John 5:3Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

We see that much in the Old Testament was also performed by means of water for this purpose. But let us return to our subject.

As I said, God first established purification by water for bodily impurities, and afterward for various diseases as well. Wishing to bring us nearer and nearer to the grace of baptism, He now heals not only impurities, but also diseases.

Indeed, images nearer to the truth, that is, nearer in time to the New Testament, were generally clearer than the more ancient types. This is true regarding baptism, the Passion, and other matters.

As the shield-bearers nearest the king shine more brightly than those standing far away from him, so it was also with the foreshadowings.

An angel descended and troubled the water, giving it healing power, in order to teach the Jews that the Lord of angels can all the more heal every disease of the soul.

Here, it was not simply the natural power of water that healed. Otherwise this would have happened always. Rather, it healed through the action of the angel.

So also with us, the water does not act by itself. When it receives the grace of the Spirit, then it cleanses all sins.

Around this pool lay a great multitude of the sick, the blind, the lame, and the withered, waiting for the movement of the water.

Then weakness hindered the one who wished to receive healing. Now everyone may approach freely.

It is not an angel who troubles the water, but the Lord of angels who accomplishes all this. No sick man can now say, “I have no man, and when I am coming, another steps down before me” (Jn 5:7).

Even if the whole world were to gather, grace is not diminished and its power is not exhausted. It remains always the same as before.

As the rays of the sun shine every day and are not exhausted, so even more the power of the Spirit is not diminished at all by the multitude of those who receive it.

This was done so that those who saw bodily diseases healed by water, and experienced this for a long time, might more readily believe that diseases of the soul can also be healed.

He also gives the miracle of this pool, which guides them toward the reception of baptism.

The Angel, descending at certain times, troubled the water and gave it healing power. It was not from the nature of the water that it healed by itself, for then this would have happened always. Everything depended on the action of the Angel.

So also among us the water of baptism is simple water. Yet through the divine descent, having received the grace of the Spirit, it destroys the diseases of the soul.

If someone is blind, that is, if the eyes of his soul are damaged and he cannot distinguish good from evil, this water heals him.

If someone is lame, that is, unmoved toward doing good and progressing in good, it heals him. If someone is completely withered, that is, in a state of despair and having nothing good in himself, this water heals them all.

At that time weakness prevented some from receiving healing. Now we have no obstacle to baptism.

For when one is healed, the others are not left without healing. Even if the whole world came together, grace would not be diminished.

The troubling of the water in the pool signifies that the spirits of evil are troubled in it, crushed and trampled down by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

O that we too might receive health! We have become paralyzed and immobile toward every good work, and we have no man, that is, no human understanding, having become like irrational beasts.

May He cast us into the pool of tearful repentance. Whoever enters it first receives healing.

The one who hopes for a later time, delays repentance, and does not hasten to repent here, but comes late, does not receive healing.

Therefore strive to enter first, lest death overtake you.

The Angel troubles this pool of repentance. Which Angel? The Angel of the Father’s great counsel, Christ and Savior.

Unless the divine teaching touches our heart and troubles it by remembrance of the torments in the age to come, this pool will not be effective. Then health does not come to the paralyzed soul.

From Dan to Beersheba the ordinances were proclaimed through Moses, while Angels ministered on Mount Sinai on the day later established as holy Pentecost. For this reason the water of the pool was troubled at no other time, showing through this the descent of the holy Angels into it.

Therefore He made it able to see, and healed that by which it was unable to see. He came to the place where a great multitude of the sick lay: the blind, the lame, and the withered.

Though He was the Physician of souls and bodies, and had come to heal all the souls of believers, He chose one from all the sick. By this He showed the unity of the Church.

If we consider what He did with a simple heart, according to human understanding and knowledge, then with respect to His power He did nothing great. With respect to His generosity, He did too little.

So many lay there, and He cared for only one, although by a single word He could have raised them all.

What then should we think, if not that His power and goodness acted so that souls, through His deeds, might understand eternal salvation, rather than bodies merit passing health?

For the true health of bodies, which is awaited from the Lord, will come at the end of the ages, at the resurrection of the dead. Then he who lives will die no more. Then he who is healed will be sick no more.

Then he who is fed will hunger and thirst no more. Then he who is renewed will grow old no more.

The eyes of the blind, opened then by the works of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, were closed again by death. The limbs of the paralytics, then made strong, were destroyed by death.

Everything temporarily healed in mortal members at last passed away. But the soul that believed prepared its passage to eternal life.

To that soul, for whose forgiveness of sins He came, and which was ready to acknowledge that He humbled Himself for the healing of its bodily diseases, He gave a great sign in the cure of that sick man.

Concerning the deep meaning of this deed and sign, I shall speak to you as far as the Lord grants of His bounty, and according to my ability, if you are attentive and support my weakness by your prayer.

If I cannot explain something, He will reveal it to you, with whose help I do what lies within my power.

I remember that we have often enough discussed that pool surrounded by five porches, in which a great multitude of the sick lay. I am about to say what many, together with me, will rather remember than learn as something new.

Still, there is no harm in repeating what is already known, so that those who did not yet know it may be enlightened, and those who already know it may be strengthened in that knowledge.

Therefore I must touch briefly on what is already known, and not examine it at length.

It seems to me that the pool and the water signify the Jewish people. For the word “waters” is applied as a name to peoples, as the Apocalypse of John shows us most clearly.

When many waters were shown to him, and he asked what they meant, he received the answer that they were peoples (cf. Rev 17:15).

That water, then, that is, that people, was enclosed in the Pentateuch of Moses as in five porches. Yet those books showed the sick, but did not heal them. For the Law accused sinners, but did not free them from sin.

The letter without grace made men guilty. Grace, when they confessed their sins, freed them from them.

Of this the Apostle says: “For if a law had been given which could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law” (Gal 3:21).

Why then was the Law given? He continues and says: “But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise might be given to those who believe through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal 3:22).

What could be clearer? Have these words not explained to us both the five porches and the multitude of the sick?

The five porches are the Law. Why did the five porches not heal the sick? Because “if a law had been given which could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.”

Why then did they hold those whom they did not heal? Because “the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise might be given to those who believe through faith in Jesus Christ.”

What happened, then, that those who could not be healed in the porches were healed in the troubled water? It was seen that the water was suddenly troubled, but He who troubled it was not seen.

You may think that this happened by the power of an Angel, yet not without some mystery containing a sign.

After the water was troubled, one man went down into it, and only he was healed. Whoever entered after him did so in vain.

What does this mean, if not that Christ came, alone, to the Jewish people? By performing great works and teaching what is profitable, He troubled sinners, troubled the water by His presence, and moved them to violence against Himself.

But He troubled them while remaining unknown. “For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8).

Therefore, to go down into the troubled water means to believe humbly in the Lord’s Passion.

One was healed there, signifying the unity of the Church. Whoever came afterward was not healed, for whoever is outside the unity of the Church cannot be healed.

Eusebius of Caesarea says that Bethesda in his time consisted of “two pools, one of which was filled with water in the rainy season, while the other had water that strongly reflected a red color.” This was probably due to the rapid influx of water through underground channels.

The very word Bethesda means in Hebrew “House of Mercy,” probably because a shelter for the sick had been built there.

Sheep intended for sacrifice were usually washed in it. In addition, the water was famed for its healing power.

From time to time an extraordinary movement of the water occurred in the pool, “for an Angel of the Lord went down at certain times into the pool and troubled the water,” giving it miraculous healing power.

“And whoever first entered it after the troubling of the water was made well, whatever disease he had.”

It is not surprising that this miraculous property drew to the pool “a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the movement of the water.”

They remained there under the shelter of five separate porticoes, built for these unfortunate people by private benefactors.

Therefore the Russian translation correctly expresses the thought of the original: “There is a pool by the Sheep Gate.” Bethesda, beth chisda, means house of beneficence.

Eusebius wrote of the pool: “The pool is shown even now in the same two basins, each of which is filled by the yearly rains. Each contains water of a strangely colored kind” (Onomasticon).

The words of verse 4 are absent from some manuscripts, according to Origen. Some remark: “It is not characteristic of John to introduce information that has no connection with his main thought” (Tholuck).

But this remark is incorrect. The information about the special character of the reservoir is connected with the miracle.

The Syriac translation, the Vulgate, Chrysostom, Cyril, Augustine, and an ancient scholion on Matthew read the fourth verse.

Whether the angel descended into the reservoir at a fixed time, at Passover, as Cyril of Alexandria thought, or at an undefined time, according to God’s will, as Zigabenus held, St. John gives no information.

He speaks indefinitely: “An angel at certain times,” κατὰ καιρόν, “went down into the pool.” In any case, the healing action of the water depended not on the water, but on the angel. This means that it was miraculous, as Tertullian and Chrysostom say.

Meanwhile darkness and malice, raised up by "the father of lies and father of the embittered, that is, the devil" (Jn 8:44), wage war against light, mercy, and love.

From the fifth chapter onward, the holy Evangelist John sketches the picture and narrative of this struggle of darkness against light, of the Jews against the Lord.

From the earthly point of view, this struggle ends in the temporary triumph of darkness and malice through the killing of the Lord Jesus. In essence, however, it is the triumph of light.

It is the fulfillment of God’s preordained plan in the suffering, death, and glorious Resurrection of the God-man.

In depicting the Jews’ struggle against the Lord, John the Theologian naturally narrates chiefly the events that took place in Jerusalem. There was the nest of scribes and Pharisees that refused to admit the thought that Jesus is the Christ.

There the hardened assaults of the Jews, gnashing their teeth against the Lord, take place. They end in an outright conspiracy against the Lord’s life, with a resolve to achieve His killing by every lawful and unlawful means.

If the sixth chapter of John carries our thought to Galilee, to the shore of the Lake of Tiberias, this is because the miracle of feeding the people is joined to the Lord’s teaching about the bread of life that comes down from heaven.

Moreover, in verse 41 there is an indication that even in Galilee, on account of the Lord’s words, embittered Jews rise up and dispute against Him.

They were probably following Him, or were even sent from Jerusalem as spies, in order to find a pretext for accusing the Lord.

All the other events in the Gospel according to John take place in Jerusalem and its environs. Only the concluding twenty-first chapter of John the Theologian again transfers the reader to Galilee.

For here, on the Lake of Tiberias, events occurred that had to be revealed to Christians, since they had not been mentioned by the preceding Evangelists.

The first narrated outburst of the Pharisees’ malice takes place in Jerusalem, on account of the healing of the sick man who had lain thirty-eight years by the pool of Bethesda.

It immediately assumes the form of a conspiracy to kill the Lord Jesus.

The feast on which this healing of the paralytic was accomplished has given occasion for doubts. Saint Irenaeus and Eusebius of Caesarea thought it was Passover. Saint John Chrysostom considers this feast to be Pentecost.

Many more recent learned theologians think it was the feast of Purim, the feast of deliverance from danger in Persia; see Esther, especially Esth 9:26.

It is very difficult to pronounce one’s own opinion on a question on which the most ancient and greatest Fathers of the Church differed. We nevertheless permit ourselves to say the following.

The event occurs after the first Passover and before the mention of the second (Jn 6:4). It seems most natural to suppose that it was the feast of Pentecost.

As for the feast of Tabernacles, it is named explicitly in chapter 7:1-2, between the second and third Passover.

The feast of Purim was celebrated in March. If the event is assigned to this feast, then it must have taken place several days before the second Passover.

Recent investigators have sought the pool of Bethesda in the valley of the Kidron brook, supposing that it is the intermittent spring now known as the "Fountain of the Virgin."

Others point out that, according to very ancient tradition based on Nehemiah 3, the "sheep gate" should be sought on the northeastern side of the ancient city, near the present gate of the holy protomartyr Stephen.

According to the same ancient tradition, the sheep pool was located near that place, beside the Temple.

The name Bethesda, or Bethsaida, is interpreted as "house of mercy." The porticoes of Bethesda were in all probability open galleries built by pious people.

In them the sick lay at least somewhat sheltered from the heat of the sun and from rain. The traveler Tristram saw a scene like the Gospel scene, with sick persons lying under shelters near the hot sulfur springs of ancient Tiberias.

Concerning the Slavonic expression "every year," it must be observed that one cannot understand here "once a year." The Greek kata kairon means "at an appointed time" or "at a suitable time for this."

Biblia Sacra translates it praestituto tempore. That is, it means "from time to time," as our Russian Synodal translation also renders it.

In other words, at times appointed by God, an angel troubled the water.

We cannot pass over in silence the fact that in some very ancient manuscripts of the Gospel according to John, verse 3 from the word "waiting" and all of verse 4 are omitted.

For this reason, verse 4 together with the end of verse 3 is considered by some an explanatory gloss, though one of very great antiquity.

Among the manuscripts lacking verse 4 are named the Sinaitic Codex, Aleph, the Vatican Codex, B, the Parisian Codex, L, and some others.

There are many intermittent springs whose healing effect is experienced only in the first moments when the spring appears from the earth.

Concerning verse 5 of this chapter, Schmieder well observes that the action of the angel indicated by the Gospel explains many phenomena of nature.

It also shows us that the unearthly, higher world often enters in a life-giving way into the ordinary course of nature’s life: Da die Geisterwelt lebendig eingreift in die Natur.

Psalm 103 points directly to this, saying, "You make Your angels spirits, and Your ministers a flaming fire."

That is, according to Schmieder’s thought, all extraordinary phenomena of nature occur by special commands of God, through the action of rational angelic powers upon the irrational powers of nature.

This view of Schmieder certainly finds its justification in the account of the Egyptian plagues, and in the angel of the final plague passing by the doors marked with the blood of the paschal lamb.

It is also justified in the punishment of David by pestilence, which begins when the angel standing by the threshing floor of Araunah stretches out his hand over Jerusalem (see 2 Sam 24:16).

Let us add that we believe the Lord God is not an indifferent spectator of human life. Those who truly study the course of events in mankind’s life cannot fail to see the hand of God.

They see it both in the great physical upheavals of nature and in the great moral upheavals of societies.