And they said to him: Where is he? He saith: I know not.
ειπον ουν αυτω που εστιν εκεινος λεγει ουκ οιδα
14 Church Fathers comment on this verse
They asked, "Where is He?" already plotting murder against Him. But notice how far Christ is from the desire for vain glory. He did not remain with those healed, because He did not wish to gain glory, stir the people, or display Himself. Notice also how the blind man answers everything in agreement with the truth.
Since the Lord, when granting healing and working a miracle, would usually withdraw because of His humility, the blind man, when asked where Jesus was, says, "I do not know," so as to be perfectly faithful to the truth.
They do not seek Jesus with a good intention. Nor do they try to learn where He was staying, or with whom, so that, finding Him, they might ask for something profitable to themselves.
They are more blind in the eyes of the mind than the man had formerly been in his bodily eyes. They are inflamed with the most unjust anger and rush upon Him like untamed beasts.
They imagine that our Savior violated the commandment which orders that absolutely nothing be done on the Sabbath.
They rage exceedingly because He dared to take clay, rub the earth with His fingers, and, beyond this, command the man to wash it off on the Sabbath.
For this reason, without any shame, they belch forth from rage and madness the question, "Where is He?"
They load with dishonor and reproach the One to Whom rich glory properly belongs and is fitting.
If they had been good and capable men, they should have crowned the divine power with fitting praises. Instead, because of their excessive wickedness, they thrust away just thoughts and deeds.
They give themselves over to misplaced zeal. They unjustly decide that the law, supposedly violated in some way, must be defended.
They seek Jesus as one who had done work on the Sabbath and, by healing a man, had broken so weighty a commandment.
It seems they thought that God is unmerciful and wrathful on the Sabbath. They imagined He is greatly indignant if He sees a man healed who was created according to His image and likeness.
Yet the healing was done by Him for Whom even the Sabbath exists, "for the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath" (Mt 12:8), according to the Savior's word.
In these words his spirit was like one already anointed, but not yet seeing. Let us understand, brethren, that he had in his soul, as it were, an anointing. He preaches, yet he does not know Whom he preaches.
Thus the Lord's spittle became like a key for the closed eyes. He healed the eyes and pupils by the waters, and in the waters He figuratively applied His sanctification to our infirmity. The Lord did this so that, when they spat in His face, the eyes of the blind, opened by His spittle, would accuse them.
"Then they said to him, 'Where is He?'" The Jews were seeking Jesus Christ, since He had withdrawn from their rage. As soon as they heard about this, they began to inquire where He was. "He said, 'I do not know.'" After anointing the blind man with clay and commanding him to go to the pool, Jesus Christ immediately departed, avoiding praise for the miracle.
A contemptuous question. They do not ask, "Where is that wonder-working man?" or, "Where is He who opened your eyes?" or even, "Where is Jesus?" They ask only, "Where is that one?" From this it is clear that they were not asking with good intent, but with malice. They wished to learn who the Physician was and judge Him as a transgressor of the Sabbath. This is confirmed by the very fact that they led the blind man to the Pharisees.
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.
Having explained nothing by their argument, they turned to the man born blind and asked what he thought about Jesus. He answered that he regarded Him as a prophet.
"Ah," the Pharisees objected, "this is a fraud! This blind man was never blind at all. Call his parents!"
The parents appeared. Yet the parents also, first, acknowledged him as their son, and second, confirmed that he had been born blind.
As to how he had received sight, they refused to testify. This was not because they did not know, but because of fear of the Jews.
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.
The healed man himself, however, never ceased firmly and courageously to bear witness to the truth, no matter how the Pharisees tried to draw him to their side in judging Jesus.
At last, he did not even fear to expose the malicious blindness of the Pharisees, who said that they did not know "where He is from."
"Why, this is marvelous," the firm confessor of Christ remarked, "that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes, which is undoubtedly the work of God."
The judges could not endure such a bold and sharp rebuke, and they cast the former blind man out of the assembly.
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.
"Where is He?" "I do not know." It is clear that from the time of the healing the former blind man had not seen the Lord. Perhaps the Lord had left the place of healing even before the man who received sight returned from the pool of Siloam.
Verses 8-14. One can imagine the rapture of the blind man who had not seen light from the day of his birth, and who, by the word of Jesus, began to see everything.
His neighbors and those who knew him could not believe their eyes that this was the same man whom they had known as a blind beggar. "I am the man," the former blind man told them.
How was he healed? This curiosity too was satisfied.
What then? They should have glorified God and the Wonderworker. But here was the difficulty: the blind man had been healed on the Sabbath.
According to the rule of Pharisaic piety, one could treat a sick person on the Sabbath only in mortal danger. To knead dough, or do anything similar, was a grave sin (Tancbuma X, 2; Sabbata VII, 2; Lichtfast adh. 1).
The main difficulty was that the blind man had been healed by Jesus, upon Whom the Sanhedrin and the synagogue were keeping close watch. 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.
First, the blind man is brought to the Pharisees and placed before the assembly (v. 14), which could not have taken place in the ordinary order of things on the Sabbath.
Second, from verses 7 and 12 we see that the man who received sight either did not return to the Lord, or, more probably, did not find Him when he came to thank Him.
For when asked, "Where is He?" the man who received sight answered, "I do not know." From this one must conclude that on the Sabbath, the day he received sight, he did not see the Lord.
Otherwise, of course, he would have recognized Him in the temple when the Lord Himself found him (v. 35).
The whole narrative is plainly recorded by an eyewitness of the events. It tells how the man born blind sat and begged, how his neighbors questioned him, how they brought him to the Pharisees, and how he answered before the assembly.
This eyewitness received some of these details from the healed man's own lips, and saw and heard the rest personally. The eyewitness was certainly the Evangelist John.
In all probability, John himself spoke with the man who had received sight after the Lord found him in the temple, and after he worshiped the Lord and confessed Him to be the Christ (v. 38).
It must be added that the neighbors most likely brought the man who received sight not to the supreme court, the Sanhedrin, but to the synagogue.
Apart from its significance as a religious assembly, the synagogue also had a certain judicial authority over violations of religious rites and ordinances.
Later this same synagogue decrees the expulsion of the man who received sight, that is, his excommunication. Compare v. 34 of this chapter with v. 22, and also Jn 12:42.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 9 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS