John 9:23Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

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).

But at the same time others began to object: how could a sinful man perform a miracle? A dispute arose. Having explained nothing by disputing, they turned to the man born blind and asked what he thought about Jesus. He answered that he recognized Him as a prophet.

“Oh,” the Pharisees objected, “this is collusion. This blind man was never blind. Call the parents.” The parents appeared. But 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, not because they did not know it, but from fear of the Jews.

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.

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.

The agreement of which the Evangelist speaks undoubtedly arose between the two mutually hostile parties of the scribes, that is, the learned men of the Jewish world, namely between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. We have already spoken of them more than once. Here we add only that, despite the sharp antagonism of opinion between these two parties in religious and philosophical questions, both parties supported ritual observance among the people with all their strength, though for different reasons.

They used it as a means of ruling the people despotically. They also apparently always acted in concert when it was necessary to establish and uphold the principle of the authority of the learned over “the accursed people,” as they called them. Compare Jn 7:49.

The age of which the parents of the man born blind speak was probably determined by those years of life at whose arrival marriage was permitted and even required. According to the Talmud, this was twenty years. In tractate Kiddushin, fol. 29, col. 2, it is said: “Beginning from twenty years, a man who remains unmarried remains in an unlawful state.”

Elsewhere it says: “A Jew who has no wife is not a man, for it is said in Gen 5:2: God created male and female... and called their name man.” These extracts are taken from Hershon's Genesis with a Talmudical Comment, London, 1883, pp. 123-124, nos. 27 and 39.

Nowhere in the Bible have we found any restriction on the right of young persons under thirty years of age to testify before a court. This latter opinion seems to be based on Numbers chapter 4, where it is established that Levites from thirty to fifty years old were taken for the service of the Lord in the Tabernacle. But we note that younger and older men were left at home for their household work.

Therefore we cannot say that the man born blind was at least thirty years old when he was brought before the assembly. Thus Bishop Michael, p. 335. Chrysostom explains that, when the parents speak of their son's age, they mean only to say: he is not a child, not a minor, and can testify about himself. Homily 58 on John, part 2, p. 138. Theophylact says the same on this passage of John.