JESUS SENDS A BLIND MAN TO THE POOL OF SILOAM

JOHN 9

The question of Jesus’s messianic legitimacy and authority raised in the seventh chapter of John progressed in the eighth and ninth chapters as inquiries by the Temple leadership continued and became increasingly barbed the longer Jesus remained in Jerusalem. In their efforts to discredit him, the Temple Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery and chided Jesus to rule on her guilt (John 8:2–11).16 This was followed by a series of confrontations in which Jesus clearly revealed his messianic legitimacy and authority, but certain Pharisees did not want to believe (John 8–9). One of those confrontations occurred when Jesus healed a man born blind.

Remains of the original roadway leading from the Temple Mount down to the Siloam Pool.

Jesus was walking with his disciples in the vicinity of the Temple when they came upon a blind man. The disciples asked Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”(John 9:2). The disciples’ question exposed a common misconception among many that physical disabilities were the result of a person’s or a parent’s sinfulness.17 Jesus quickly dismissed their question by answering, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, . . . but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (John 9:3). Then, giving testimony to his own messianic authority, Jesus mixed saliva and soil, placed it on the man’s eyes, and told him to go and wash the mixture off in the Pool of Siloam (John 9:7).

The pool, located at the southern end of Jerusalem, was a public venue where people came to get water. As Jesus sent the man there to be healed, God’s work was on full display, just as Jesus intended (John 9:8–9). After washing his eyes according to Jesus’s instructions, the man could see.

When the Temple Pharisees learned of the healing, they had the man brought to them and heatedly challenged his story. Then these religious leaders intensely interrogated him and his parents, challenging them to explain how it was that he could now see after being born blind. The healed man’s humble reply was simply, “I was blind and now I see! . . . If this man [Jesus] were not from God, he could do nothing” (John 9:25, 33).

Jesus’s healing of this blind beggar pushed the Temple leadership into panic. Who was this man who could bring sight to a person born blind? The public testimony of the healed beggar that he now miraculously had his vision established Jesus’s authenticity to those who were still wondering if the Messiah had arrived in Jerusalem. This testimony came from a man who had been a beggar, not from Jerusalem’s educated religious leaders who were blinded by their own elitism and misguided traditions of men. By sending the blind man to the Pool of Siloam for healing, Jesus demonstrated to everyone in Jerusalem that the Son of Man was, in fact, in their midst regardless of whether or not they wanted to see him.

Jerusalem at the Time of Jesus

Excavations of the Pool of Siloam.