"O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters."Jeremiah 17:13

JESUS STOOPED DOWN AND WROTE ON THE GROUND, 

as much as to say, by symbolical action, "You are appealing to the wrong court; who made me a judge or a ruler over you? I have other work to attend to." Again, it was an act of delicate courtesy.

" It turned all eyes from the wretched woman in an anguish of

shame and terror, to Himself. She stood alone and forgotten ; all eyes

were then and have ever since been fixed on the figure of Christ, won

dering what and why He wrote in the dust. It is not fanciful to note

the contrast between this writing and that prescribed in case of the trial of a suspected adulteress by the Mosaic law (Numb. 5 : 23). The priest was to write certain curses in a book, then wash them  with bitter water, which the accused was required to drink, that the curses might enter into her if she were guilty. 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.'" 

— Lyman Abbott, D. D.