Charles Ellicott Commentary John 5

A feast of the Jews.—The writer does not tell us what feast this was, and we must be content to remain without certain knowledge. There is, perhaps, no Jewish feast with which it has not been identified, and it has been even proclaimed confidently that it must have been the Day of Atonement! (Caspari, Chron. and Geogr., Introd., Eng. Trans., p. 130). Our reading is to be regarded as the better one, though not a few authorities insert the article, and interpret “the Feast” to mean the Feast of Passover.

The time-limits are John 4:35, which was in Tebeth (January), and John 6:4, which bring us to the next Passover in Nisan (April), i.e., an interval of four months, the year being an intercalary one with the month VeAdar (and Adar) added, or, as we should say, with two months of March.

The only feast which falls in this interval is the Feast of Purim, and it is with this that the best modern opinion identifies the feast of our text. It was kept on the 14th of Adar (March), in commemoration of the deliverance of the Jews from the plots of Haman, and took its name from the lots cast by him (Esther 3:7; Esther 9:24 and following). It was one of the most popular feasts (Jos. Ant. xi. 6, § 13), and was characterised by festive rejoicings, presents, and gifts to the poor. At the same time it was not one of the great feasts, and while the writer names the Passover (John 2:13; John 6:4; John 13:1), the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:2), and even that of the Dedication (John 10:22), this has no further importance in the narrative than to account for the fact of Jesus being again in Jerusalem. (Compare Introduction: Chronological Harmony of the Gospels, p. 35)

Now there is at Jerusalem.—We have no certain knowledge of the time referred to in the last verse, nor of the place referred to in this verse. For “sheep-market,” we should read with the margin, sheep-gate (Nehemiah 3:1; Nehemiah 3:32; Nehemiah 12:39).

This gate was known well enough to fix the locality of the pool but is itself now unknown. St. Stephen’s Gate, which has been the traditional identification, did not exist until the time of Agrippa.

There is something tempting in the interpretation of the Vulgate, adopted by some modern travellers and commentators, which supplies the substantive from the immediate context and reads “sheep-pool.” But the fact that the Greek adjective for “sheep” is used here only in the New Testament, and in the Old Testament only in the passages of Nehemiah referred to above, seems to fix the meaning beyond doubt.

Bethesda means “house of mercy.” The “Hebrew tongue” is the Hebrew current at that time, which we ordinarily call Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaic. The spot is pointed out traditionally as Birket Israil, near the fort of Antonia, but since Dr. Robinson’s rejection of this, it has been generally abandoned. He himself adopted the “Fountain of the Virgin,” which is intermittent. He saw the water rise to the height of a foot in five minutes and was told that this occurs sometimes two or three times a day.

The fountain is connected with the pool of Siloam and probably with the fountain under the Grand Mosque. The seventh edition of Alford’s Commentary contains an interesting letter pointing out that Siloam itself was probably the pool of Bethesda.

This letter notes that the remains of four columns in the east wall of the pool, with four others in the centre, show that there was a structure half covering it, which, resting upon four columns, would give five spaces or porches. The fact that this pool is called Siloam in John 9:7 does not oppose this view. The word “called” here, is more exactly surnamed, and “House of Mercy” may well have been given to the structure and thus extended to the pool in addition to its own name.

But to pass from the uncertain, it is established beyond doubt:

1. That there are, and then were, on the east of Jerusalem mineral springs.
2. That these are, and then were, intermittent.
3. That such springs are resorted to in the East just as they are in Europe.

In these lay a great multitude.—The word great before multitude, and the latter clause of the verse waiting for the moving of the water, and the whole of John 5:4, is omitted by most of the oldest manuscripts, including the Sinaitic and the Vatican, and is judged to be no part of the original text by a consensus of modern editors, including Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, and Westcott and Hort.

It is interesting to note how a gloss like this has found its way into the narrative, and, for ninety-nine out of every hundred readers, is now regarded as an integral part of St. John’s Gospel.

We meet with it very early. It is found in the Alexandrian manuscript, and in the Latin and early Syrian versions. Tertullian refers to it. This points to a wide acceptance from the second century onward, and points doubtless to the popular interpretation of that day.

It explains the man’s own view in John 5:7, and the fact of the multitude assembled around the pool (John 5:3). The bubbling water, moving as it were with life, and in its healing power seeming to convey new energy to the blind, crippled, and lame, was to them like the presence of a living messenger of God. They did not know its constituent elements, and could not trace the law of its action, but they knew the Source of all good, who gave intellect to man and healing influence to matter, effect to the remedy and skill to the physician, and they accepted the gift as direct from Him.

Scientists of that century will smile at these Christians of the second century. The Biblical critic is glad that he can remove these words from the record, and cannot be called upon to explain them. But it may be fairly asked, which is most truly scientific—to grasp the Ultimate Cause of all, even without the knowledge of intermediate links; or to trace these links, and express them in so-called laws, and make these abstract laws lifeless representatives of the living God?

There is a via media which, here as elsewhere, wisdom will seek rather than either extreme. All true theology must be, in the best sense, scientific; and all true science must be, in the best sense, religious.

Thirty-eight years.—The period expresses not his age on the one hand, nor the time of his being at Bethesda on the other, but the time during which he had suffered from the infirmity. Helpless and friendless, having spent half the span of human life in that condition, he appeals without an uttered word to the Mercy which is present in the House of Mercy; and to him alone of those He healed does Christ of His own accord address the first question. The infirmity was in some way connected with youthful sin (John 5:14), and the sufferer and his history would be well known to those in Jerusalem. The exact knowledge of the writer tells us that for thirty-eight years he had paid sin’s penalty.

And now Jesus sees him lying there among the throng of sufferers, and every ache of every limb and every sorrow of every heart told of the perfection of life marred by the curse of sin.

But this man’s own sin had left its mark upon him, a mark that people could read and condemn, even though within the gleaming facade of their own outward deeds, their souls’ life was paralyzed by sin to its very core.

But he hears, in tones that went to his heart as he listened, the strange question, stranger indeed than “Wilt thou…?”, “Are you truly willing to be made whole?”