30 April 2024

The man at the pool.

John 5.1-9.

There are two back-to-back stories of Jesus curing people in John, but because they’re in two different chapters, Christians tend not to nice they’re right by each other. On purpose. ’Cause they happen some time apart. The first, where Jesus cures a royal’s son, happens in western Galilee right after they got back from Jerusalem. The second, where Jesus cures a weak man at a pool, takes place back in Jerusalem—either at the next festival where they were expected to go to temple, or several festivals later; maybe even years later. We don’t know.

The situation is this: Jesus is back in Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem there’s a pool. The UBS and NA Greek New Testaments identify it as Βηθζαθά/Vithzathá, although most bibles go with the name given by the Textus Receptus, Βηθεσδά/Vithesdá (KJV “Bethesda”) and other ancient copies of John call it Βηθσαιδά/Vithsedá, Βηδσαιδά/Vidsedá, Βηδσαιδάν/Vidsedán, and Βελζεθά/Velzethá. All of these are attempts to transliterate the Aramaic name בית זיתא/Beit Cheytá, the name of a district in first-century Jerusalem which Josephus calls “the New City.” The district was next to the Roman fortress, Antonia, located on the NNW corner of the temple mount, and the pool was within this district. It was created around the 700s BC as a reservoir for rainwater, and around 200 BC the head priest, Simon bar Onias (also known as Simon 2), had a second pool created just south of it. Scholars figure it was so one pool could hold warm water, and the other cold, so you could bathe in whatever temperature you pleased.

Because it’s by the Sheep Gate, popular legend says the pool was created to wash sheep before their ritual sacrifice. Problem is, the pool is 13 meters deep, which is more appropriate for drowning sheep. So no, it’s likely not for washing animals. (That’s what they used Siloam for.) More likely this pool was mainly used for ritual washing. People had to get ritually clean before they could go to temple, so here’s where they did it.

The Israel Museum’s model of the “Pool of Bethesda” during the first century. Without the water of course. John describes it with five colonnades—the four around the whole complex, and one in the middle over the wall between the pools. [Wikimedia]

After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, the pool was made part of a pagan temple to Asclepius and Serapis, the Roman and Egyptian gods of healing. When the Roman Empire became Christian, it was turned into the Church of the Sheep, which was destroyed in 614 by the Persians. The Crusaders rebuilt it as a smaller church, the Church of the Paralytic, which fell into disuse after the crusaders built the larger Church of St. Anne nearby. That church was renovated by the French in the 1800s, but the rest remained ruins, later to be excavated by German archaeologist Conrad Schick.

Today, the Sheep Gate is known as the Lion’s Gate (Hebrew שער האריות/shahar ha-Arayót), named for the leopard carvings in the stone above it, which get confused with lions. It’s the entrance to the Muslim quarter. The pool’s still there, as part of the St. Anne’s church complex.

But let’s get back to Jesus’s day. At that time, the pool was a healing pool: Sick people gathered round it, hoping for a miracle.

John 5.1-4 KWL
1 After these events there’s a Judean feast,
and Jesus goes up to Jerusalem.
2 A pool is in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate
—in Aramaic it’s called Beit Cheytá—
having five colonnades.
3 Under these colonnades lay a large number
of weak, blind, lame, shriveled people,
{waiting for the water to move.
4 For an angel comes down to the pool at times,
and agitates the water,
so the first who enters after the water is agitated
becomes whole from whatever ailment he has.}

Verses 3B–4 first appeared in fourth-century copies of John, and were of course added to the Textus Receptus. They provide kind of a backstory to why all these people were gathered round the pool: Whenever the water moved, they figured an angel was causing it, and hoped it’d heal them. My only problem with this theory is it sounds a lot like pagan superstition; like something the Greeks would claim. “Look, a lesser god is moving the water! Jump in!” But is that what people believed in the first century? Or what people believed in the fourth century, after a few centuries of Greco-Roman pagans had overseen the pool, and added their own superstitions to the pool’s history?

Now we do know the water was agitated, for that’s what the weak man says. Jn 5.7 But it didn’t have to be roiled up by an angel. It coulda happened whenever the water was replenished. Or when an attendant dumped a bunch of bath salts into it. Or when crowds of people came to town and needed ritual washing. Anything coulda moved the water—and people might figure, “Fresh water” or “Ritual washing” or “Fresh salts” or any of those things might somehow make the water holier, and therefore more likely to cure ’em.

But the angel story has been in bibles, including the Vulgate, for a mighty long time. And you know how people are with favorite traditions: They’re loath to give ’em up, no matter how wrong and misguided they might be.

Still, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this was a myth these sick people believed. They wanted to get well, and healthcare didn’t exist back then. Their “physicians” were actually witch doctors, and had no real medical nor scientific training. Their faith healers might be legit—might actually have the Holy Spirit empowering them—but then again might not, or might be frauds. So what other options did you have? Well, there was a rumor if you got in the pool at just the right time, you’d get cured. So here they were.

If it all sounds hopeless to you—and it kinda does to me too—y’notice the people gathered round the pool had to have some small degree of hope, or they wouldn’t be there! (Or, which is just as likely, their family members wouldn’t carry them there, day after day, in the hopes something might happen.) Hey, what else are you gonna do? Who else are you gonna turn to?

So this is the depressing situation Jesus walked into one day… to bring somebody out of it.

Too weak to get in the pool.

We don’t know what this guy was suffering from. John calls him an ἀσθενῶν/asthenón, “weak person.” Jn 5.7 The KJV translated this as “impotent man.” Since that word means something entirely different nowadays, I’m not gonna use it… but if you want your listeners to giggle, by all means go ahead and keep calling him impotent.

If we had to guess, I think it’d be a fair guess that he’s suffering the consequences of his own actions. We can see that in Jesus’s later comment to him, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” Jn 5.14 KJV It makes it sound like at one point 38 years ago—before Jesus was even born!—he sinned, and this came unto him. But there’s no way of knowing what it was, and how it made him too weak to move.

And in any case, just before Jesus cures the blind man in Jn 9, he makes it clear we ought not presume disease is the product of sin.

John 9.2-3 KWL
2 Jesus’s students question him, saying, “Rabbi,
who sinned—this person or his parents—
so he might become blind?”
3 Jesus replies, “Neither this person nor his parents.
Instead it’s so God’s works might be revealed in him.”

In Jesus’s culture, Pharisees taught if you were sick or unwell, it was your own damn fault. Somebody sinned, and God was punishing you for it, so the onus was on you to get better—and if you didn’t, you were either still hip-deep in sin, or too lazy to improve yourself. You know, like the way Americans feel about the poor.

Okay, let’s say the ailment was the result of the guy sinning. Let’s say when he was a boy, Dad told him, “Don’t dive into the shallow end of the pool!” but he did, disobeying his father—and he broke his neck, and now his legs don’t work, and he’s gotta drag himself to this pool by his arms. Who knows?—maybe that’s exactly what happened here. We don’t know. But don’t you think 38 years of being unable to walk is hugely disproportionate to the sin of disobeying Dad?

That’s the problem with people who preach karma instead of grace. Karma is never proportionate. Neither is grace, but that’s what makes grace amazing.

John 5.5-7 KWL
5 A certain person had been there 38 years,
suffering from a certain weakness.
6 Jesus, seeing this person laying there,
and knowing he’s been there a long time already,
tells him, “Wanna become whole?”
7 The weak man answers Jesus, “Sir,
I have no person to help me when the water is agitated,
to throw me into the pool.
I get into it;
another gets in before me.”

Jesus asks him, “Wilt thou be made whole?” Jn 5.6 KJV and the man’s answer is basically, “Well I try, but someone always beats me to the water.” Which is a fair answer! Yes he would be made whole, if he could, but he can’t, so it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe Jesus could help him out? Throw him in the pool as soon as the water stirs? Jesus looks like a healthy, muscly woodworker; certainly he could get this guy into the pool quick enough.

Yet again, preachers tend to presume the very worst of this weak man. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard preachers bash him. They figure he was a sinner—which is fair; we all sin. But they also figure he was an unrepentant sinner. That his answer to Jesus betrays a bad attitude: “Lookit him. He’s got Jesus our healer offering to cure him, and all he can do is complain he can’t get to the pool fast enough.”

And other criticisms which lack grace, which are ready and willing to find fault with the sick guy. With the needy person. With the sufferer. You do realize compassion is a fruit of the Spirit and karma isn’t?

True, when you contrast the weak person with the royal in the story right before this one, that guy heard Jesus say, “Go thy way; thy son liveth,” believed, and went home. Jn 4.50 This guy doesn’t exhibit any faith in Jesus yet. But to be fair, he didn’t seek out Jesus like the royal did. He may not even have known he should seek Jesus. Or if he did… if he doesn’t have anybody to help him into the pool, he certainly has no one to help him get to Jesus.

Good thing Jesus came to him!

“Lift up your bed and walk.”

Ancient middle eastern “beds” were basically a thick piece of fabric which provided a buffer between the sleeper and the ground, or the cold hard tile of the floor. It wasn’t a bed like a western bed; it’s not a mattress or futon or foam padding. It’s not even a yoga mat. Most of the time it’s little more than carpet.

That’s why the NIV and other bibles translate κράβαττόν/krávatton as “mat.” It’s something you could roll up and take with you; not a cot you had to carry out of there. “Take up thy bed” isn’t as challenging a command as some preachers might claim.

But the weak man had to believe Jesus enough to obey it. And he did.

John 5.8-9 KWL
8 Jesus tells him, “Get up.
Pick up your bed and walk.”
9 At once the person becomes whole.
He picks up his bed and walks.
It’s the sabbath on that day.

Yeah, the weak man’s critics are gonna claim he didn’t have the faith to believe Jesus before our Lord told him to get up; but he certainly had the faith to believe Jesus afterward. He did get up.

One Jesus movie I’ve seen, depicted this man getting cured as he was standing up. Makes it look like the cure didn’t kick in until he had the faith to try to stand up. It’s certainly dramatic, but it’s not what John says. At once (KJV “immediately”) the person was cured; his legs worked again. He could get up just as easily as any other middle-aged or elderly guy—which isn’t all that easy, but we can do it.

And he did it. And picked up his bed. And walked out of the pool area, whole again.

And pretty quickly ran into some Judeans who objected to him carrying his bed on sabbath, but that’s the next part of the story, which I’ll get to another time.