John 9:11Meaning & 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.

He proclaims his Benefactor and says, "The Man called Jesus." He calls the Lord a man because until now he knew nothing more about Him, and what he has now learned he confesses.

How, then, does he know that this is Jesus? From His conversation with the disciples. The disciples asked the Lord about him. He answered them at some length: "I must work the works of Him Who sent Me; I am the light of the world."

No one else taught in this way except Jesus alone, and He often used such sayings. From this the blind man learned that it was Jesus. He knew by touch that He had made clay and anointed his eyes, and he said this. He was silent about the spitting because he did not know about it. Since he did not know, he did not add it. Clearly this man was righteous.

He is shown to be still ignorant that the Savior is God by nature. Otherwise he would not have spoken of Him in so lowly a manner. Evidently he thinks and reasons about Him as about one of the saints. He seems to have drawn this view from the obscure report spread through all Jerusalem, and from the rumor about Him everywhere.

People with bodily affliction and extreme need usually have no leisure to acquire exact information about others, since they devote all their care to their hopeless poverty. Therefore he calls Him a very simple man and reports the manner of the healing.

Behold, he became a herald of grace. Behold, he proclaims good tidings and bears witness, now that he sees. He had been considered blind, and the heart of the impious was crushed, because they did not have in the heart what he already had on his face. Behold, he became a herald of grace. Behold, he bears the good news. Having received sight, he became a confessor. That blind man acknowledged Him, and the heart of the impious was wounded, because they did not have in the heart what he already had on his face.

What are you saying? Can a man do this? The blind man did not yet know that Jesus Christ is God. He did not say, "He spat on the ground," because he had not yet seen then. But he said, "He made clay and anointed my eyes," because he felt this and knew it by touch. But how did the blind man know that He was called Jesus? No doubt he asked those who were present. Perhaps he had also heard before of His miracles. For this reason, as was said, he immediately obeyed.

With great boldness, brevity, and clarity he showed both the Physician and the means by which He healed him.

Rumors began at once. Among those who knew this man born blind, some recognized him as their former acquaintance, while others denied it.

They began asking him how he had received sight. He told them everything as it had happened.

They asked, "Where is your healer?" He answered, "I do not know!"

The matter was important. They brought him to the Pharisees. New interrogations began. The man born blind gave the same answer.

The Pharisees first turned their attention to the violation of the Sabbath. From this came the immediate conclusion about the Man Who supposedly had healed the blind man: this Man is not from God.

At the same time, others began to object: how could a sinful man work a miracle? A dispute arose.

The great miracle of healing the man blind from birth caused all the greater 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 reported to the Pharisees, they began a 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 first the former blind man and then his parents about what had happened.

But the parents of the healed man, fearing excommunication from the synagogue, refused, under the pretense of ignorance, to give testimony about how their son had received sight.

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 come to see, he told them everything as it had happened, declaring that Jesus had healed him, their amazement knew no bounds.

In any case, this was a fact that could not be left without proper investigation. Struck by the miracle, the Jews considered it their duty to report everything to the scribes and Pharisees.

Only shortly before, they had taken up stones against Jesus, and now He had performed an astonishing miracle. At last the matter had to be investigated, and they brought the man who had been blind to them.

Then there followed a scene that offers a striking example of how far spiritual blindness can go, when people maliciously shut their eyes so as not to see what they do not wish to see.

"The Man called Jesus." The blind man may have heard the Lord's name at the healing itself. Yet he expresses an incorrect understanding of Him by calling Him only a man. Later he calls Him a prophet (Jn 9:17), then a messenger of God (Jn 9:33). Only by the Lord Himself is he brought to faith in Him as the Son of God, the Messiah.

This shows that there were beginnings of faith in the heart of the man born blind, but this faith did not mature at once. Even after the healing, he still needed a special word from the Lord, so that this faith might be expressed more fully and clearly.

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 the correction made by the Synodal edition itself. It alone rightly expresses the thought of the original.

When the neighbors and those who formerly knew the blind man began asking him how he had received his sight, he named the Lord. Therefore the question could concern only the Lord's whereabouts, and could not be framed with the pronoun "who?"

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

In all likelihood, the questioning and the subsequent events occurred on the day after the healing. This is clear from two circumstances.