23-15. The Healing of the Impotent Man at Bethesda

15. The Healing of the Impotent Man at Bethesda

John 5:1-16 The ablest commentator of the Romish communion begins his observations on this miracle with the expression of his hearty wish that St. John had added one word, and told us at what “feast of the Jews” it was wrought.^[1] Certainly a vast amount of learned discussion would so have been spared; for this question has been much debated, and with an interest beyond that which intrinsically belongs to it; for it affects the whole chronology of St. John’s Gospel, and therefore of the ministry of our Lord; seeing that, if we cannot determine the duration of that from the helps which this Gospel supplies, we shall seek in vain to do it from the others. If this “feast of the Jews” was certainly a passover, then St. John will make mention of four passovers, three besides this present, namely, 2:13; 6:4; and the last; and we shall arrive at the three years and a half, the half of a “week of years,” for the length of Christ’s ministry, which many, with appearance of reason, have thought they found designated beforehand for it in the prophecies of Daniel (ix. 27).^[2]. But if this be a feast of Pentecost, or, as in later times has found acceptance with many, of Purim, then the half week of years which seems by prophecy to have been measured out for the duration of Messiah’s ministry, however likely in itself, will derive no confirmation from dates supplied by St. John; nor will it be possible to make out from him, with any certainty, a period of more than between two and three years from our Lord’s baptism to the time when, by a better sacrifice, He caused “the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.” The oldest opinion which we have on this much-contested point is that of Irenaeus. Replying to the Gnostics, who pressed the words of Isaiah, “the acceptable year of the Lord,” as meaning literally that our Lord’s ministry lasted but a single year, he enumerates the several passovers which He kept, and expressly includes this.^[3] Origen, however, and the Alexandrian doctors, who drew from Isaiah’s words the same conclusions which the Gnostics had drawn, did not, as consistently they could not, agree with Irenaeus; nor did the Greek Church generally; Chrysostom, Cyril, Theophylact, understanding the feast here to be Pentecost. At a later period, however, Theodoret, wishing to confirm his interpretation of the half week in Daniel, refers to St. John in proof that the Lord’s ministry lasted for three years and a half,^[4] and thus implies that for him this feast was a passover. Luther, Calvin, and the Reformers generally were of this mind; and were the question only between it and Pentecost, the point, would have been settled long ago, as now on all sides the latter is given up. But in modern times another scheme has been started,—Kepler was its first author,—which has many suffrages in its favour; to wit, that we have here a feast of Purim; that, namely, which fell just before the second passover in our Lord’s ministry,^[5] for second, and not third, would in that case be the passover which St. John presently names (John 6:4). I am not disposed to accept this newer disposition of the times and seasons of our Lord’s life. No doubt there is something perplexing in this passover being so soon followed by another; though, if we accept the supplementary character of St. John’s Gospel, and that it mainly records our Lord’s ministry in Judaea and Jerusalem, on which the other Evangelists had dwelt so little, this perplexity will disappear; above all, when the immediate consequences of this miracle were an impossibility to tarry there (5:1, 6; 6:1). Our Translation speaks, not of “the feast” but “a feast of the Jews” and it is certainly doubtful whether the article should stand in the Greek text or no; though Tischendorf has restored it in his last edition, and it is found in that oldest of all MSS., the Codex Sinaiticus. If it should have a place here, and “the feast” be the proper rendering, this would be nearly decisive; for all other feasts so fall into the background for a Jew, as compared with the passover, that “the feast” with no further addition or qualification, could hardly mean any other feast but this (John 4:45; Mat 27:15). Still the uncertainty of the reading will not allow too great a weight to be placed on this argument. That, however, which mainly prevails with me is this—the Evangelist clearly connects, though not in as many words, yet by pregnant juxtaposition, the Lord’s going to Jerusalem with the keeping of this feast; for this He went up (cf. 2:13). But there was nothing in the feast of Purim to draw Him thither. That was no religious feast at all; but a popular; of human, not of divine, institution. No temple service pertained to it; but men kept it at their own houses. And though naturally it would have been celebrated at Jerusalem with more pomp and circumstance than anywhere else, yet there was nothing in its feasting and its rioting, its intemperance and excess, which would have made our Lord particularly desirous to sanction it with his presence. As far as Mordecai and Esther and the deliverance wrought in their days stand below Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, and the glorious redemption from Egypt, so in true worth, in dignity, in religious significance, stood the feast of Purim below the feast of the passover; however a carnal generation may have been inclined to exaggerate the importance of that, in the past events and actual celebration of which there was so much to flatter the carnal mind. There is an extreme improbability in the hypothesis that it was this which attracted our Lord to Jerusalem; and we shall do well, I think, to stand here upon the ancient ways, and to take this feast which our Lord adorned with his presence and signalized with this great miracle, as “the feast,” that feast which is the mother of all the rest, the passover.

“Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep-market a pool,^[6] which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda,^[7] having five porches.” For many centuries the large excavation near the gate now called St. Stephen’s gate, has been pointed out as the ancient Bethesda.^[8] It is true that its immense depth, seventy-five feet, had perplexed many; yet the “incurious ease” which has misnamed so much in the Holy Land and in Jerusalem, had remained without being seriously challenged, until Robinson, among the many traditions which he has disturbed, brought this also into question, affirming that “there is not the slightest evidence which can identify it with the Bethesda of the New Testament.”^[9] Nor does the tradition which identifies them ascend higher, as he can discover, than the thirteenth century. He sees in that excavation the remains of the ancient fosse, which protected on the north side the citadel Antonia; and the true Bethesda he thinks he finds, though on this he speaks with hesitation, in what now goes under the name of the Fountain of the Virgin, being the upper fountain of Siloam.^[10]

“In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered.” Our Version is slightly defective here. It leaves an impression that “impotent folk” is the genus, presently subdivided into the three species, “blind, halt, withered;” whereas, instead of three being thus subordinated to one, all four are coordinate with one another. “We should read rather, “In these lay a great multitude of sick, blind, halt, withered;” the enumeration by four, when meant to be exhaustive, being a very favourite one in Scripture (Eze 14:21; Rev 6:8; Mat 15:31). The words which complete this verse, “waiting for the moving of the water” lie under strong suspicion, as the verse following has undoubtedly no right to a place in the text. That fourth verse the most important Greek and Latin copies are alike without, and most of the early Versions. In other MSS. which retain this verse, the obelus which hints suspicion, or the asterisk which marks rejection, is attached to it; while those in which it appears unquestioned belong mostly, as Griesbach shows, to a later recension of the text. And this fourth verse spreads the suspicion of its own spuriousness over the last clause of the verse preceding, which, though it has not so great a body of evidence against it, has yet, in a less degree, the same notes of suspicion about it. Doubtless whatever here is addition, whether only the fourth verse, or the last clause also of the third, found very early its way into the text; we have it as early as Tertullian,—-the first witness for its presence.^[11] The baptismal Angel, a favourite thought with him, was here foreshowed and typified; as somewhat later, Ambrose^[12] saw a prophecy of the descent of the Holy Ghost, consecrating the waters of baptism to the mystical washing away of sin; and Chrysostom makes frequent use of the verse in this sense.^[13] At first probably a marginal note, expressing the popular notion of the Jewish Christians concerning the origin of the healing power which from time to time these waters possessed, by degrees it assumed the shape in which now we have it: for there are marks of growth about it, betraying themselves in a great variety of readings,—some copies omitting one part, and some another of the verse,—all which is generally the sign of a later addition: thus, little by little, it procured admission into the text, probably at Alexandria first, the birth-place of other similar additions. For the statement itself, there is nothing in it which need perplex or offend, or which might not have found place in St. John. It rests upon that religious view of the world, which in all nature sees something beyond and behind nature, which does not believe that it has discovered causes, when, in fact, it has only traced the sequence of phenomena, and which everywhere recognizes a going forth of the immediate power of God, invisible agencies of his, whether personal or otherwise, accomplishing his will.^[14] That Angels should be the ministers of his will would be only according to the analogy of other Scripture; while in “the Angel of the waters” (Rev 16:5) we have a remarkable point of contact with the statement of this verse. From among this suffering expectant multitude Christ singles out one on whom He will display his power;—one only, for He came not now to be the healer of men’s bodies, save only as He could annex to this healing the truer healing of their souls and spirits. “And a certain man was there which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.”^[15] Some understand this poor cripple—a paralytic probably (cf. ver. 8 with Mark 2:4; Acts 9:33-34), to have actually waited at the edge of that pool for these “thirty and eight years.” Others take them for the years of his life. But neither interpretation is correct; these “thirty and eight years” express the duration not of his life, but of his infirmity; yet without implying that he had expected health from that pool during all that time; though the next verse informs us that he had there waited for it long. “When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, He saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?” A superfluous question, it might seem; for who would not be made whole, if he might? and his very presence at the place of healing attested his desire. But the question has its purpose. This impotent man probably had waited so long, and so long waited in vain, that hope was dead or wellnigh dead within him, and the question is asked to awaken in him anew a yearning after the benefit, which the Saviour, pitying his hopeless case, was about to impart. His heart may have been as “withered” as his limbs through his long sufferings and the long neglects of his fellow-men; it was something to learn that this stranger pitied him, was interested in his case, would help him if He could. So learning to believe in his love, he was being prepared to believe also in his might. Our Lord assisted him now to the faith, which presently He was about to demand of him. The answer, “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool,” contains no direct reply, but an explanation why he had continued so long in his infirmity. The virtues of the water disappeared so fast, they were so pre-occupied, whether from the narrowness of the spot, or from some cause which we know not, by the first comer, that he, himself helpless, and with no man to aid, could never be this first, always therefore missed the blessing: “while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.” But the long and weary years of baffled expectation are now to find an end: “Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” This taking up the bed shall serve as a testimony to all of the completeness of the cure (cf. Mat 9:6; Acts 9:34). The man believed that power accompanied that word; made proof, and found that it was so: “immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked. And on the same day was the Sabbath”—a significant addition, explaining all which follows.

“The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.” By “the Jews” we understand here, as always in St. John, not the multitude, but the Sanhedrists, the spiritual heads of the nation (John 1:19; John 7:1; John 9:22; John 18:12; John 18:14). These find fault, with the man, for had not Moses said, “In it thou shalt not do any work” (Exo 20:10), and Jeremiah more pointedly still, “Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath days” (xvii. 21); so that they seemed to have words of Scripture to justify their interference, and the offence which they took. But the man’s bearing of his bed was not a work by itself; it was merely the corollary, or indeed the concluding act,, of his healing, that by which he should make proof himself, and give testimony to others, of its reality. It was lawful to heal on the Sabbath day; it was lawful then to do whatever was immediately involved in, and directly followed on, the healing. And here lay ultimately the true controversy between Christ and his adversaries, namely, whether it was more lawful to do good on that day, or to leave it undone (Luk 6:9). Starting from the unlawfulness of leaving good undone, He asserted that He was its true keeper, keeping it as God kept it, with the highest beneficent activity, which in his Father’s case, as in his own, was identical with deepest rest,—and not, as they accused Him of being, its breaker. It was because He had Himself” done those things” (see ver. 16), that the Jews persecuted Him, and not for bidding the man to bear his bed, which was a mere accident involved in his own preceding act.^[16] This, however, first attracted their notice. Already the pharisaical Jews, starting from passages such as Exo 23:12; Exo 31:13-17; Exo 35:2-3; Num 15:32-36; Nehem. 13:15-22; had laid down such a multitude of prohibitions, and drawn so infinite a number of hair-splitting distinctions (as we shall have occasion to see, Luk 13:15-16), that a plain and unlearned man could hardly know what was forbidden, and what was permitted. This poor man did not concern himself with these subtle casuistries. He only knew that One with power to make him whole, One who had shown compassion to him, bade him do what he was doing, and he is satisfied with this authority: “He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk”^[17]—surely the very model of an answer, when the world finds fault and is scandalized with what the Christian is doing, contrary to its traditions, and to the rules which it has laid down!

After this greater offender they inquire now, as being the juster object of censure and of punishment: “Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?” The malignity of the questioners reveals itself in the very shape which their question “assumes. They do not take up the poor man’s words on their more favourable side, which would also have been the more natural; nor ask, “What man is he that made thee whole?” But, probably, themselves knowing perfectly well, or at least guessing, who his Healer was, they insinuate by the form of their question that He could not be from God, who gave a command which they, the interpreters, of God’s law, esteemed so great an outrage and transgression against it.^[18] So will they weaken and undermine any influence which Christ may have obtained over this simple man—an influence already manifest in his finding the Lord’s authority sufficient to justify him in the transgression of their commandment. But the man could not point out his benefactor; “he that was healed wist not who it was; for Jesus had conveyed Him? self away, a multitude being in that place”—not, as Grotius will have it, to avoid ostentation and the applauses of the people; but this mention of the multitude shall explain the facility with which He withdrew: He mingled with and passed through the crowd, and so was lost from sight in an instant. Were. it not that the common people usually were on his side on occasions like the present, one might imagine that a menacing crowd under the influence of these chiefs of the Jews had gathered together, while this conversation was going forward betwixt them and the healed cripple, from whose violence the Lord, for his hour was not yet come, withdrew Himself awhile.

“Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple.” We may accept it as a token of good that Jesus found him there rather than in any other place. It lies near to suppose that he was there, returning thanks for the signal mercy so lately vouchsafed to him (cf. Isaiah xxxviii. 22; Acts 3:8). But He, whose purpose it ever was to connect. with the healing of the body the better healing of the soul, suffers not this matter to conclude thus; but by a word of solemn warning, declares to the sufferer that all his past life lay open and manifest before Him; interprets to him the past judgment, bids him not provoke future and more terrible: “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” Assuredly these are words which give us an awful glimpse of the severity of God’s judgments even in this present time; for we must not restrict this “worse thing” to judgment in hell;—” a worse thing” than those eight and thirty years of infirmity and pain. His sickness had found him a youth, and left him an old man; it had withered up all his manhood, and yet “a worse thing” even than this is threatened him, should he sin again.^[19] Let no man, however miserable, count that he has exhausted the power of God’s wrath. The arrows that have pierced him may have been keen; but, if he shall provoke them, there are sharper and keener behind.

What the past sin of this sufferer had been we know not, but the man himself knew very well; his conscience was the interpreter of the warning. This much, however, is plain to us; that Christ did connect the man’s suffering with his own particular sin; for, however He rebuked elsewhere men’s uncharitable way of tracing such a connexion, or that unrighteous Theodicee, which should in every case affirm a man’s personal suffering to be in proportion to his personal guilt, a scheme which all experience refutes, much judgment being deferred to the great day; yet He never meant thereby to deny that much of judgment is even now continually proceeding. However unwilling we may be to receive this, bringing as it does God so near, and making retribution so real and so prompt a thing, yet is it true notwithstanding. As some eagle, pierced with a shaft feathered from its own wing, so many a sufferer, even in this present time, sees and cannot deny that his own sin fledged the arrow of judgment, which has pierced him and brought him down. And lest he should miss the connexion, oftentimes he is punished, it may be is himself sinned against by his fellow-man, in the very kind wherein he himself has sinned against others (Jdg 1:6-7; Gen 42:21). The deceiver is deceived, as was Jacob (Gen 27:19; Gen 27:24; Gen 29:23; Gen 31:7; Gen 37:32); the violator of the sanctities of family life is himself wounded and outraged in his tenderest and dearest relations, as was David (2Sa 11:4; 2Sa 13:14; 2Sa 16:22). And many a sinner, who cannot read his own doom, for it is a final and a fatal one, yet declares in that doom to others that there is indeed a coming back upon men of their sins. The grandson of Ahab is himself treacherously slain in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite (2Ki 9:23); William Rufus perishes, himself the third of his family who did so, in the New Forest, the scene of the sacrilege and the crimes of his race.^[20]

“The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole.” Whom he did not recognize in the crowd, he has recognized in the temple. This is Augustine’s remark, who hereupon finds occasion to commend that inner calm and solitude of spirit in which alone we shall recognize the Lord.^[21] Yet while such remarks have their own worth, they are scarcely applicable here. The man probably learned from the bystanders the name of his deliverer, and went and told it,—assuredly not, as some assume, in treachery, or to augment the envy which was already existing against Him,—but gratefully proclaiming aloud and to the rulers of his nation the physician who had healed him.^[22] He may have expected, in the simplicity of his heart, that the name of Him, whose reputation, though not his person, he had already known, whom so many counted as a prophet, if not as the Messiah Himself, would be sufficient to stop the mouths of the gainsayers. Had he wrought in a baser spirit, he would not, as Chrysostom ingeniously observes, have gone and told them “that it was Jesus, which had made him whole” but rather that it was Jesus who had bidden him to carry his bed. Moreover, we may be quite sure that the Lord, who knew what was in man, would not have wasted his benefits on so mean and thankless a wretch as this man would have thus shown himself to be. His word did not allay their displeasure, but only provoked it the more. “And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath day.” What was the penalty for the wilful violation of the Sabbath, and they who would not see in Jesus the Son of God could have only regarded Him as such a presumptuous violator of it, we see Num 15:32-36. He, returning good for evil, endeavoured to raise them to the true point of view from which to contemplate the Sabbath, and his relation to it as the Only-begotten of the Father. He is no more a breaker of the Sabbath than God is, when He upholds with an energy that knows no pause the work of his creation from hour to hour and from moment to moment: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;” my work is but the reflex of his work. Abstinence from an outward work is not essential to the observance of a Sabbath; it is only more or less the necessary condition of this for beings so framed and constituted as ever to be in danger of losing the true collection and rest of the spirit in the multiplicity of earthly toil and business. Man indeed must cease from his work, if a higher work is to find place in him. He scatters himself in his work, and therefore must collect himself anew, and have seasons for so doing. But with Him who is one with the Father it is otherwise. In Him the deepest rest is not ex-eluded by the highest activity; nay rather, in God, in the; Son as in the Father, they are one and the same.^[23] But so to defend what He has done only exasperates his adversaries the more. They have here not a Sabbath-breaker, only, but also a blasphemer; for, however others in later times may have interpreted his words, they who first heard them interpreted them correctly;^[24] that the Lord was here putting Himself on an equality with God, claiming divine attributes for Himself;; “Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He had not only broken the Sabbath, but said’ also that God was his Father, making Himself equal with God.” Strange, if the Unitarian scheme of doctrine is true,, that He should have suffered them to continue in their error, that He did not at once take this stumbling-block out of their way, and explain to them that indeed He meant nothing of the kind which they supposed. But so far from. this, He only reasserts what has offended them so deeply, in a discourse than which there is no weightier in Holy Scripture for the fast fixing of the doctrine concerning the relations of; the Father and the Son.. Other passages may be as important witnesses against the Arian, other against the Sabellian, declension from the truth; but this upon both sides’ plants the pillars of the faith; yet it would lead, too far from, the purpose of this: volume to enter on it here.

I conclude with a brief reference” to a matter in part anticipated already, namely, the types and prophetic symbols which many have traced in this history. Many, as has been already noticed, found, in these healing influences of the pool of Bethesda a foreshowing of future benefits, above all, of the benefit of baptism; and, through familiarity with a miracle of a lower order, a helping of men’s faith to the receiving the mystery of a yet higher healing which should be linked with water.^[25] They were well pleased also often to magnify the largeness and freedom of the later grace, by comparing it with the narrower and more stinted blessings of the former dispensation.^[26] The pool with its one healed, and that one at distant intervals,—once a year Theophylact and most others assumed, although nothing of the kind is said, and the word of the original may mean oftener or seldomer,—was the type of the weaker and more restrained graces of the Old Covenant; when not as yet was there room for all, nor a fountain, opened, and at all times accessible, for the healing of the spiritual sicknesses of the whole race of men, but only of a single people. The author of the work attributed to Ambrose (De Sacram. ii. 2): Tune inquam temporis in figura, qui prior descendisset, solus curabatur. Quanto major est gratia Ecclesiae, in qua, omnes salvantur, quicunque descendunt!

Thus Chrysostom, in a magnificent Easter sermon,^[27] having its peculiar fitness, for at that season multitudes of neophytes were baptized: “Among the Jews also there was of old a pool of water. Yet learn whereunto it availed, that thou mayest accurately measure the Jewish poverty and our riches. There went down, it is said, an Angel and moved the waters, and who first descended into them after the moving, obtained a cure. The Lord of Angels went down into the stream of Jordan, and sanctifying the nature of water, healed the whole world. So that there indeed he who descended after the first was not healed, for to the Jews, infirm and carnal, this grace was given: but here after the first a second descends, after the second a third and a fourth; and were it a thousand, didst thou cast the whole world into these spiritual fountains, the grace would not be worn out, the gift expended, the fountains defiled, the liberality exhausted. “And Augustine, ever on the watch to bring out his great truth that the Law was for the revealing of sin, and could not effect its removal, for making men to know their sickness, not for the healing of that sickness, to drag them out of the lurking-places of an imagined righteousness, not to provide them of itself with any surer refuge, finds a type, or at least an apt illustration of this, in those five porches, which showed their sick, but could not cure them, in which they “lay, a great multitude of impotent folk, blind,, halt, withered.” It needed that the waters should be stirred, before any power went forth for their cure. This motion of the pool was the perturbation of the Jewish people at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then powers were stirring for their healing; and he who “went down,” he who humbly believed in his incarnation, in his descent as a man amongst us, who was not offended at his lowly estate, was healed of whatsoever disease he had.^[28]

Footnotes

[1] Maldonatus, who seems almost inclined to fall out with St. John that he has not done so: Magna nos Joannes molestiâ contentioneque liberâsset, si vel unum adjecisset verbum, quo quis ille Judaeorum dies fuisset festus declarâsset.

[2] See Hengstenberg, Christologie, 2d edit. vol. ii. p. 180

[3] Con. Haer. ii. 22: Secundâ vice ascendit in diem festum Paschae in Hierusalem, quando paralyticum qui juxta natatoriam jacebat xxxviii annos curavit.

[4] Comm. in Dan., in loc.

[5] Hug has done everything to make it plausible; and it numbers Tholuck and Olshausen decidedly, and Lücke somewhat doubtfully, among its adherents, also Neander (Leben Jesu, p. 430) and Jacobi (Theoll. Stud. u. Krit. vol. xi. p. 861, seq.). Hengstenberg (Christologie, 2d ed. vol. iii. pp. 180-189) earnestly opposes it, and maintains the earlier view; so too does Paulus.

[6] Ἐπὶ τῇ προβατικῇ should be completed, not, as in the E. V., with ἀγορᾷ, but with πύλῃ (see Neh 3:1; Neh 12:39, LXX, πύλη προβατική, and translated, “by the sheep-gate” rather than “by the sheep-market.” Κολυνβήθρα = natatoria (cf. John 9:7), from κολυμβάω, to dive, or swim; we meet the word Ecc 2:6, for the reservoir of a garden. It is used in ecclesiastical language alike for the building in which baptisms are performed (the baptistery), and the font which contains the water (see Suicer, Thes. s. vv. βαπτιστήριον and κολυμβήθρα.

[7] βηθεσδά= domus misericordiæ. Bengel and others appeal to this passage, as important for fixing the date when this Gospel was written, as proving, at least, that it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet in truth it proves nothing. St. John might still have said, “There is at Jerusalem a pool,” that having survived the destruction; or might have written with that vivid recollection, which caused him to speak of the past as existing yet. The various reading, ἦν for ἐστί, is to be traced to transcribers, who being rightly persuaded that this Gospel was composed after the destruction of the city, thought that St. John could not have otherwise written.

[8] Röhr, Palestina, p. 66, does so without a misgiving.

[9] Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 489, seq.

[10] He was himself witness of that remarkable phenomenon, so often mentioned of old, as by Jerome (In Isaiah viii.): Siloe.... qui non jugibus aquis, sed in certis horis diebusque ebulliat; et per terrarum concava et antra saxi durissimi cum magno sonitu veniat;—but which had of late fallen quite into discredit,—of the waters rapidly bubbling up, and rising with a gurgling sound in the basin of this fountain, and in a few minutes retreating again. When he was present they rose nearly or quite a foot (Researches, vol. i. pp. 506-508; for other modern testimonies to the same fact see Hengstenberg, in loc). Prudentius, whom he does not quote, has anticipated the view that this Siloam is Bethesda, and that in this phenomenon is “the troubling of the water,” however the healing virtue may have departed.
Variis Siloa refundit
Momentis latices, nec fluctum semper anhelat,
Sed vice distinctâ largos lacus accipit haustus.
Agmina languentum sitiunt spem fontis avari,
Membrorum maculas puro ablutura natatu;
Certatim interea roranti pumice raucas
Expectant scatebras, et sicco margine pendent.
Perhaps it is not a slip of memory, and a confusion of this passage with John 9:7, but his belief in the identity of Siloam and Bethesda, which makes Irenæus (Con. Haer. iv. 8) to say of our Lord: Et Siloâ etiam sæpe sabbatis curavit; et propter hoc assidebant ei multi die sabbatorum.

[11] Be Bapt. 5: Angelum aquis intervenire, si novum videtur, exemplum futurum praecucurrit. Piscinam Bethsaida angelus interveniens commovebat; observabant qui valetudinem querebantur: Nam si quis praevenerat descendere illuc, queri post lavacrum desinebat: Figura ista medicinae corporalis spiritalem medicinam canebat, ea, forma qua semper carnalia in figura spiritalium antecedunt. Proiiciente itaque hominibus gratia Dei plus aquis et angelo accessit: qui vitia corporis remediabant, mine spiritum medentur: qui temporalem operabantur salutem, nunc aeternam reformant: qui unum semel anno liberabant, nunc quotidie populos conservant. It will be observed that he calls it above, the pool Bethsaida; this is not by accident, for it recurs (Adv. Jude 1:13) in Augustine, and is still in the Vulgate.

[12] De Spir. Sand. i. 7: Quid in hoc typo Angelus nisi descensionem Sancti Spiritûs nuntiabat, quae nostris futura temporibus, aquas sacerdotalibus invocata precibus consecraret? and DeMyst. 4: Illis Angelus descendebat, tibi Spiritus Sanctus; illis creatura movebatur, tibi Christus operatur ipse Dominus creaturae.

[13] Thus In Joh. Horn, xxxvi.: "As there it was not simply the nature of the waters which healed, for then they would have always done so, but when was added the energy of the Angel; so with us, it is not simply the water which works, but when it has received the grace of the Spirit, then it washes away all sins. "

[14] Hammond’s explanation of this phenomenon, which reads like a leaf borrowed from Dr. Paulus, is very singular, both in itself, and as coming from him. It very early awoke earnest remonstrances on many sides,—see for instance Witsius, in Wolf, Curae (in loc). The medicinal virtues of this pool were derived, he supposes, from the washing in it the carcases and entrails of the beasts slain for sacrifices. In proof that they were here washed, he quotes Brocardus, a monk of the thirteenth century! whose authority would be worth nothing, and whose words are these: Intrantibus porro Portam Gregis ad sinistram occurrit piscina probatica, in qua Nathinaei lavabant hostias quas tradebant sacerdotibus in Templo offerendas; that is, as is plain, washed their fleeces before delivering them to be offered by the priests. Some in later times, knowing that the sacrifices were washed in the temple and not without it, have amended this part of the scheme by a suggestion that the blood and other animal matter was drained off by conduits into this pool. But to proceed: The pool, he says, possessed these healing powers only at intervals, because only at the great feasts, eminently at the passover, was there slain any such multitude of beasts as could tinge and warm those waters, making them a sort of animal bath for the time. The ἄγγελος is not an Angel, but a messenger or servant, duly sent down to stir the waters, that the grosser and thicker particles, in which the chief medicinal virtue resided, but which as heaviest would have sunk to the bottom, might reinfuse themselves in the waters. The fact that only one each time was healed he explains, that probably the pool was purposely of very limited dimensions, for the concentrating of its virtues, and thus would contain no more—its strength by evaporation or otherwise being exhausted before place could be made for another. He has here worked out at length a theory which Theophylact makes mention of, although there is no appearance that he himself accepted it, as Hammond affirms. His words are: Εἶχον δὲ οἱ πολλοὶ ὑπόληψιν‚ ὅτι καὶ ἀπὸ μόνου τοῦ πλύνεσθαι τὰ ἐντόσθια τῶν ἱερείων δύναμιν τινὰ λαμβάνει θειότεραν τὸ ὕδωρ. And after all it seems more than doubtful whether he does not mean that some thought this grace was: given to the waters because they were used for washing the altar sacrifices; and not that it was naturally imparted through that washing. Certainly what follows in his exposition seems very nearly to prove this. This explanation has found favour with one, a physician I should imagine (Richter, Be Balrieo Animali, p. 107, quoted by Winer, Realworterbuch, s. v. Bethesda), who writes: Non miror fontem tantû, adhuc virtute animali hostiarum calentem, quippe in proxima loca tempestive effusum, ut pro pleniori partium miscelâ, turbatum triplici maxime infirmorum classi, quorum luculenter genus nervosum laborabat, profuisse; et quia animalis haec virtus cito cum calore aufugit, et vappam inertem, immo putrem relinquit, iis tantum qui primi ingressi sunt, salutem attulisse.

[15] These thirty and eight years of the man’s punishment answering so exactly to the thirty-eight years of Israel’s punishment in the wilderness have not unnaturally led many, old and new (see Hengstenberg, Christol. vol. ii. p. 568), to find in this man a type of Israel after the flesh.

[16] Calvin: Non suum modo factum excusat, sed ejus etiam qui grabbatum suum tulit. Erat enim appendix et quasi pars miraculi, quia nihil quam ejus approbatio erat.

[17] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xvii.): Non acciperem jussionem a quo receperam sanitatem?

[18] Grotius: En malitiae ingenium! non dicunt, Quis est qui te sanavit? sed, Quis jussit grabatum tollere? Quaerunt non quod, inrentur, sed quod calumnientur.

[19] Calvin: Si nihil ferulis proficiat erga nos Deus, quibus leniter nos tanquam teneros ac delicatos filios humanissimus pater castigat, novam personam et quasi alienam induere cogitur. Flagella ergo ad domandum nostram ferociam accipit...... Quare non mirum est si atrocioribus poenis quasi malleis conterat Deus, quibus mediocris poena nihil prodest: frangi enim aequum est, qui corrigi non sustinent.

[20] Tragedy in its highest form continually occupies itself with this truth—nowhere, perhaps, so grandly as in the awful reproduction in the Choëphorae of the scene in which Clytemnestra stood over the prostrate bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra—a reproduction with only the difference that now it is she and her paramour that are the slain, and her own son that stands over her.

[21] In Ev. Joh. tract. xvii.: Difficile est in turbâ videre Christum... Turba strepitum habet; visio ista secretum desiderat... In turba non eum vidit, in templo vidit.

[22] Calvin: Nihil minus in animo habuit quam conflare Christo invidiam; nihil enim minus speravit quam ut tantopere furerent adversus Christum. Pius ergo affectus fuit, quum vellet justo ac debito honore medicum suum prosequi.

[23] Thus Augustine on the eternal Sabbath-keeping of the faithful (Ep. Leviticus 9): Inest autem in illâ requie non desidiosa segnitia, sed quaedam ineffabilis tranquillitas actionis otiosae. Sic enim ab hujus vitae operibus in fine requiescitur, ut in alterius vitae actione gaudeatur. Cf. Philo, Leg. All. i. § 3.

[24] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xvii.): Ecce intelligunt Judaei, quod non intelligunt Ariani.

[25] So especially Chrysostom (in loc).

[26] Tertullian (Adv. Jude 1:13) adduces as one of the signs that even these scanty blessings did with the Jewish rejection of Christ cease altogether, that from that day forth, this pool forfeited the healing powers which it before possessed: Lex et Prophetae usque ad Joannem fuerunt; et piscina Bethsaida usque ad adventum Christi, curando invaletudineo ab Israel, desiit a beneficiis deinde cum ex perseverantiâ, furoris sui nomen Domini per ipsos blasphemaretur.

[27] Opp. vol. iii. p. 756, Bened. ed.

[28] Enarr. i. in Ps. 70:15: Merito lex per Moysen data est, gratia et veritas per Jesum Christum facta est. Moyses quinque libros scrip sit; sed in quinque porticibus piscinam cingentibus languidi jacebant, sed curari non poterant... Illis enim quinque porticibus, in figurâ quinque librorum, prodebantur potius quam sanabantur aegroti... Venit Dominus, turbata est aqua, et crucifixus est, descendat ut sanetur aegrotus. Quid est, descendat? Humiliet se. Ergo quicumque amatis litteram sine gratia, in porticibus remanebitis, aegri eritis; jacentes, non convalescentes: de litterâ enim praesumitis. Cf. Enarr. in Psa 83:7 : Qui non sanabatur Lege, id est porticibus, sanatur gratiâ, per passionis fidem Domini nostri Jesu Christi. Serm. cxxv.: Ad hoc data est Lex, quae proderet aegrotos, non quae tolleret. Ideo ergo segroti illi qui in domibus suis secretius aegrotare possent, si illae quinque porticus non essent, prodebantur oculis omnium in illis porticibus, sed a porticibus non sanabantur... Intendite ergo. Erant illae porticus legem significantes, portantes aegrotos non sanantes, prodentes non curantes. Cf. In Ev. Joh. tract, xvii..