Jesus’ last plea to the crowd was “put your trust in the light” (v. 36), and the first note struck in the narrator’s concluding summary (v. 37) is that they would not believe in him. Jesus’ public ministry is summarized as a series of miraculous signs intended to nourish faith, but the result instead was unbelief. The very purpose of John’s Gospel, as stated in 20:30–31, was to reverse that result, but in order to do so realistically the strength and stubbornness of unbelief had to be presented in the most graphic of terms. The summary in verse 37 is reminiscent of Moses’ speech to Israel in Deuteronomy 29:2–4: “Your eyes have seen all that the LORD did in Egypt to Pharaoh.… You saw those great trials, those miraculous signs and great wonders. But to this day the LORD has not given you a m…