John 9:8Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The extraordinary nature of the event brought them even to unbelief, although so much had been done to remove every distrust. Some said, "Is this not the one who sat and begged?" O how great is the love of God for mankind! To what point did Christ not condescend, when in His great goodness He heals beggars and thereby stops the mouths of the Jews!

He does not deem only the glorious, the famous, and those clothed with authority worthy of equal care, but also the simple. For He came for the salvation of all. What happened with the paralytic happened also with the blind man.

The neighbors, struck by the extraordinary character of the miracle, did not believe. His walk to Siloam with eyes anointed with clay was meant to let many see him, so that afterward they could not deny it by pleading ignorance. Yet even now they do not believe. The Evangelist notes that he begged alms not without purpose, but to show the Lord's ineffable love for mankind. He condescended even to the poor and healed beggars with great care. From this we too should learn not to despise our lesser brethren.

Great miracles with difficulty call forth faith in themselves and are inaccessible to understanding. They are received by the mind without investigation, since attempting to investigate what surpasses mind and speech is a sign of perplexity.

Therefore, I think, even some of those who had formerly seen the blind man, usually staying at the crossroads, did not believe. They were astonished when they unexpectedly met him possessing bright eyes.

This event causes doubt and division among them. Some, paying more attention to the greatness of the deed, say that he is not the same man, but only very similar to the blind man they knew. This is quite natural for those who, having rejected the truth, are as if driven into involuntary falsehood.

Then the neighbors, and those who had seen before that he was blind, said: "Is this not the man who sat and begged?" Some said, "This is he." Others said, "He is like him." His opened eyes had changed his face. But he said, "I am he." This was an expression of gratitude, lest he be thought ungrateful. Then they asked him, "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."

This event amazed the neighbors and acquaintances of the blind man. The new manner of healing troubled them. This man walks through the city seeing, so that all may behold the new and wondrous deed performed by Him Who was born in Bethlehem, by that little Child wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. For this was what made the Jews disbelieve His Godhead.

Therefore, you senseless and hard-hearted men, turn your attention to those who have existed from the beginning. Begin with Adam and examine everyone in order. Will you find that what has now happened ever happened to others, or that any age had an example of such a healing?

Both the blind man's neighbors and all who had seen and known him as blind were amazed when they saw him with eyes and seeing. They asked one another: is this the blind man who sat and asked for alms? Some said that it was he. Others said that it was another man like him. But he bore witness concerning himself and cried out: I am the man who was formerly blind.

Notice that the divine Evangelist showed this through the words, "who sat and begged." That is, this blind man was so poor and destitute that he sat by the road asking alms. He did this to prove the ineffable love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who looks not upon the richest men, but rather upon such people with compassion and fatherly care.

His neighbors, and those who had known him before as blind, were perplexed when they saw him sighted. Some said that this was the very man who sat near the temple and begged alms. Others, while not denying this outright, found in him a strong likeness to the former blind man. The healed man himself resolved this misunderstanding.

A great miracle had again taken place, and the city was thrown into confusion by it. Filled with extraordinary rapture at the miraculous gift granted to him, the greatest gift of sight, the former blind man certainly did not keep silent about the miracle worked upon him.

He himself was very well known in Jerusalem as a blind beggar familiar to everyone. Now his appearance as a seeing man seemed, especially to those who knew him closely, rather like an apparition or a deception of the senses. They argued among themselves whether this was the same blind beggar, or only someone like him. Therefore he had to insistently assure them that it was he himself.

In these verses, the impression produced upon those who knew the man born blind by the miracle of his healing is vividly depicted. The liveliness and vividness of the whole following account seem to allow the supposition that the beloved disciple of the Lord heard all this from the healed man himself. He later became a believer and perhaps a follower of Christ (Jn 9:35-38).

The neighbors, by place of residence, are distinguished here from those who had seen, or were accustomed to see, the blind man sitting and begging in a known place. Both groups are reliable witnesses that the man truly had been blind. The neighbors, of course, also knew from his parents that he was blind from birth.

"Who sat" probably means that he sat for the most part in one definite place, as the poor who ask alms have been and still are accustomed to do.

Verses 8-14. One can imagine the rapture of the blind man, who had not seen light from the day of his birth and by the word of Jesus began to see everything.

His neighbors and those who knew him did not believe their eyes, that this was the same man whom they had known as a blind beggar. "I am that very man," the former blind man told them. How was he healed? This curiosity too was satisfied.

What should have followed? They should have glorified God and the Wonderworker. But here was the trouble: the blind man was healed on the Sabbath. According to the rule of Pharisaic piety, a sick man could be treated on the Sabbath only in mortal danger. But kneading dough, or doing anything similar, was a grave sin (Tancbuma X, 2; Sabbata VII, 2; Lichtfast adh. 1).

The chief trouble was that Jesus, Whom the Sanhedrin and synagogue were watching closely, had healed the blind man. 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 a correction made by the Synodal edition itself, and it is the only correct expression of the thought of the original. When the neighbors and those who had formerly known the blind man began to question him about how he had received sight, he named the Lord by name. Therefore the question could concern only the Lord's whereabouts and could not be formulated with the pronoun "who?"

Thus Chrysostom also reads, "Where is He?" and supposes that if the crowd had known where the Lord was, they would have wanted to bring Him also before the Pharisees.