The healing at Bethesda (Notes on John 5:1-18)

From a video of this episode by the CJCLDS

Older posts in this series: John 1, John 2, John 3:1-10, John 3:9-12, John 3:13-21, John 3:22-30, John 3:31-36, John 4:1-26, John 4:27-42, John 4:43-54.

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[1] After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

The text does not specify which feast it was, but the fact that Jesus went up to Jerusalem suggests that it was one of the three festivals -- Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles -- for which the Israelites were expected to made pilgrimages -- the Samaritans to Mount Gerizim, and the Jews to their own holy site, the Temple in Jerusalem. Since this Gospel elsewhere mentions by name "the Jews' passover" (John 2:13) and "the Jew's feast of tabernacles" (John 7:2), we might tentatively guess that this unspecified "feast of the Jews" was the other one, Pentecost. Pentecost is also the next festival after Passover, which fits the narrative. Jesus went to Jerusalem for Passover, stayed for a while after the feast, went back to Galilee for an apparently brief stay, and then returned to Jerusalem for another feast. Pentecost, so called because it is the 50th day after Passover, seems to fit this chronology.

The fact that the author doesn't bother to name the festival, and the constant reminders that these were all festivals "of the Jews," would seem to suggest that he was writing for an audience that was not particularly Jewish. (The author himself, on the other hand, plainly was Jewish and knew the Hebrew Bible inside and out.)

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[2] Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. [3] In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. [4] For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

The passage I have italicized (vv. 3b-4) is widely considered to be an interpolation. It is absent from some of the Greek manuscripts and from the Vulgate, and many modern English translations relegate it to a footnote. However, most of the content of this interpolated passage is implied by v. 7, where we learn that the paralyzed man thought he would be healed if someone put him in the pool "when the water is troubled," but only if no one else got into the pool before he did. The only thing that v. 4 adds to this is that the troubling of the water was caused by "an angel."

What was really going on here? Judging among the possibilities is largely a matter of guesswork, but some seem more plausible than others. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind.

First, the archaeological consensus is that this pool was a manmade reservoir, fed by rainwater, which would seem to rule out hot-spring activity as the cause of the troublings and healings, and would also make it less likely that any sort of nature spirit was involved.

Second, the fact that the blind, lame, and paralyzed all confidently expected to be healed here strongly suggests that something more potent than minerals or the placebo effect was at work.

Third, the "rule" -- that only the first person to enter the water after it is troubled gets healed -- sounds like something out of a fairy tail and smacks more of the economy of faerie and the pagan world than of Heaven. To me this counts as evidence against the hypothesis that the healings were the work of an "angel" in any conventional sense of that word. (There is apparently some archaeological evidence that the pool was associated with a temple of Aesculapius -- in Jerusalem! -- which sounds about right to me.) Alternatively, this "last one in is a rotten egg" rule could just be a bit of ignorant folklore. Apparently there were scads of invalids hanging about just waiting for the waters to be troubled, so it seems likely that there would normally be several people entering the waters roughly simultaneously. If a given person was healed, he would take that to mean he had been first; if not, that someone else must have entered just a split-second before him. This would give God (or the angel, or whomever) considerable leeway to choose whom to heal while still maintaining the pool's reputation for working every time.

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[5] And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.

[6] When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, "Wilt thou be made whole?"

[7] The impotent man answered him, "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me."

Jesus' question means something like, "Don't you want to be healed?"

The nature of the man's infirmity is not specified, but he apparently had some limited mobility. When he later takes up his bed and walks, this means he has been healed; but even before being healed, he was able to enter the pool unassisted, albeit not quickly enough.

It seems strange that the man was at the pool alone. Did he stagger or crawl there himself from wherever his home was? Did someone bring him there and then just leave him? Or was he attended after all, but by someone (a wife, children, elderly parents) who lacked the physical strength to put him into the water?

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[8] Jesus saith unto him, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk."

[9] And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.

[10] The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, "It is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed."

[11] He answered them, "He that made me whole, the same said unto me, 'Take up thy bed, and walk.'"

[12] Then asked they him, "What man is that which said unto thee, 'Take up thy bed, and walk?'"

[13] And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.

It is interesting, and surely deliberate, that the healing pool so carefully established as the backdrop for this episode plays no role at all in the healing, and that Jesus never so much as mentions it. Part of the message of this episode is that whatever was going on in that pool -- whether angels or Aesculapius or just good old-fashioned superstition -- it had been superseded by Jesus and was no longer relevant.

"Bear no burden on the sabbath day" (Jeremiah 17:21). It seems pretty clear that Jesus broke the sabbath deliberately, and for no pressing reason. This man had been suffering from his condition for 38 years. What possible difference could it have made if his healing had been delayed one more day out of respect for the Law? Or Jesus could even have healed him then and there, on the sabbath, and then told him to come back for his bed the next day. Is it possible that Jesus just didn't think about the fact that it was the sabbath? He was, after all, from "Galilee of the gentiles," where they must have been less strict about such things. This seems highly unlikely to me. It's not like it was his first time in Jerusalem or interacting with "the Jews." He knew exactly what he was doing. He deliberately told the man he had healed to break the sabbath, knowing that this was a capital offense under the Mosaic law.

What about the man who was healed? Why was he so ready to obey and take up his bed? Wasn't he afraid to openly break the sabbath in the heart of Pharisee country? Perhaps he was a gentile, in Jerusalem for the (possibly pagan) healing pool rather than for Pentecost. His response to his Jewish accusers was simply that the one who had healed him had also told him to carry his bed; as an outsider, he would have assumed that whatever a Jewish holy man had told him to do would obviously not be in violation of the Jewish law. It is also suggestive that the Jews did not try to kill this man for the crime of bearing a burden on the sabbath, but they did later try to kill Jesus for telling him to do so. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the man was a gentile and pardonable in his ignorance, whereas Jesus clearly knew better.

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[14] Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, "Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee."

[15] The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole.

The fact that Jesus found the man "in the temple" does not disprove my suggestion that he may have been a gentile. The atrium gentium, open to non-Jews, was considered to be part of the Temple.

We are not given enough information to guess the nature of the man's sin or its connection with his healing. Some commentators have taken Jesus' admonition as implying that the man's original ailment had been the result of sin. (Syphilis can cause partial paralysis, but it had not yet been brought to the Old World in Jesus' time.) I don't think any such inference is necessary, though. Jesus was simply saying that, now that his body had been made whole, it was high time he turned his attention to the state of his soul.

The man's departing and immediately reporting Jesus to "the Jews" seems like the action of an ingrate and informer. I suppose it is possible that he wanted to spread the word about this great holy man, Jesus, but in context it seems much more likely that his primary aim was to deflect the blame for sabbath-breaking to Jesus and away from himself. Perhaps his anger at being called a sinner played a role in this decision.

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[16] And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day.

While it is true that Moses decreed the death penalty for sabbath-breaking, the Jews of Jesus' time had no authority to execute that penalty. Judaea was under Roman rule, and only the Romans could put a man to death. (That is why later, when Jesus was executed, the sentence had to be pronounced by the Roman governor Pilate.) If the Jews nevertheless "sought to slay him," that could mean they attempted to murder him, in the sort of religious vigilantism one today associates with Islam, or that they attempted to convince the Roman authorities that he should be executed. Since it is hard for me to imagine anyone thinking the Romans would agree to execute a man for the "crime" of telling someone else to carry a bed on Saturday, I would tend to favor the former possibility.

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[17] But Jesus answered them, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."

This is perhaps not the sort of defense we might have expected. Jesus does not say that carrying a "bed" (probably just a mat) hardly counts as "bearing a burden" and is not a violation of the sabbath. He does not say that, while keeping the sabbath is important, healing a man who needs healing is even more important. Instead, he says, "God is still working, and so am I." God, contrary to what Moses said, never rested from his labors, and neither should we. Rather than argue that his apparent sabbath-breaking was justified in this particular case, Jesus denies the whole idea of the sabbath.

If you search the Gospels, I think you will find not a single instance of Jesus keeping the sabbath or encouraging anyone else to do so. Even when he rattles off some of the Ten Commandments in response to the rich young ruler's query (Mark 10:19, Luke 18:20), he is careful to omit that one. The only time the sabbath ever comes up in connection with Jesus is when he is breaking it, which he does repeatedly and deliberately. 

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[18] Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

Centuries of Christianity have made it so natural to think of God as "Our Father" that it is easy to forget that the fatherhood of God is not a Jewish doctrine and was among Jesus' more controversial teachings. Although I am open to correction on this point, I do not believe the Old Testament contains a single unambiguous reference to God as the Father. (Update: see details and partial retraction here.)

There's Malachi 2:10: "Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?" But in context, I think the "one father" refers to Abraham or Israel, not to God.

There's also Isaiah 63:16: "Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting." But again this is accompanied by references to Abraham and Israel, and God is poetically playing their role; the identification is no more literal than when Elkanah said to Hannah, "Am I not better to thee than ten sons?"

It may seem a small thing to say "Father" rather than "Creator," but I think Jesus' would-be murderers were right to regard it as revolutionary and to equate it with "making himself equal with God." If a man builds a house, the house is never going to be anything like the man who created it -- but begetting a son is another thing entirely. A son is fundamentally the same sort of being as his father and is destined to become like him. To call God one's Father is to make an astonishing claim about oneself, and the Jews are not to be faulted for finding it shocking in the extreme.