the video below.