Out Of Whose Heart? Thoughts on John 7:37-38

Let me say at the outset that I have enormous respect for those scholars who have dedicated significant portions of their lives to the task of producing translations of the Bible. To understand just a few of the challenges that translators face, we need but consider that the original manuscripts of the New Testament were written in all capital letters with no spaces between the words, no marks of punctuation, no chapter and verse divisions, and no system of hyphenation for words that wouldn’t quite fit at the end of a line. The classic (and quick!) illustration is the following text: GODISNOWHERE. The question for translators becomes “Does the writer mean GOD IS NOW HERE or GOD IS NOWHERE?” The personal biases of the translator sometimes play a role in the interpretive decision. For example, if the translator is an athiest, he (or she) may be inclined to the latter option.

For a longer but helpful illustration, consider the following two “Dear John” letters published in Games Magazine (January 1984), the discovery of which I owe to Jerry Camery-Hoggatt who cited them on pages 96-97 of his book, Speaking of God, (Hendrickson, 1995). Notice that every word and letter is the same in both; only the punctuation differs.

DEAR JOHN,

I WANT A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT LOVE IS.  ALL ABOUT
YOU ARE GENEROUS, KIND, THOUGHTFUL  PEOPLE  WHO
ARE NOT LIKE YOU.  ADMIT TO BEING USELESS AND INFERIOR,
JOHN.  YOU HAVE RUINED ME.  FOR OTHER MEN I YEARN. FOR
YOU, I HAVE NO FEELINGS WHATSOEVER. WHEN WE’RE APART,
I CAN BE FOREVER HAPPY.  WILL YOU LET ME BE?  YOURS,

GLORIA

DEAR JOHN

I WANT A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT LOVE IS ALL ABOUT.
YOU ARE GENEROUS, KIND, THOUGHTFUL.  PEOPLE WHO
ARE NOT LIKE YOU  ADMIT TO BEING USELESS AND INFERIOR,
JOHN.  YOU HAVE RUINED ME FOR OTHER MEN.  I YEARN FOR
YOU. I HAVE NO FEELINGS WHATSOEVER WHEN WE’RE APART.
I CAN BE FOREVER HAPPY.  WILL YOU LET ME BE YOURS?

GLORIA

Punctuation clearly makes a significant difference in the meaning of these two letters!

Often the text itself offers clues as to the intended punctuation. For example, if we had seen only the unpunctuated version of the Dear John letters above, we probably would have put the first period after the word “about,” because English sentences rarely end with a verb and because the expression “all about” is frequently found with verbs of “knowing.” By contrast, the expression “all about you” is a bit archaic, having been largely replaced by “all around you.”

Similarly we find another “glitch” in the first letter’s translation in the sentence that reads “For other men I yearn.” English is a word order based language—usually following a basic Subject—Verb—Object order. Sometimes the order can be switched around for poetic reasons, but we are clearly not dealing with poetry in these letters! In prose we would expect to see “I yearn for other men.” [This is not Yoda-speak]

If we examine the second letter’s translation above, we will find similar glitches that would give us a better idea of what the original unpunctuated text must have meant. [Test it out to see if you get the idea.]

But the text we are considering is written in Greek, not English. And Greek is not a word order dependent language; instead it makes changes (“inflection”) to the basic form of a word that signal what function the word has in the sentence (for example, subject, direct object, etc.) Thus translators often have a number of clues other than word order to guide them in correctly punctuating the sentences. Even in spite of this, however, there are instances where the decision regarding how a text should be punctuated is not always clear-cut, and John 7:37-38 is a case in point.

³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him [i.e., the believer].”

But as the footnote in the NIV text points out, the text could be punctuated to read as follows:

³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me. And let him drink, ³⁸ whoever believes in me.  As the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him [i.e., Christ].”

Now I certainly do not consider myself to have arrived at the level of scholarship and erudition to which I aspire (for reasons of stewardship, not acclaim). Thus I offer here the conclusion of my limited research on these verses. [loosely translated, I have a few lines of data I’d yet like to explore]:  My present view is that while there may be grammatical or contextual features that “tip the scales” for one or the other of these translations (effectively, interpretations!) to one degree or another, we would do well to maintain both of these perspectives since both are grammatically sound, since both can point to passages that corroborate their perspective (Scripture interprets Scripture), and since double entendre appears in several key places in John’s Gospel. Put simply, Jesus is clearly the SOURCE of this “river of living water” (likely a metaphor for the Holy Spirit; see v.39), and believers are the CONDUIT for the Holy Spirit reaching out to others.