Christ, on the contrary, writes his sentence on the sand, where, in a moment, it will be effaced by the pardon, “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.” What he wrote has been made a matter of ingenious rather than profitable conjecture. The most probable conjecture is that he wrote the sentence, “He that is without sin amongst you,” etc., thus enabling the Pharisees, if they had not been too passionately intent on their design, to avoid his public rebuke. 7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you,[306] let him first cast a stone at her. [306] Deut. 17:7; Rom. 2:1, 22. 8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. 9 And they which heard _it_, being convicted by _their own_ conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, _even_ unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. =7-9. So when they continued asking.= They would not take the rebuke of his quiet contempt. Had they stopped to think, conscience would have answered their inquiry; but they were too eager; they did not hear what it had to say to them; Christ must interpret its voice; and he did so with a poignant rebuke.--=He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.= Christ puts on them the problem with which they had sought to perplex him. In their vindictive haste they had forgotten the provision of the law that the witnesses on whose testimony the accused was condemned should cast the first stone (Deut. 17:5-7). They had also forgotten the provision of the Rabbinical law that, in case of accusation, if the husband was not guiltless, the wife could not be condemned (_Lightfoot_). Christ recalls these two principles, and leaves them to solve their own problem. Go on, he says in effect, and try and condemn the accused according to your own law. Let the sinless cast the first stone. But a deeper meaning is in his words. Unchastity was a universal sin in the first century. Its extent in Palestine is illustrated by the licentious lives of the Herods, father and sons. Nowhere was this vice more flagrant and unrestrained than among the priests, whose licentiousness was no secret to the common people (see Matt. 12:39; James 4:4). It was this revelation of their own guilt, implied in the words and easily understood by the people, which stung them, and drove them, self-condemned, one by one, from the presence of both the accused and the judge.--=And again he stooped down.= To give conscience in them an opportunity to assert itself, with as little resistance as possible from pride. He gave them no opportunity to answer; he did not look to see who was first to withdraw.--=Beginning with the elders.= The word rendered eldest (πρεσβυτέρων) is almost universally rendered _elders_, generally as an official designation, and frequently in connection with the word _ruler_ (_e. g._, Matt.