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§11 The Healing at the Pool (John 5:1–18)

At this point the narrator’s interest in Jesus’ itinerary begins to wane. The events of chapters 5, 6, and 7 are introduced by the vague connective phrase, meta tauta (some time later, 5:1; “some time after this,” 6:1; “after this,” 7:1). The transition from chapter 4 to chapter 5 is a natural one in that a person appropriately goes to Jerusalem from Galilee for a feast of the Jews (v. 1), but the transition between chapters 5 and 6 is more awkward. Jesus is assumed to be still in Jerusalem at the end of chapter 5, but the beginning of chapter 6 finds him in Galilee about to cross from one side of Lake Galilee to the other (6:1). For this reason, some scholars have proposed that the order of chapters 5 and 6 be reversed: Jesus is in Galilee at the end of chapter 4, continues there in chapter 6, and finally returns to Jerusalem in chapter 5! But this proposal leaves unexplained the beginning of chapter 7, which does not say that Jesus returned to Galilee but implies that he was already there, traveling from town to town (7:1). The rearrangement of chapters creates as many problems as it solves. Its fallacy lies in the attempt to make the Gospel more chronological than it actually intends to be. The same phrase at the beginning of each of these chapters appears to mean no more than “the next thing I would like to tell is …” Having brought Jesus from Cana to Jerusalem and back to Cana again, the author now turns to other, more overtly theological concerns.

In view of this Gospel’s interest in the Jewish religious festivals (e.g., “Passover” in 2:13; 6:4; 11:55; 12:1; 13:1; “Tabernacles,” or Sukkoth, in 7:2; “Dedication,” or Hanukkah, in 10:22), it is surprising that the festival mentioned in verse 1 is not named. On the assumption that Passover is meant, some have assumed that Jesus was in Jerusalem for three Passovers (chaps. 2, 5, and 12–19) and spent one other in Galilee (chap. 6). Others have suggested the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Weeks (i.e., Pentecost). But the author has left the festival anonymous, either deliberately or because the story was handed down to him without an exact temporal setting. If it was left anonymous deliberately, it may have been to conceal a departure from chronological order. Possibly the story of the healing at the pool was originally preserved as a sample of the (otherwise unspecified) miracles performed at Jesus’ first Passover in Jerusalem (2:23; 3:2). Once the story of the temple cleansing had been transferred to that early Passover visit (2:13–22), the tendency would have been for it to overshadow the miracles associated with that visit. The account found in 5:1–18 is perhaps one of those miracle stories “rescued” from its original setting, given a new literary setting of its own, and made the basis both of Jesus’ ongoing controversy with the Jewish authorities and of his self-revelation as the giver of life.

In any case, this was the miracle that Jesus later singled out as a focus of opposition to him (7:21–23), even though he was known to have performed others as well (7:31; cf. 6:2). It is presented as a sample of the kind of action that from an early point in his ministry produced conflict over Sabbath observance and over Jesus’ personal claims (vv. 16, 18).

The scene is described carefully (vv. 2–5). The healing occurs at a place where healings were expected. Bethesda was apparently a healing shrine consisting of a pool with an intermittent spring popularly believed to have healing properties. Jesus surveys a scene in which a large number of the sick and the disabled have gathered for healings. Attention is focused on one man in particular who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years (v. 5). Though it is often assumed that he was a paralytic (cf. Mark 2:1–12), the text does not say so. Like the government official’s son at Capernaum, he is diagnosed only as being an invalid (cf. 4:46). The narrator’s interest is not in the medical particulars of the case (except for the duration of the man’s condition) but in the cure—and, even more, its consequences.

The irony of the cure is that Jesus bypasses the healing sanctuary that has just been so carefully described and heals the sick man (just as he did the government official’s son) with a spoken word: Get up! Pick up your mat and walk (v. 8; cf. Mark 2:9, 11). The form of this command is what determines the consequences. The sick man is immediately healed and does exactly what Jesus tells him. At this point the narrator pauses to supply a necessary bit of information: It was the Sabbath (v. 9b; cf. 9:14). The man had broken the Sabbath law, not by being healed, but by carrying his mat (v. 10). Instead of accepting responsibility for his actions, he blames the man who made me well (v. 11), but Jesus’ identity is still unknown to him, and Jesus has slipped away in the crowd (v. 13). Neither the man nor the Jewish authorities “find” Jesus. It is Jesus who “finds” the man nearby in the temple area and speaks to him (v. 14a). The initiative throughout belongs to Jesus. His identity, his goings and comings, are known only to those to whom he discloses himself (cf. 9:35–37). Yet he knows the character and circumstances of the man he has just healed. Echoing the synoptic story of the paralytic, in which healing and the forgiveness of sins are virtually equated (Mark 2:5–11), Jesus warns the man to stop sinning or something worse may happen to you (v. 14b; cf. Jesus’ warning to the adulterous woman in 8:11, at the end of a passage inserted into John’s Gospel by later copyists: “Go now and leave your life of sin”). The question of whether the man’s sickness was a punishment for his sins is not addressed directly in this story, as it is in the subsequent account of the healing of the man born blind (cf. 9:1–3), nor are the two situations identical. The sick man of Bethesda ignores Jesus’ warning as if he had not heard. His encounter with Jesus at the temple means only that he can now identify Jesus to the Jewish authorities as the one responsible for his violation of the Sabbath (v. 15). At this point he disappears from the narrative, and the reader never learns if something worse happened to him or not. His main function has been to precipitate a conflict between Jesus and the Jewish authorities that will continue to the end of this Gospel.

The conflict develops in two stages. The first stage centers on the issue at hand, the law of the Sabbath (v. 16). Jesus speaks to this issue concisely and dramatically (v. 17), but his reply forces the conflict into a second stage, centering on Jesus’ claim to be God’s son and thus equal with God (v. 18). Jesus’ response to this charge is dramatic but hardly concise, for it extends all the way to the end of the chapter (vv. 19–47). Verses 16 and 18 have in common an introductory form that highlights these two stages:

And this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus … (v. 16, RSV)

This was why the Jews sought all the more to kill him … (v. 18, RSV)

The alternating verses, accordingly, also begin with a common form,

Jesus said to them/gave them this answer (Gr: apekrinato, vv. 17, 19).

In the Gospels Jesus is represented as replying in several ways to the charge that he or his disciples are guilty of breaking the Sabbath. Most of his answers are based on logic or on practical considerations (e.g., John 7:22–23; Mark 2:25–27; 3:4; Matt. 12:3–7, 11–12; Luke 13:15–16; 14:5), but at least one focuses on the person of Jesus himself: “So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28 and parallels). His answer in John 5:17 belongs in the latter category: My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working. The background of this pronouncement lies in certain debates among Jewish rabbis and philosophers over the meaning of the biblical statements that God rested on the seventh day (Gen. 2:2–3; cf. Exod. 20:11). Their conclusion was that God did not actually stop working after six days, for if he had, the world would have ceased to exist. Instead, he simply ended his work of creation and began his work of sustaining and watching over the world (see, e.g., Philo, Allegory of the Laws I, 5f.). In this sense, God himself breaks the Sabbath. Building on this conclusion, Jesus argues that if God (whom he calls his Father) is still at work, it is appropriate and necessary that he also should work, even on the Sabbath. Jesus’ assumption is that his works are the works of God (cf. 4:34).

The Jewish authorities take offense, not at Jesus’ reference to the traditional discussion of God and the Sabbath, but at the phrase, my Father, with its implied claim that Jesus was God’s son in a unique sense (v. 18). To them it sounded as if he was making himself equal with God (something Jesus is said in Phil. 2:6 to have deliberately chosen not to do). The charge will be repeated in 10:33: “You, a mere man, claim to be God.” To any Jew familiar with the Old Testament, such a claim was equivalent to blasphemy (10:33; cf. Exod. 20:3; Deut. 6:4, 13–14). Only once before in the Gospel has Jesus spoken so openly of God as my Father (2:16), and the full extent of the hostility provoked by such language is only now becoming clear.