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Open Antagonism between Christ, as the Light of the World, and the Elements of Darkness in the World, especially in their proper Representatives, Unbelievers, but also in the Better Men, so far as They still belong to the World.
Joh_5:1 to Joh_7:9
I
1. The Healing.
17But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto [is working unceasingly even until now, or, up to this time] and I work [am working]. 18Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken [broke, ἔëõåí ] the sabbath [according to their opinion], but said also that God was his Father [but also called God his own Father, ðáôÝñá ἴäéïí ], making himself equal with God.
19Then answered Jesus [to this second accusation] and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do [doing, ðïéïῦíôá ]: for what things soever he doeth, these things also doeth the Son likewise [in like manner]. 20For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that [which he] himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, [and greater works than these will he show him], that ye may marvel.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come [cometh not, ïὐ÷ ἔñ÷åôáé ] into condemnation [judgment, ÷ñßóéí ]; but is passed from [hath passed out of] death unto [into, åὶò ] life.—
30I can of mine own self [of myself] do nothing; as I hear [the actual sentence of God], I judge; and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father [him] which hath sent [who sent] me.
Joh_5:1. After these things.—On the distinction between ìåôὰ ôáῦôá and ìåôὰ ôïῦôï , see Lücke on this passage. Here closes the first great ministry of Jesus in Galilee (see Leben Jesu, II., 2, pp. 556–745).
A [The] feast of the Jews.—[Which feast? This point is still under dispute, but the controversy is now narrowed down to a choice between the Passover and the Purim. The decision has a bearing on the chronology of the gospel history. If the feast here spoken of be the Passover, then our Lord’s public labors continued during three and a half years, since John notes three other passovers as falling within His ministry, 2:13; 6:4; 12:1 and 13:1. If not, then the time must in all probability be reduced to two and a half years. On the bearing of the definite article on the question, and the various readings, see Text. Notes.—P. S.] Meyer: “Which feast is meant, appears with certainty from Joh_4:35; comp. 6:4. For Joh_4:35 was spoken in the month of December; and from Joh_6:4 it appears that the passover was nigh at hand; hence the feast here intended must be one falling between December and the passover, and this is no other than the feast of Purim, which was celebrated on the 14th and 15th of Adar (Est_9:21 ff.), that is, in March [one month before the passover], in memory of the deliverance of the nation from the massacre projected by Haman. So Keppler, [who first suggested this view], d’Outrein, Hug, Olshausen, Wieseler, Neander, Krabbe, Anger, Lange, Maier and many others.” Meyer justly adds: The feast is not designated, because it was a minor festival, whereas the greater feasts are named by John: not only the passover, but also the óêçíïðçãßá , 7:2, and the ἐãêáßíéá 10:22.
[The chief objections to this view are: 1. The feast of Purim was no temple feast, and required no journey to Jerusalem. But Christ may have attended this feast as He attended other festivals (7:2; 10:22) without legal obligation, merely for the purpose of doing good. 2. The Purim was never celebrated as a Sabbath. But the Sabbath spoken of, Joh_5:9, may have preceded or succeeded the feast.—P. S.]
Other views of the feast: (1) The passover: Irenæus, Luther, and many more; (2) Pentecost: Cyril [Chrysostom, Calvin], Bengel, etc.; (3) the feast of tabernacles: Cocceius, Ebrard [Ewald]; (4) the feast of dedication: Petavius; (5) a feast which cannot be determined: Lücke, De Wette, [Brückner], Luthardt, Tholuck (7th ed.)
The feast of Purim [ éְîֵé äַôåּøִéí , or simply ôּåּøéí lot, from the Persian], Est_9:24; Est_9:26; ἡ Ìáñäï÷áἴêÞ ἡìÝñá , 2Ma_15:36; Joseph. Antiq. xi. 6, 13. On the 13th of Adar a fast preceded the feast; in the festival itself the book of Esther (called îְּâִìָä by eminence) was read in the synagogues. As a popular festival it was distinguished, like the feasts of tabernacles, and dedication, by universal rejoicings. Fanaticism in the people naturally sought to make it a festival of triumph over the Gentiles (subsequently over the Christians also). And on this account was this particular feast of Purim so pre-eminently the feast of the Jews (with the article), and the article in the Cod. Sinait. in this place cannot be made to speak exclusively, as Hengstenberg proposes, for the passover. We must no doubt mark a difference between the simple expression, feast, and the expression: feast of the Jews.
Joh_5:2. Now there is at Jerusalem.—The ἔóôé has been interpreted with reference to the porches, as indicating that, at the time of the composition of this passage, Jerusalem had not been destroyed. On this see the Introduction. Eusebius writes in his Onomast. s. v. ÂçæáèÜ : êáὶ íῦí äåßíõôáé [but he does not mention the locality]. Yet the ἔóôé may also be attributed to rhetorical vivacity.
By the sheep gate.— Ἐðὶ ôῇ ðñïâáôéêῇ sc. ðýëῃ .| According to Nehemiah’s topography of the restored city it was what is now Stephen’s gate in the north-east quarter of the city, leading out over Kidron to Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives (Bâb Sitty Merijam, ‘Gate of My Lady Mary;’ also ‘Gate of the Tribes,’ or ‘Porta vallis Josaphat.’ Comp. Winer, Art. Jerusalem, I. p. 548; Krafft, Die Topographie Jerusalems, p. 148; Robinson, I. p. 386; 2:74, 136, 148; Von Raumer, Paläst. p. 255. [If the Pool of Bethesda is identical with the Fountain of the Virgin (see below), the Sheep Gate cannot well have been St. Stephen’s Gate, which is too far off.—P. S.]
A pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda.— áֵּéú çֶñְãָà , house of kindness, grace, gentleness, house of mercy. Tholuck: Institution of charity, Charité. Five porches.—Tobler (Denkblätter von Jerusalem, 1853, p. 62): So late as the fifth century five porches were still shown. According to his (medical) hypothesis there were five arched compartments for the separation of the patients. Tholuck: Colonnades, porticoes, to shelter the patients from wind and rain; probably the rear one having a wall. Theodore of Mopsuestia imagined one central hall (probably inclosing the pool), and four halls on the circumference of it (perhaps crosswise); this would have been, at all events, the most convenient arrangement for the sick. The outer portions must doubtless have been protected on more than one side.
As to the location of the pool, there is on the outer side of the gate of Stephen a small fishpond or reservoir, and inside the gate the very large, deep reservoir, to which the name of Bethesda is usually given; probably without foundation. It is perfectly dry, and on the bed of it grow large trees, the tops of which do not even reach to the level of the street. In this pool Robinson sees the remains of an old trench which belonged to the fortress of Antonia. He supposes, on the other hand, that the Fountain of the Virgin may have been the pool of Bethesda. Robinson says [Am. ed. of 1856, vol. I. p. 337]:
“On the west side of the valley of Jehoshaphat about twelve hundred feet northward from the rocky point at the mouth of the Tyropœon, [or the valley of the Cheesmongers] is situated the fountain of the Virgin Mary; called by the natives’, ‘Ain um ed-Deraj, Mother of Steps. In speaking of Siloam I have already brought into view the singular fact, that there is no historical notice later than Josephus, which can be applied to this fountain, before near the close of the fifteenth century, and have also mentioned the more modern hypothesis, which regards it as the fountain of Siloam, in distinction from the pool of that name. Others have held it to be the Gihon, the Rogel, and the Dragon-well of Scripture; so that in fact it has been taken alternately for every one of the fountains, which anciently existed at Jerusalem. It is unquestionably an ancient work; indeed there is nothing in or around the Holy City, which bears more distinctly the traces of high antiquity. I have already alluded to the reasons which make it not improbable, that this was the ‘King’s Pool’ of Nehemiah, and the ‘Pool of Solomon’ mentioned by Josephus, near which the wall of the city passed, as it ran northwards from Siloam along the Valley of Jehoshaphat to the eastern side of the temple.” This spring is connected with the well of Siloam by a passage [of about 2 feet wide, 1750 feet long, and cut through the solid rock], through which Robinson and his companions [for the first time] laboriously passed. “The water in both these fountains, he relates [I. p. 340], is the same; notwithstanding travellers have pronounced that of Siloam to be bad, and that of the upper fountain to be good. We drank of it often in both places. It has a peculiar taste, sweetish and very slightly brackish, but not at all disagreeable. Later in the season, when the water is low, it is said to become more brackish and unpleasant. It is the common water used by the people of Kefr Selwân. We did not learn that it is regarded as medicinal, or particularly good for the eyes, as is reported by travellers; though it is not improbable that such a popular belief may exist.” At the upper fountain (the Fountain of the Virgin) Robinson observed a sudden bubbling up of the water from under the lower step. “In less than five minutes it had risen to the basin nearly or quite a foot; and we could hear it gurgling off through the interior passage. In ten minutes more it had ceased to flow, and the water in the basin was again reduced to its former level….Meanwhile a woman of Kefr Selwân came to wash at the fountain. She was accustomed to frequent the place every day; and from her we learned, that the flowing of the water occurs at irregular intervals; sometimes two or three times a day, and sometimes in summer once in two or three days. She said, she had seen the fountain dry, and men and flocks, dependent upon it, gathered around and suffering from thirst; when all at once the water would begin to boil up from under the steps, and (as she said) from the bottom in the interior part, and flow off in a copious stream.” [I. p. 342].
[For these reasons Dr. Robinson merely suggests, without expressing a definite conviction himself (I. p. 343), that this Fountain of the Virgin may have been Bethesda, the same with the “King’s Pool” of Nehemiah and the “Solomon’s Pool” of Josephus. T. Tobler, during frequent visits to the Fountain of the Virgin in the winter of 1845, early in the morning and late in the evening, confirms the observations of Robinson as to its intermittent character which bring it into striking resemblance with the Pool of Bethesda. Neander (Leben Jesu, p. 282), and Tholuck (in loc.) are inclined to Robinson’s view Tholuck, who frequently visited the springs of Kissingen in Bavaria, speaks of a gaseous spring of this kind in Kissingen, which after a rushing sound about the same time every day commences to bubble and is most efficacious at the very time the gas is making its escape. Comp. also an article on the miracle of Bethesda by Macdonald, in the Andover Bibliotheca Sacra, for Jan. 1870, pp. 108 ff. According to Wolcot and Tobler, the water of the Fountain of the Virgin and the Pool of Siloam, as well as that of the many fountains of the Mosque of Omar, proceeds from a living spring beneath the altar of the temple. This spring was, as Dean Stanley says, (Sinai and Palestine, new ed., Lond. 1866, p. 181), the treasure of Jerusalem,’ its support through its numerous sieges—the ‘fans perennis aquæ’ of Tacitus (Tac. Hist. v. 12)—the source of Milton’s
‘Brook that flowed
Hard by the oracle of God.’
But more than this, it was the image which entered into the very heart of the prophetical idea of Jerusalem. ‘There is a river (a perennial river), the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High’ (Psa_46:4). ‘All my fresh springs shall be in thee’ (Psa_87:7). ‘Draw water out of the wells of salvation’ (Isa_12:3). In Ezekiel’s vision (Eze_47:1-5) the thought is expanded into a vast cataract flowing out through the Temple-rock eastward and west ward into the ravines of Hinnom. and Kedron, till they swell into a mighty river, fertilizing the desert of the Dead Sea. And with still greater distinctness the thought appears again, and for the last time, in the discourse, when in the courts of the Temple, ‘in the last day, that great day of the feast (of Tabernacles), Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me,…out of his belly shall flow rivers of living I water’ (Joh_7:37-38).”—P. S.]
Other hypotheses see in Meyer [who, however, thinks that the exact situation of Bethesda, cannot be fixed with certainty; see p. 219]. What leaves the theory of Robinson in need of further investigation is the assumption that here, contrary to the usual order, the bathing pool or fish pool must have been placed above, and the B spring below on the same fountain stream or flume. This difficulty may be obviated by distinguishing between the point of the spring itself and a bathing pool situated somewhat aside. But the distance of the Fountain of the Virgin from the Sheep Gate invalidates Robinson’s theory. [Or rather it may invalidate the identity of the Sheep Gate with St. Stephen’s Gate, which is of more modern origin.—P. S.]
It is more probable that, according to Krafft (Topographie Jerus. p. 176), the now dry Struthion pool in the church of St. Anna was the pool of Bethesda, “To attribute the healing virtue of the water, which, according to Eusebius, was of a red tinge, and was perhaps impregnated with mineral substance, to the sacrificial blood from the temple, and to derive the name from àַùְׁãָà , effusio (Calvin, Arret., and others, after Eusebius), is unfounded, and contrary to Joh_5:7. The usual interpretation of the name is found even in the Peshito.” (Meyer). “Struthion is an alkali. This alkali, together with particles of iron, mixed with the water, may have given it its red color and medicinal effect.” (Krafft).
Joh_5:3. Blind, lame, withered.—Three kinds of sick folks [ ôῶí ἀóèåíïýíôùí ] are specified: The blind first; comp. John 9; the lame, those disabled in their limbs; the withered, those who were fallen away, emaciated, consumptive, (comp. Mat_12:10; Luk_6:6; Luk_6:8). [Also paralytics, as this man was, to judge from his lameness and the êñÜââáôïò paralylicorum, Mar_2:4; Act_9:33.—P. S.]
Waiting for the moving of the water.—See the textual note above. On this passage together with the next verse, criticism has four theories:
1. All is spurious; a later interpolation of the popular belief for the explanation of Joh_5:7. This is favored by (a) the omission of the whole locus in B. C.,* 157, 314, and in the Coptic and Sahidic V.; (b) the many variations in the several expressions, see Tischendorf; (c) the many ἅðáî ëåãüìåíá as êßíçóéò , ôáñá÷Þ etc.; (d) the stamp of popular tradition upon the statement; (e) “If the passage were genuine, it would not have been omitted.” Lücke, Olshausen, Tischendorf, Meyer. [Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort.—P. S.]
2. The whole doubtful passage is genuine, (a) In favor of the close of Joh_5:3, Cod. D., etc.; in favor Joh_5:4, Cod. A., etc. Tertullian, the Peshito (b) The insertion could not well be accounted for, Baumgarten-Crusius, Brückner, Lachmann, [Reuss, Lange, Hengstenberg].
3. The close, of Joh_5:3, ἑêäå÷ .— êßíçóéí , is genuine, Joh_5:4, a later addition. This is favored by (a) the omission in D., where the close of Joh_5:3 remains; (b) the consideration that without this passage Joh_5:7 would be unintelligible. Ewald, Tholuck, [Godet].
4. The close of Joh_5:3 is spurious, Joh_5:4 is genuine; being more strongly supported by A. C.* So Hofmann.
It is of great weight, (1) that Tertullian stands so early a witness for the whole text. He ought not to be estimated here according to his realistic view elsewhere, but as reporting a document which was sacred to him. (2) that Joh_5:7 would be in fact unintelligible without Joh_5:4. (3) that Joh_5:4 is more strongly attested than the close of Joh_5:3, particularly by Code A. (4) that the close of Joh_5:3 might have been carried away with Joh_5:4, when the latter was omitted. (5) that the silence of Origen leaves us to suppose that the Alexandrian school found the passage offensive for its realism.
On the other hand Joh_5:4 cannot be sustained (a) by Hofmann’s doctrine of angels, which makes angels the agents in all second causes, or natural phenomena; (b) by Tholuck’s observation that John himself would no doubt have explained that natural phenomenon, as the Christian and the general religious popular opinion explained it in the second century, especially after what the Apocalypse says of the angel of the waters and of fire (Joh_16:5; Joh_14:18). The Revelation, like the book of Daniel, is a symbolical book.
The matter is no doubt to be thus explained: According to the Jewish popular conception there was a personal angel who produced the moving of the water. John found the conception and admitted it in his narrative, translating in his own mind the personal angel into a symbolical angel, or a distinct divine operation, i. e., in reference to such facts, for in a higher sphere he well knew the personal angels. He could leave the reader to adjust the passage according to Joh_1:51.
Joh_5:4. Troubled the water.—According to Wolcott on Arabian substituted for the angel in the fountain of the Virgin “the convolutions of a dragon at the bottom.” Tholuck, p. 161. [The common legend is that a great dragon lies within the intermittent Fountain of the Virgin; when he is awake, he stops the water; but when he sleeps, it flows. See Robinson, I. p. 342; Porter, I., 140.—P. S.]
First after the troubling.—The popular religious idea of the periodical moments of healing efficacy in the spring.
Joh_5:5. Thirty-eight years [ ôñéÜêïíôá êáὶ ὀêôὼ ἔôç ἔ÷ùí ἐí ôῇ ἀóèåíåßᾳ áὐôïῦ ].—It is a question whether ἕ÷ùí is to be referred to the thirty-eight years, or to ἐí ôῇ ἀóè [that is, whether the exact expression is, he had so many years in his infirmity,= ἔ÷ùí ôñéÜìêïíôá ê . ὁ . ἐ ., or had his infirmity for so many years= ἀóèåíῶò ἕ÷ùí ], The usage of John is in favor of the former (Joh_5:6; Joh_8:57; Joh_11:17; comp. Lücke, II. p. 25). He had lived thirty-eight years in his impotency. [He had been sick thirty-eight years—not at Bethesda all that time. The long disease makes the cure appear all the greater. Hengstenberg allegorizes here again, and discovers in the sick man of Bethesda a symbol of the Jewish nation, and in the thirty-eight years of his sickness a symbol of the thirty-eight years which Israel spent under the bane in the wilderness (I. 300 f.). So also Wordsworth in loc.—P. S.]
Joh_5:6. And knew.— Ãíïýò when He perceived. We cannot venture to assert, with Meyer, that this does not intend supernatural knowledge. A natural medium there might have been; the insight into the whole situation partook of the supernatural. The indefinite ðïëὺí ÷ñüíïí also indicates this. [So also Hengstenberg, Godet and Alford.—P. S.]
Desirest thou to be made whole?—Meyer: “The question is asked to excite the attention and expectation of the suffering man. Paulus falsely: The man had been a malicious beggar, who represented himself as sick; wherefore Jesus asked him with reproving emphasis, Desirest thou to be made whole? Art thou in earnest? Similarly Ammon; whereas Lange takes him only for a man of faint will, whose slumbering energy of will Christ here aroused again (?); of which the text gives as little sign, as that the question was intended for the whole people of whom this invalid was a type (Luthardt).”But the following points are clearly implied in the narrative, as Meyer himself must admit: (1) that in this miracle of healing alone an unasked offer occurs, though in John 9. there is an unasked healing (yet every honest beggar virtually asks the greatest possible alms); (2) that, besides, the man always allows himself to be anticipated by all others, though he is still able feebly to walk; (3) that he complains in a feeble manner without point; (4) that he lets his benefactor slip away, without learning his name, or even eagerly asking it, and then, against the Jews, appeals only to the command of Jesus; (5) that he receives from Jesus in the temple a warning, which implied a fickle character; (6) that immediately after his recognition of Jesus he goes to the Jews and gives the name of his miraculous healer, though he must have observed their evil designs. All this is in the test. Yet malevolence properly so called cannot be asserted. His continuance at the pool of Bethesda leads us to recognize in his indolence a spark of spiritual patience; in his helpless and forlorn condition he appears a very peculiar object of sympathy; his visiting the temple seems to bespeak a sense of gratitude; even in his giving of the name of Jesus a mistaken obedience may have had a share; but exegesis cannot make him a valiant confessor. [The question of Jesus, addressed to the cripple’s desire for health, was a proof of sympathy with his sufferings, and kindled a spark of hope when on the brink of despair, and thus naturally prepared the way for his cure.—P. S.]
Joh_5:7. Another goeth flown before me.—Meyer: “The brief motion must be conceived as limited to a particular point of the pool, so that only one at a time can receive the benefit.” But there is nothing of this in the text; and motion in a pool cannot possibly be confined to a particular point, Rather might the stairs have been constructed on the presumption that only one bather would receive healing. In Joh_5:4 Meyer, without warrant, sees the apocryphal expression of a superstitious popular opinion. [Alford: “The man’s answer implies the popular belief, which the spurious but useful insertion in Joh_5:3-4 expresses.”—P. S.]
Joh_5:8. Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.—Three words of power in one wonderful work, or even three thunder strokes of the might of the divine healing will, which awaken at once the faint will and the worn-out energy of the deceased man. The words of healing addressed to the paralytic in Matthew 9, are similar indeed, in Mark (John 2) the very same, yet they have here a different import; they are intended to give threefold vividness to the outward visibility of the power of Jesus in proof of His invisible work of grace on the heart of the sufferer. The criticism of Strauss and Weisse, which can make of this story a legendary exaggeration of the healing of that paralytic, shows more than mere indifference to place, time, and circumstances, and all connected with them; it confounds a true heroic faith with the most weak-minded inclination to faith, and a man who causes his friends to break through the roof with a man, who can find no one even to put him into the water. Critical opinions of this sort themselves lie like blind, lame, and withered about the pool of Bethesda. [Against Baur and Hilgenfeld see Meyer, p. 221 f.]
Joh_5:9. And on that day was the Sabbath.—A twofold scruple might arise, one against the healing, another against the carrying. In reference to the healing, the principle universally prevailed: “All danger or preservation of life removes the Sabbath restrictions” (Omne dubium vitæ pellit Sabbatum); though this principle was so encumbered with casuistic distinctions and exceptions that in most cases it was not possible for the laity duly to distinguish the lawful and the unlawful, the forbidden and the allowed (Lücke, II., p. 29). So too the carrying of articles on the Sabbath is, according to the Talmud, not indeed absolutely forbidden, but was at most allowed only under many restrictions; for one thing it could not be done on the open street (see Tholuck).
Joh_5:10. The Jews.—[Not the people, but those in authority who misrepresented the people in their rejection of Christ]. In such cases the matter goes quickly through fanatics, informers, and subordinates to the chiefs. Here the hierarchical chiefs already seem to speak; according to Meyer and Tholuck, the Sanhedrists. Yet it is possible that the matter only gradually reached them. At first they attack only the man himself for his carrying, which was the most palpable.
Joh_5:11. He that made me whole.—Beyond the word ἐêåῖíïò , no trace again of individual energy appears in the answer, nothing but historical statement. Unquestionably the words seem to say: One who made me whole, a wonder-worker, must certainly have had the right to heal me. Hence Meyer: They savor of defiance; Tholuck: The man puts the authority of the Wonder-worker as in Joh_9:30 against theirs. But the character of the blind man in John 9. is at least an entirely different one from this. That man makes bold to draw inferences, this one does not, and the sentence before us, according to the connection, may be taken as well for an excusing of himself by the strange injunction of the strange man, as for anything else. At all events this man seems not to make head against the Jews. It must be remembered, too, that he could not otherwise designate Jesus, since he did not know His name.
Joh_5:12. Who is the man that?—Not only is the contemptuous expression the Man characteristic, but also the fact that they seem entirely to ignore the miraculous healing itself. [They do not ask: ‘Who is he that healed thee?’ but they carefully bring out the unfavorable side of what had taken place, as malicious persons always do.—Alford.]
Joh_5:13 f. And he that was healed knew not.—Bengel’s apology: “Grabbato ferendo intentus et judaica interpellations districtus,” says less than the rest of the verse itself, for Jesus had withdrawn himself, Meyer incorrectly: He withdrew “when this collision with the Jews arose.” This would be at least a very equivocal course, to forsake one who was attacked on His account; this Jesus never did. He turned aside because a multitude was there, whose demonstrations He wished to avoid; perhaps the treatment of this invalid also required it.
Joh_5:14. Jesus findeth him in the temple.—Chrysostom, Tholuck, Meyer: The healing made a religious impression upon him, Yet the evangelist seems intentionally to imply that this meeting did not immediately follow; he writes ìåôὰ ôáῦôá , not ìåôὰ ôéῦôï . And the address of Christ to him does not indicate a man thoroughly possessed with gratitude. Sin no more, lest, etc.—An unusually earnest injunction upon one whom He had healed, notwithstanding He finds him in the temple. Hence, too, it cannot be supposed that no more is intended here than merely the general connection of sin with evil (Iren. Adv. hær., v. 15; Bucer, Calov, Neander). This interpretation on the contrary, is no doubt a false application of Joh_9:3. Here a special connection between a particular kind of sin and the particular disease must have existed, according to Chrysostom, Bullinger, Meyer, and others. Neither the special sin nor the special disease is known; which magnifies the penetrating knowledge of the Lord. But a sin which produced disease thirty-eight years before, may be designated in general even in an old man as a sin of youth. Lest something worse befall thee.—Bengel: “Gravius quiddam quam infirmitas 38 annorum.” [Trench: The ÷åῖñïí ôé “gives us an awful glimpse of the severity of God’s judgments.” Comp. Mat_12:45.]
Joh_5:15. The man departed.—Strictly: Then departed the man; ὁ ἄíèñùðïò . Chrysostom concludes that it was not ingratitude which moved him to this; that he had spoken before the Jews not of carrying his bed, but of that which they cared least to hear: that Jesus had healed him. This apology falls, when we consider his former declaration. There he described the unknown man by the words, He that made me whole. For this reason he now says in giving his information: He that made me whole is Jesus. Meyer explains: the motive is neither malice (Schleiermacher, Lange [incorrect citation; Comp. Leben Jesu, II. p. 769], Paulus, etc.), nor gratitude wishing to get Jesus acknowledged among the Jews (Cyril, Chrysostom), nor obedience to the rulers (Bengel, Lücke, De Wette, Luthardt), but his authority (Jesus) is to him forthwith higher than that of the Sanhedrists, and he braves them with it. (Thus this man would be a hero, while Nicodemus is supposed to be hampered.) According to Tholuck the man is somewhat stupid and without suspicion of the rulers. Probably he added to weakness of heart and ignorance a fear of the Jews, in which he sought to shield himself from their reproach without perceiving that he might be prejudicing. It is worthy of notice, that they probably let his case drop, while the blind man in chap. 9. they in the end excommunicate; that here in fact they even base upon the statement of this man a process against Jesus.
Joh_5:16. For this cause the Jews persecuted Jesus.—What follows evidently refers to a trial (Lampe, Rosenmüller, Kuiuoel; against Meyer [and Alford]; comp. Luk_21:12, äéþêåéí used of judicial process), though the terms are so chosen as at the same time to express the continuance of the persecutions after the failure of the process. Probably Jesus was arraigned before the little Sanhedrin. Winer: “There were smaller colleges of this name (Sanhedrin, the little Sanhedrin), consisting of twenty-three counsellors (according to Sanhedrin, 1, 6) in every Palestinean city which numbered more than one hundred and twenty inhabitants; in Jerusalem even two (Sanhedr. 11, 2).” But of these, as also of the courts of three, to which the cognizance and punishment of lighter offences pertained, Josephus knows nothing; whereas he mentions a court of seven (Antiq. iv. 8, 14) in the provincial cities, which always had among its members two from the tribe of Levi (Mat_5:21; Mat_10:17). The variations in the form of the little Sanhedrin amount, however, to nothing; enough that it existed.
Because he did these things; ôáῦôá .—They craftily combine the two charges: (1) the healing of the invalid on the Sabbath, and (2) the commanding him to carry his bed, in the single indictment for breaking the Sabbath in various ways: thus covering the main fact that He had wrought a miracle. Concerning the restriction of healing by the Sabbath regulations of the Pharisees, see above on Joh_5:9.
[On the Sabbath, ἐí óáââÜôῳ .—This was the cause of offence and brings out, in connection with Joh_5:17, the difference between the then prevailing Jewish and the Christian idea of Sabbath observance. The former is negative and slavish, the latter positive and free. The Pharisees scrupulously adhered to the letter of the fourth commandment as far as it forbid any (common) work, and hedged it around with all sorts of hair-splitting distinctions and rabbinical restrictions, but they violated its spirit which demands the positive sanctification of the Sabbath by doing good. The rest of the Sabbath is not the rest of idleness or mere cessation from labor, else God Himself who is always at work (Joh_5:17), would be a Sabbath-breaker as well as Christ. It is rather rest in God, a rest from ordinary work in order to a higher and holier activity for the glory of God and the good of man. We must cease from our earthly work, that God may do His heavenly work in and through us. The Sabbath law, like the whole law, is truly fulfilled by love to God and love to man. Christ refutes the false conception of Sabbath rest, as a mere cessation from labor, in various ways, now by the example of David eating the show-bread, now by the example of the priests working in the temple, now by the readiness of the Jews to deliver an ox out of a pit on the Sabbath. Here He takes higher ground and claims equality with the Father who never ceases doing good. God’s rest after creation was not a rest of sleep or inaction, but a rest of joy in the completion of His work and of benediction of His creatures. “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.” (Gen_2:3). His strictly creative activity ceased with the Hexaëmeron, but his world-preserving and governing, as well as His redeeming activity continues without interruption, and this is properly His Sabbath, combining the highest action with the deepest repose. In the case of man while on earth abstinence from the distracting multiplicity of secular labor and toil is only the necessary condition for attending to his spiritual interests. Acts of worship and acts of charity are proper works for the Christian Sabbath, and are refreshing rest to body and soul, carrying in themselves their own exceeding great reward. The eternal Sabbath of God’s people will be unbroken rest in worship and love, as Augustine says, at the close of his Civitas Dei: “There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise.” Christ never violated the fourth or any other commandment of God, in its true divine meaning and intent, but fulfilled it by doctrine and example (Mat_5:17). He emancipated us from the slavery of the negative, superstitious and hypocritical sabbatarianism of the Pharisees, and set us an example of the true positive observance of the Sabbath by doing good; the Sabbath being made for man (Mar_2:27), i. e., for his temporal and eternal benefit. This was its purpose when God instituted it, together with the marriage relation, in the state of man’s innocence, and this Christ has restored, as He restored the marriage relation to its original purity. The commentators pass too slightly over this point, and some of them misconstrue Christ’s and Paul’s opposition to the Jewish sabbatarianism of that age into a violation or abrogation of the fourth commandment. Trench, in his work on Miracles, p. 206 (Am. ed.), has some good remarks on Joh_5:16, which I shall transfer here:
“ ‘The Jews,’ not here the multitude, but some among the spiritual heads of the nation, whom it is very noticeable that St. John continually characterizes by this name, (1:19; 7:1; 9:22; 18:12, 14) find fault with the man for carrying his bed in obedience to Christ’s command, their reason being because ‘the same day’ on which the miracle was accomplished ‘was the Sabbath;’ and the carrying of any burden was one of the expressly prohibited works of that by Hero, indeed, they had apparently an Old Testament ground to go upon, and an interpretation of the Mosaic law from the lips of a prophet, 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 that which 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 most 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 Himself had ‘done those things’ (see Joh_5:16), that the Jews persecuted Him, and not for bidding the man to bear his bed, which was a mere accident and consequence involved in what He himself had wrought.”—P. S.]
Joh_5:17. My Father worketh until now [ ἔùò ἄñôé “inde a creatione sine intervallo sabbati” Bengel], and I work also.—A difficult answer. It undoubtedly asserts (1) Christ’s exaltation above the Sabbath law, like Mar_2:28; (2) the conformity of His working to the law of the Sabbath, in other words His fulfilling of the Sabbath law, Mat_12:12; (3) the relation of the working of God to His own working as its pattern, Joh_5:20; (4) His working out from God and with God, which makes their charge a charge against God Himself, Joh_5:19. The last idea has special emphasis. According to Strauss the sentence is Alexandrian. [Philo of Alexandria, in his Treatise on the Allegories of the Sacred Laws, chap. vii. says with regard to the institution of the Sabbath after creation: “God never ceases to work ( ðïéῶí ὁ èåὸò ïὐèÝðïôå ðáýåôáé ), but when He appears to do so, He is only beginning the creation of something else; as being not only the Creator, but also the Father of everything which exists.”—P. S.] But Alexandrianism explained only the law of the Sabbath by the eternal working of God. There is a distinction between the creative work of God at the beginning which originates the world, and looks like human effort, and His subsequent festive working in the created world. This way of God, working on the Sabbath the works of the Spirit, works of relief, and love, in incessant divine agility, as it manifests itself in the objective world, must manifest itself also in the Son. According to Tholuck, modern expositors (Grotius, Lücke) stop with the idea that human activity is allowed on the Sabbath. We substitute: Divine activity.
According to Luthardt the words are uttered with reference to the future Sabbath: First the working of the Father, then that, of the Son, then that of the Holy Spirit. A correct idea, but not here in place, for according to our text the Father and the Son work simultaneously and together. Meyer: “The subject is not the preserving and governing of the world in general, but the continued activity of God for the salvation of mankind in spite of His Sabbath resting after the creation” (Gen_2:1-3). But this is in fact the work of preserving and governing, providentia. Olshausen and De Wette explain: the working of God is rest and activity together, and so it is in Christ. Meyer on the contrary: of rest and contemplation there is not a word. The subject, however, is a divine working which as such is also repose, combining at once activity and festive contemplation. Grotius: It is a relation of imitation. Meyer denies this, contrary to Joh_5:19; it is only the necessary correlation of volition and execution. The Father’s having the initiative brings in the element of imitation which by no means exhausts the idea of co-operation (so as to reduce it to a mere working side by side after the same manner, as of one God with another). On Hilgenfeld’s discovery of the demiurge, see Meyer [p. 223 f., 5th ed.].
[Godet compares with this ver. Luk_2:49, and justly remarks that it virtually contains the whole following discourse. It asserts the mysterious union of Christ with God, which Christ had already expressed in His twelfth year to His parents. It is rightly understood by the Jews (Joh_5:18), though wrongly construed by them into blasphemy, since they saw in Him a mere man. It is at the same time the most triumphant refutation of the charge of Sabbath-breaking. What a sublime apology this! In charging Me, He says to His adversaries, with breaking the law of God, you charge the Law-giver, my Father, with breaking His own law: for my activity continually and in each moment corresponds to His. Owen remarks on this verse: “There is not the shadow of a doubt, that Jesus did here claim, and intended to claim, absolute equality with the Father. What is here most logically inferred, is distinctly stated, Joh_1:1; Col_1:15-17; Heb_1:2-3.”—P. S.]
Joh_5:18. The Jews sought the more to kill him, etc.—The one complex charge (of Sabbath-breaking) now becomes two, and the second is the greater. He has ascribed to Himself a singular relation to God. By this He is supposed to have blasphemed God and incurred the death of the blasphemer, Lev_24:16 (Bengel: “Id misere pro blasphemed habuerunt”). They had already hated Him unto death on the could not easily under the circumstance make out of the Sabbath-breaking, and in their second charge their real intention becomes also the formula one of finding Him guiltu of death. Hence nunc amplius,to interpret for the ìὰëëïí [Bengel], is more suitable than the magis of Meyer. Amplius means not only insuper, but also appertius. Tholuck incorrectly: the murderous wish still remains informatta. The matter still depended on the inquisition only in so far as the pretended blasphemy seemed to be not sufficiently established by Christ’s expression: My Father. “The name of father, except in the much disputed passage, Job_34:36, and in Psa_89:26 where it is descriptive, is not used in the Old Testament as a personal name. In the Apocrypha the individual use of the word first begins to develop itself, Wis_14:3; Sir_23:1; Sir_23:4. Otherwise God is only in the national (theocratic) sense Father of the people, and even in the use of the term in this sense there still appears in the century after Christ a certain reserve, etc. Thus this specific calling of God his Father (comp. ἴäéïò , Rom_8:32) must have been very striking in his mouth.” Tholuck.
[The Jews correctly understood ὁ ðáôÞñ ìïõ (instead of ἡìῶí ) to assert a peculiar and exclusive fatherhood ( ðáôÝñáἵäéïí , patrem proprium) in relation to Jesus such as no mere man could claim, and a peculiar sonship of Jesus such as raised Him above all the children of God and made Him equal in essence with God. (Comp. the ìïíïãåíἠò õἱüò of John and the ἵäïéò õἱüò of Paul, Rom_8:32). But regarding Jesus as a mere man, and evidently a man in His sound senses, the Jews charged Him with blasphemy. This is inevitable from their premises. The only logical alternative is: Christ was either a blasphemer, or equal with God. Comp. 10:33. Alford rema