John 9:10Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"They asked him: How were your eyes opened?" He answers, "The Man called Jesus." What are you saying? Is it for a man to do such deeds? But he did not yet know anything great about Him.

"The Man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes." See how truthful he is. He did not say from what He made the clay. What he does not know, he does not say. He did not see that Christ spat on the ground. But that He anointed him, he knew by feeling and touch.

"And He said to me: Go to the pool of Siloam and wash." His hearing told him this. But how did he know His voice? From His conversation with the disciples. Thus he relates all this on the basis of the witness of the deed itself, and yet he cannot say the manner of the healing.

If faith is needed even in relation to what is sensible and touched, much more is it needed in relation to the invisible.

They decide with difficulty to believe that this is the very man whom they had long known. Having ceased disputing about this, they ask how he was delivered from blindness and in what manner this extraordinary deed took place. Such curiosity and inquiry into the manner of an event is always usual among those who marvel.

In our judgment, they do this not without divine guidance. Even against their will, they are to learn the almighty power of our Savior, through the clear and open declaration made to them by the blind man.

Then the neighbors, and those who had seen before that he was blind, said: "Is this not the man who sat and begged?" Some said, "This is he." Others said, "He is like him." His opened eyes had changed his face. But he said, "I am he." This was an expression of gratitude, lest he be thought ungrateful. Then they asked him, "How were your eyes opened?" He answered, "A man called Jesus made clay, anointed my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.' I went, washed, and received sight."

Those who saw with outward eyes were guiding the blind man, who saw with inward eyes. Yet the blind man, though in darkness, guided those who saw outwardly but were inwardly blind. He washed the clay from his eyes and saw himself. They too washed their hearts from blindness and saw themselves. Thus, while the Lord openly opened the eyes of one blind man, He secretly opened the eyes of many blind men. The blind man who received sight served the Lord as a kind of staff, through which He gathered many blind men and healed them of blindness of heart.

It is evident that the eyelids of the blind man's eyes had been closed. Therefore they said to him, "How were your eyes opened?" Or this means: how did you begin to see? In what way was the disease of your eyes healed? How do you see, though you were formerly blind?

Talk began at once. Some who knew this man born blind recognized him as their former acquaintance, while others denied it. They began to ask him how he had received sight. He told everything just as it had happened. They asked, "Where is your healer?" He answered, "I do not know!"

The matter was serious. They led him to the Pharisees. New interrogations began. The man born blind answered the same. The Pharisees first turned their attention to the violation of the Sabbath. From this came the immediate conclusion concerning the man who had supposedly healed the blind man: this Man is not from God.

The great miracle of healing the man born blind produced an even stronger excitement in Jerusalem, because the healed man was very well known in the city as a beggar blind from birth. Therefore, when this miracle was brought to the attention of the Pharisees, they began the most careful investigation of the event.

All their efforts in this case were directed toward casting doubt on the reality of the miracle. To this end they questioned now the former blind man, now his parents, about what had happened.

When asked, "How were your eyes opened?" he answered: "A man called Jesus made clay, anointed my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.' I went, washed, and received sight." Having clearly recounted all that had happened to him, he could not point out his Healer, for he had not seen Him. He could not even say where He was, but he named Him by the name he had probably heard from others.

When, in answer to their question about how he had become able to see, he told them everything as it had happened and declared that Jesus had healed him, their amazement knew no end. In any case, this was a fact that could not be left without proper investigation. The Jews, struck by the miracle, considered it their duty to bring all this to the attention of the scribes and Pharisees.

They had only just before taken up stones against Jesus, and He had performed a staggering miracle. At last this matter had to be investigated, and they brought the former blind man to them. There followed a scene that presents a striking example of how far the spiritual blindness of men can go when they maliciously shut their eyes so as not to see what they do not want to see.

They asked: among the more truthful, this was probably not a question of mere curiosity, but of deep sincerity and wonder. Among the unbelieving, it was partly curiosity and partly doubt. In his answer they hoped to see confirmation of their thought that he was not the former blind man, but only resembled him.

Verses 8-14. One can imagine the rapture of the blind man, who had not seen light from the day of his birth and by the word of Jesus began to see everything.

His neighbors and those who knew him did not believe their eyes, that this was the same man whom they had known as a blind beggar. "I am that very man," the former blind man told them. How was he healed? This curiosity too was satisfied.

What should have followed? They should have glorified God and the Wonderworker. But here was the trouble: the blind man was healed on the Sabbath. According to the rule of Pharisaic piety, a sick man could be treated on the Sabbath only in mortal danger. But kneading dough, or doing anything similar, was a grave sin (Tancbuma X, 2; Sabbata VII, 2; Lichtfast adh. 1).

The chief trouble was that Jesus, Whom the Sanhedrin and synagogue were watching closely, had healed the blind man. Jn 7:32, 45, 50. To avoid persecution, they hastened to present the former blind man to the Pharisees.

In the twelfth verse we introduce into the text a correction made by the Synodal edition itself, and it is the only correct expression of the thought of the original. When the neighbors and those who had formerly known the blind man began to question him about how he had received sight, he named the Lord by name. Therefore the question could concern only the Lord's whereabouts and could not be formulated with the pronoun "who?"

Thus Chrysostom also reads, "Where is He?" and supposes that if the crowd had known where the Lord was, they would have wanted to bring Him also before the Pharisees.