Charles Ellicott Commentary John 5:3

"In these lay a multitude of them that were sick, blind, halt, withered, [waiting for the moving of the water.]" — John 5:3 (ASV)

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.