John 5:10Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

He does not pray for the cessation of the illness in the man lying there, lest He appear like one of the holy prophets. Rather, as Lord of hosts, He commands the healing with authority. He tells the healed man to go home rejoicing and to carry the bed on his shoulders, as a sign of the Healer's power for those who saw it. The sick man immediately obeys the command and, through obedience and faith, obtains the grace most desired.

Christ heals the man on the Sabbath and immediately commands him to break the ordinance under the law. He makes him walk on the Sabbath, and burdened with a bed, though God clearly cries through one of the holy prophets: "Do not carry burdens out of your houses on the Sabbath day" (Jer 17:22). Surely no prudent person will think that by this He compels the man to despise and transgress the divine commandments.

Rather, through this Christ made clear, as in an image, that the Jews would receive healing through obedience and faith in the last times of the age. I think the Sabbath indicates this, as the last day of the week. Those who have already received healing through faith and have passed over to a new life must count the old letter of the law as nothing. They must renounce service veiled, as it were, in shadows, and the useless observance of Jewish rites.

That sick man acted so, and the Jews were indignant. They saw a man carrying his bed on the Sabbath day. Yet they did not begin to reproach the Lord for healing him on the Sabbath, lest He answer them: if one of them had an animal fall into a well, would he not pull it out on the Sabbath day and save his animal (cf. Lk 14:5)? Therefore they no longer reproached Him because a man had been healed on the Sabbath day, but because the healed man carried his bed. If treatment cannot be postponed, should one forbid giving direction in the healing? They said to the healed man: "You ought not to have done what you did, taking up your bed."

Thus the blinded Jews said to the paralytic: "It is not lawful for you to take up your bed." One must also know that we often resemble the Jews. Seeing the mistakes and faults of others, we condemn them by the malice of our heart. But like the blind, we never notice virtues and good deeds, and like the mute, we say nothing about them.

The paralytic, however, answered the Jews with the greatest boldness and said:

Since this was on the Sabbath, in the view of the foolish zealots of the law Jesus Christ had in this case violated the law of Sabbath rest twice. First, He performed a healing on the Sabbath. Second, He permitted the healed man to carry his bed on that day. Therefore, when the former sick man told them that the One who healed him was Jesus Christ, they became greatly enraged against the Lord and even sought to kill Him.

Christ's enemies arrogantly ask the healed man: "Who is that Man who dared to permit you to carry your bed on the Sabbath?" They do not ask, "Who healed you?" Though they had not been present at this paralytic's healing, they guessed that the Healer must be Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore they did not even wish to speak of it.

As the spirit of the Mosaic legislation was increasingly suppressed in this sect by the letter of dead ritualism, the Sabbath lost its former exalted character.

It was meant to be spiritual and bodily rest from labor, and its dedication to the service of God.

Instead, petty observance of rest came to the forefront. It was surrounded by such absurd inventions of idle sanctimony that this gracious day of rest became a day of burdensome slavery and every kind of constraint.

With the most exact minuteness it was determined what one could and could not do on the Sabbath, how many steps one might take, how far one might move, how much one might eat, how much one might write, what medicines one might take, and so on.

Most of all, however, rules were developed concerning the carrying of a burden on the Sabbath day.

Relying on the saying of the prophet Jeremiah, “Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day” (Jer 17:21), the rabbis devised an entire code.

In it they defined exactly what kinds of burdens could be carried and what kinds could not be carried on the Sabbath day.

Since the Sabbath day began on Friday evening and was announced by the sound of a trumpet, every true Israelite, according to rabbinic teaching, had to cast off every burden at once.

One decree stated: “On Friday, before the beginning of the Sabbath, no one may leave the house with a needle or a pen, lest he forget to lay them aside when the Sabbath begins.

Everyone must carefully search his pockets at that time, lest anything remain there with which it is forbidden to go out on the Sabbath day.”

Even food, according to the interpretation of the scribes, could be carried on the Sabbath only in a strictly defined quantity.

Of fruit, one could carry no more than a single dried fig. Of honey, no more than was needed to anoint a sick man’s wound.

Of water, no more than was needed to make clay required for the healing of diseased eyes.

As for other objects, one could carry no more paper than could be placed in a phylactery or case, and no more ink than was needed to write two letters, and so on.

Nor was it only actual loads constituting a burden that could not be carried. According to the interpretation of Pharisaic rabbis, one could not even wear shoes with nails or patches on the Sabbath.

Both nails and a patch constituted a “burden.”

From this the rabbis were absolutely forbidden to wear patched shoes, lest through forgetfulness they violate the sanctity of the Sabbath.

In their opinion, this Sabbath observance was kept by the whole universe, so that even the Angel of the Lord never troubled the waters in Bethesda on the Sabbath.

Given such views, it is no wonder that the scribes and Pharisees hastened to point out to the paralytic what lawlessness he was committing by carrying such a “burden” as his miserable bed.

The Law of Moses forbade work on the Sabbath, and nothing more (Ex 20:8, 16; Ex 22:14-17; Deut 5:12-14; Jer 17:21, 22, 24, 27). But the pitiful teachers of Judaism extended the strictness of Sabbath rest to ridiculous proportions. Among the thirty kinds of labor forbidden on the Sabbath, the rabbis included carrying anything from a public place into a house (Tract. Sabbatum, ch. 8, §2, f. 6, 11).

Their established interpretation of the law gave them the right to interfere at any moment in a person's life. But the man healed by the Lord, together with health, had already gained a certain firmness to withstand the teachers. With remarkable common sense he answers them. The One who had authority and power to heal him, a man sick for thirty-eight years, certainly had authority to command him to take up his bed. It was not fitting for him, the healed man, to disobey the One who healed him.

There is irony in his words. He seems to say to the Pharisees: you did not heal me, and you could not have healed me. This is beyond your reach. Why, then, do you now meddle in a matter that stands above you?