:The early manuscripts of the Greek New Testament have no punctuation marks and no spaces between words. In English translations a simple removal of the first comma in the sentence makes all the more evident, that the third phrase in the verse is not a quotation from the Old Testament. This has been done here in this ''Harmony of the Gospel (Conservative Version)''. Jesus is saying that whoever believes in him just as the Scripture says, according to what the whole of the Scripture (the Bible) testifies about him, will have "''in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life''" (John 4:14), that scripture teaches that it will flow out of him. This promise of the Lord, preceded by the Greek formula of quotation, '''καθὼς εἶπεν ἡ γρ''', which normally introduces a scriptural quotation, is an almost identical allusion to a text in the [[Book of Sirach]] (rejected as inspired scripture by the Protestant Reformation) which says,
::"''I went forth like a canal from a river and like a water channel into a garden. I said, 'I will water my orchard and drench my garden plot'; and lo, my canal became a river, and my river became a sea. I will again make instruction shine forth like the dawn, and I will make it shine afar; I will again pour out teaching like prophesy, and leave it to all future generations.''" (Sirach 24:30-33 RSVCE.)
:As shown here in this ''Harmony of the Gospel"'', the English text in John might be better rendered grammatically with different punctuation as follows: "He who believes in me as the Scripture has said—from within him will flow rivers of living water.” This does not alter the words of the inspired text. Those textual critics, translators and commentators who represent Jesus here as apparently quoting an exact text of scripture that "does not exist" (in the Protestant canon), give enemies of the Bible yet one more additional pretext to deny the inspiration of the scriptures in support of their contention that the Bible is full of mistakes. When they are convinced that there is no such text in the Old Testament, there is no justification for them to read this verse as if Jesus made a mistake or that the writer of the Gospel was scripturally incompetent or that a portion of sacred scripture has been lost; instead they should read it according to the ''literal sense of scripture'' as found within the context of the whole of the Bible and the constant teaching of Christianity regarding the divine knowledge of Christ as infallible.
:This is similar to the kind of mistaken reading represented in translations of Matthew 27:9-10 by the ''[[Eisegesis|eisegetical]]'' insertion of punctuation which falsely represents the factual statement of what the chief priests, "''some of the sons of Israel''", actually did with the thirty pieces of silver, making it a textual citation from Jeremiah instead. Placing a period after "Jeremiah" would greatly improve the accuracy of the reading of the verse in English.