"7 After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. 2 Now the Jews' Feast of Booths was at hand. 3 So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. 4 For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” 5 For not even his brothers believed in him. 6 Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. 8 You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” 9 After saying this, he remained in Galilee."
John 7:1-9
In no chapter of John's gospel does the symbolic and allusive character of his writing appear more clearly than here, and it is particularly necessary to understand this if we are going to get through to the meaning and point of what he says. It is a long chapter, and at first glance seems to be a stringing together of various disjointed utterances and arguments. But the unifying theme is the Feast of Tabernacles, and it is here we must start. It is in 2 that we have the opening statement which gives the key to everything else, just as in the previous chapter the statement about the Jews’ Passover leads into the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand and the discussion on the bread of life. In the Feast of Tabernacles the Jews commemorated their journeyings in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. It was a great feast, when the mighty works of God on their behalf were brought to mind. It was also celebrated at the close of the harvest, and was regarded as a foreshadowing of the day of the Lord and the final harvest day of God. One of the Scriptures read at the feast was Zechariah 14, which speaks of conditions obtaining in the messianic age - continuous daylong and unfailing supply of water. Two ceremonies took place during the festival, connected with the prophetic utterance in Zechariah: the first was the ritual thawing of water from the Pool of Siloam in a golden pitcher, to be poured on the altar by the priests, to the accompaniment of the singing of the congregation, 'With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation' (Isaiah 12:3); the second was the all-night illumination of one of the temple courts on the first night of the festival, and on other nights also, so brilliantly that every court in Jerusalem was said to be lit up by it. Water and light are therefore the two keynotes; and it is with this background that we must understand our Lord's statements in 37 and in 8:12, 'If any man thirst...' and 'I am the light of the world'.