John 9:13Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The Jews wanted to find Christ in order to lead Him to the priests. But since they did not find Him, they led the blind man to the Pharisees for a stricter interrogation.

The Pharisees and the Jewish elders saw that this miracle would draw many to Christ. Consumed by the zeal of impiety and pierced by the sting of truth, they summoned the man who had formerly been blind.

It was a grievous sight: a trial of piety, and a trial conducted by evil judges. Yet there was comfort in this, that the accused had a great Advocate, and God Himself directed and watched over the contest.

They lead him to the Pharisees in order to subject him to a more detailed and severe interrogation. And the one who is baptized will afterward be subjected to temptations. Perhaps, for Christ who healed him, he will be led before kings and governors (Lk 21:12).

They lead the man to the rulers, not so that they might learn what had happened to him and marvel. Such a disposition could never have been natural to those who nourished excessive hatred for our Savior Christ.

Rather, they wished to present him as clear proof, as they thought, of His lawlessness. They accused Him as a transgressor of the law because He had made clay on the Sabbath.

They reject what was worthy of wonder in the miracle. They seize upon this, as though it were a crime, and present the man on whom the miracle was worked as proof of what was done.

At the same time, they think they are performing a pious deed, one in keeping with Jewish customs. They strive to carry out the ordinance of the law.

What, then, did they say, being unable to see and not having been anointed? "This Man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath."

He Himself kept it better, being without sin. For the spiritual Sabbath is to have no sin.

Then, brethren, God commands the following when speaking about the Sabbath: "You shall do no work" (Lev 23:21).

And hear the Lord: "Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin" (cf. Jn 8:34).

But they, as I said, being unable to see and not having been anointed, kept the Sabbath bodily and violated it spiritually.

"Then some of the Pharisees were saying..." (Jn 9:13-16). Not all, but some, for some had already been anointed.

What did those who were unable to see and not anointed say? "This Man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath."

They led the man who had formerly been blind and set him before the Pharisees, so that they might investigate and accuse both the miracle and the Wonderworker. For the miracle had been done on the Sabbath day.

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.

Those who heard the former blind man's explanation led him to the Pharisees, since the healing had taken place on the Sabbath, when, according to the teaching of the Pharisees, even healing was not permitted.

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.

They brought him: these were the same persons mentioned in Jn 9:8, 9, 10, and 12.

The reason they brought the former blind man to the Pharisees was that the healing had occurred on the Sabbath. According to the Pharisaic interpretation of the Sabbath law, widespread even among the common people, one ought not even heal the sick then.

See Jn 5:9, 16, 18 and parallels.

They wished to ask the Pharisees how this healing on the Sabbath day should be regarded. It was also, as they could understand if they believed the account of the man born blind, an extraordinary and miraculous healing.

Since the Sanhedrin did not hold sessions on the Sabbath, nor did a synagogue court sit then, we must suppose that they did not bring the blind man to a judicial session of either body.

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).

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.