John 9:14Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

For this reason the Evangelist notes that it was the Sabbath, in order to show their evil design and the reason they were seeking the Savior. They thought they had found a way to slander the miracle through an alleged violation of the law.

The Evangelist notes that "it was the Sabbath" in order to show their malice, how they seized every occasion against Christ. They accuse Him of breaking the Sabbath and thereby attempt to obscure the miracle. Therefore they do not ask him, "How did you receive sight?" but, "How did He open your eyes?" In everything they slander the Lord as One who acted on the Sabbath.

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."

"He made clay on this Sabbath," they say (cf. Jn 9:14, 16). They passed over in silence the One Who healed, and began to reproach what He had done.

So also with the man who had been sick for thirty-eight years. They said, "Who commanded you to carry your bed?" (cf. Jn 5:10), and not, "Who healed you?"

So now they say, "He made clay on this Sabbath" (cf. Jn 9:14, 16).

Yet even without clay, moved by hatred, did they not reject Him when He healed the man with dropsy by a single word (Lk 14:2-4)?

What did He do to that sick man when He healed him? By one word alone he was cleansed and made whole.

Thus, in their opinion, even the one who speaks words violates the Sabbath. Is that what you say?

But if so, who violated the Sabbath more: our Savior by His healing, or they, who spoke against their Benefactor out of hatred?

The Evangelist also indicated the very day on which Jesus made the clay. By this he explains that the Jews raged and were indignant at Him because on the Sabbath He made clay, anointed the blind man's eyes, and sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam.

Why, then, did the God-man heal on the Sabbath not only this man blind from birth, but also the man with the withered hand (Mt 12:13)?

Why did He heal the woman who could not straighten herself (Lk 13:13), the man with dropsy in the Pharisee's house (Lk 14:4), and the paralytic at the Sheep Pool (Jn 5:9)?

He did so in order to correct the erroneous opinions of the Jews about the Sabbath, and to show that He is Lord and Master both of the law and of the Sabbath.

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).

When the crowd of neighbors noisily led the blind man who had received sight to the synagogue, it hardly intended to formulate an accusation that either he or his healer had violated the Sabbath.

As usual, this crowd had no opinion of its own. In extraordinary cases it went to its leaders, so that they might suggest how a given event should be viewed.

In the present case, the Evangelist himself explains, for the understanding of the following narrative, that it was the Sabbath when the Lord gave sight to the blind man.

But when the blind man was set before the Pharisees, they immediately realized that this event might provide a pretext for accusing the Lord Jesus of violating the Sabbath.