John 9:18Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Now again, not knowing what to say, they turn to the time. They say that He violates the Sabbath and that He is a sinner.

But with all strictness He asked you, His envious accusers, who are always ready to censure His works: “Which of you convicteth Me of sin?” Jn 8:46. No one answered or said, “Thou blasphemest, calling Thyself sinless.”

If they had been able to say anything, they would certainly not have kept silent. Indeed, they threw stones at Him and said that He was not from God when they heard that He was before Abraham.

They themselves were murderers, yet they boasted that they were from God. About Him who performed such signs, when He healed on the Sabbath, they said that He was not from God because He did not keep the Sabbath.

If these men had had even a shadow of accusation against Him, they would not have failed to use it. If they now call Him a sinner because He seemed to violate the Sabbath, this accusation too proved vain.

Their own companions recognized it as groundless and insignificant. Thus, meeting obstacles everywhere, they turn to a new device, still more shameless and insolent.

What device was this? The Evangelist says: “They did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight.” How, then, did they accuse Him of not keeping the Sabbath? Is it not obvious that they believed?

And how do you not believe the numerous people, the neighbors who had seen him? But, as I have said, falsehood always exposes itself by what it thinks will harm the truth, and it reveals the truth more clearly.

This happened now as well. So that no one might say that the neighbors and those who had seen him said nothing definite, but spoke of a similar person, they bring the parents into the midst. By this they unwillingly confirm the reality of the event, because parents know their son better than all.

Unable to frighten the blind man, and seeing that he preached about the Benefactor with full boldness, they hoped to harm the miracle through the parents. Notice their malicious question.

What do they say? Having placed them in the midst in order to throw them into confusion, they ask with great heat and anger: “Is this your son?” They did not say, “who was formerly blind,” but how?

The unyieldingness of malice casts doubt on truth. They summon the parents of the blind man. Malice gathers witnesses against itself.

Moreover, the law clearly proclaims that every word is true on the testimony of two or three witnesses (Deut 19:15).

Yet they deprive of force the testimony not of two or three only, but, as it appears, of a much greater number of people.

They turn to others, to the parents of the healed man, thereby doing something lawless and ignorant.

But the law is nothing to them when they are trying to do something for their own pleasure.

When the miracle, attested by the neighbors and by the healed man himself, forced them to keep silence even against their will, they conceived the hope of making those questioned, the blind man's parents, disregard the truth and speak according to their desire.

Then the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received sight until they summoned the parents of this man who had received sight (Jn 9:18). That is, they summoned the parents of the one who had been blind and had begun to see. And they asked them, “Is this your son, of whom you say that he was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered them: “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees, we do not know. Or who opened his eyes, we do not know. He is of age. Ask him. Let him speak for himself” (Jn 9:19-21).

“He is, of course, our son. Yet we truly would have had to answer for him as for an infant, if he could not answer for himself. In due time he began to speak, and now he has begun to see. We know that he was blind from birth. We know that in due time he began to speak, and behold, now he has begun to see. Ask him himself, so that you may know. Why are you trying to trap us?” Thus his parents answered because they feared the Jews. For the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Him as Christ should be put out of the synagogue (Jn 9:22).

Yet to be outside the synagogue was no longer an evil. They cast out, but Christ received. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age. Ask him” (Jn 9:23).

The expression until, up to, as long as, does not always signify in Holy Scripture a definite time that has an end. It is also used for what is boundless and unending. This is shown by what is said of the raven: “It went forth and did not return until the waters were dried up from the earth” (Gen 8:7). Likewise: “Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool” (Ps 109:1). Again: “And he did not know her until she had borne her firstborn Son” (Mt 1:25). Likewise: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).

For the raven never returned to the ark. Likewise the Son of God always sits at the right hand of glory and majesty on high. The Most Holy Theotokos always and eternally remains Virgin. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not only with the Apostles and the righteous until the end of the world. He will also be with them afterward, unto endless ages of ages.

The Pharisees summoned the blind man's parents because they thought that, frightened by their authority, they would keep silent about the miracle.

The healed man himself, however, did not cease for a moment firmly and courageously to bear witness to the truth. The Pharisees tried to incline him to their side in their judgment about Jesus. Yet in the end he was not afraid to expose the malicious blindness of the Pharisees, who said that they did not know “where He is from.”

“Why, this is a marvel,” the firm confessor of Christ observed, “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 reproof. They drove the man who had been blind out of the assembly.

They did not believe that he had been blind, and so forth. Hearing the healed blind man's bold confession concerning Christ, that He is a prophet, the Pharisees hostile to the Lord expressed disbelief in the very blindness of the healed confessor. They acted as though they gave more credit to those who had previously said that this was not the blind man who used to sit and beg, but another man who merely resembled him in appearance (Jn 9:8). Thus they craftily took up the matter from another side. They summoned the parents of the healed man for questioning.

They did not believe, until they summoned them. Even afterward they did not believe, as is clear from what follows. This expression is explained by the meaning of the particle until, which does not signify the cessation of an action after the time marked by it. Compare the note on verses 4-5 and Mt 1:25.

The Sanhedrin, it seems, wished to be no less skeptical than the academic Renan. It subjected the event to the most rigorous logical judgment. The parents answered the first two questions affirmatively. This meant much for the triumph of truth. The parents say that the healed man truly had been blind from birth. Thus the enemies of Jesus, trying to darken the truth, only assisted its glory.

The parents left the last two questions of the Sanhedrin for their son to answer. Why? “They feared the Jews. For the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Him as Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue.” There were three kinds of excommunication.

By one, piddi, the disgraced person was forbidden to have dealings with anyone, whether his own people or strangers, for thirty days. He could not approach anyone nearer than four cubits. The second degree of excommunication, Cherem, was solemn expulsion from the synagogue. It was accompanied by an order not to speak a word to anyone, nor to eat or drink with others.

The third degree, Chammata, completely excluded the disgraced person from ecclesiastical and civil society (Buxtorf, Lexic. Talm., cols. 827, 1304, 2463; Udringae Synod. 739). In any case, there was something to fear.

They hoped the parents would renounce their son, or at least express doubt whether this was truly their son. Then it would be easy to spread among the people the rumor that the famous miracle was only a deliberate fraud. It would be said to rest on the resemblance between the man born blind and a sighted man brought before the synagogue.

The intentional intimidation of the parents appears clearly in the Jews' question: how then does your son, of whom you say that he was born blind, now see? Is the man standing here before you your son?