Gospel of John - 5:1-18

Gospel of John - 5:1-18 • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

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How would you feel if you felt you had been unfaithful to someone who had always loved you, always cared for you, always provided for you … and you threw that person under the bus? Here is a story of a man who threw Jesus under the bus. If there’s hope for him then there’s got to be hope for the rest of us.

John 5:1 ESV

1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

“after this” means little more than “the next thing I would like to tell is this.”

Jesus went up to Jerusalem, as he had at the time of Passover.

Galilee seems to be his main place and trips to Jerusalem are taken only at Festival times.

The festival is unnamed. So we don’t know exactly when this story took place.

What is known is that this could have taken place at any of the festivals.

John 5:2 ESV

2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.

John 5:1 ESV

1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

This information is especially for people unfamiliar with Jerusalem.

Joh_5:1 Instead of “going down” to Capernaum from Cana in Galilee (katabēthi, Joh_4:49), Jesus “went up” [Gr. ἀνέβη.] to Jerusalem, just as he had done at Passover (see Joh_2:13). Having firmly established that Jesus is a Galilean (Joh_2:1-12; Joh_4:3, Joh_4:47, Joh_4:54), the author makes Galilee his point of reference and brings Jesus to Jerusalem only for “a festival of the Jews.” [Gr. ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδίων, without a definite article. Some ancient manuscripts (including א, C, L, 33) have “the festival of the Jews” (ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδίων), as if the author (and perhaps the readers as well) have a specific festival in mind, whether Passover (later called “the festival of the Jews,” Joh_6:4), or Tents (sometimes referred to in Jewish literature simply as “the festival”), or Pentecost (which would have come fifty days after the Passover of chapter 2). But the question is moot because the most reliable ancient witnesses (including B, P66, P75, A, and D) lack the definite article.] Ordinarily the “festival” is named, as either Passover (Joh_2:13; Joh_11:55), Tents, or Tabernacles (Joh_7:2), or Dedication (now known as Hanukkah) (Joh_10:22). Here alone it is unnamed, either deliberately or because the story was preserved and handed down without a precise temporal setting. In Joh_2:13-22 it may have been important that the festival was “the Passover of the Jews” because of veiled references to Jesus’ death and resurrection (Joh_2:17, Joh_2:19-22), anticipating Jesus’ last Passover. Here we find nothing linking the events of the chapter to a specific festival. What turns out to be important instead is that “it was the Sabbath that day” (Joh_5:9; see Joh_5:10, Joh_5:16).

But the question is moot because the most reliable ancient witnesses (including B, P66, P75, A, and D) lack the definite article.] Ordinarily the “festival” is named, as either Passover (Joh_2:13; Joh_11:55), Tents, or Tabernacles (Joh_7:2), or Dedication (now known as Hanukkah) (Joh_10:22). Here alone it is unnamed, either deliberately or because the story was preserved and handed down without a precise temporal setting. In Joh_2:13-22 it may have been important that the festival was “the Passover of the Jews” because of veiled references to Jesus’ death and resurrection (Joh_2:17, Joh_2:19-22), anticipating Jesus’ last Passover. Here we find nothing linking the events of the chapter to a specific festival. What turns out to be important instead is that “it was the Sabbath that day” (Joh_5:9; see Joh_5:10, Joh_5:16).

This gate was the gate sheep being brought to the Temple for sacrifice would enter the city.

If the author has purposely left the festival nameless, he could have done so in order to conceal a departure from chronological order. If the healing to be recorded in this chapter was remembered in connection with Jesus’ first Passover described in chapter 2, then it could have originally been one of the impressive “signs he was doing” that attracted the attention of “many,” including Nicodemus (see Joh_2:23; Joh_3:2). If, as many believe, the story of the temple cleansing was transferred at some point in the tradition from the last week of Jesus’ life to that first Passover in Jerusalem, it would have tended to overshadow other stories already associated with that early visit. The healing recorded in chapter 5 could have been one of those accounts “rescued” from its original setting, given a new literary setting of its own, and made the basis of further controversy between Jesus and the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem (Joh_5:16-18, Joh_5:19-47; see also Joh_7:21-23). None of this, however, sheds light on the Gospel in its present form, where the events described are clearly subsequent to Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem and Judea (2:13-3:36), and to his ministries in Samaria and Galilee (Joh_4:1-54). Whatever the historical facts or traditions, in its literary setting this unnamed “festival of the Jews” could be any festival between the first Passover in Jerusalem (Joh_2:13) and the second Passover (presumably a year later) at the time Jesus fed the multitude in Galilee (Joh_6:4). It is unlikely, therefore, that the author intends us to think of it as Passover. He has left it nameless, and we should do the same. The only reason for mentioning it is to bring Jesus to Jerusalem from Galilee, and for this any “festival” will do. Again (as in Joh_2:13) the mention of “the Jews” in charge of the festival tells us who Jesus’ antagonists will be (see Joh_5:10, Joh_5:15, Joh_5:16, Joh_5:18).

Archeological evidence shows - the Pool of Siloam was a pool used even after the city was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70.

Five porticoes indicates this was a very large place. Lots of sick people were gathered there.

,

John 5:3–5 ESV

3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.

We aren’t told exactly what kind of sickness or illness the man had.

We are told that the man had been there for 38 years and couldn’t get into the pool.

This indicates the man was either lamb or shriveled up.

Couldn’t move - paralyzed

Withered foot or leg.

The fact that the man had been there so many years causes us to wonder how much he actually wanted to be healed - maybe he wasn’t really trying.

Evidently people came here to be healed throughout the year, not just as festival times.

We might have a lot of unanswered questions about what was going on but we definitely know:

A lot of people who were sick and disabled were gathered here.

Out of all those people our attention is on just one man of the many gathered there.

John 5:6 ESV

6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”

The Hebrew name of the place, probably unfamiliar to them and quite uncertain in the manuscripts, is less important to the story than the author’s description of the pool’s “five porticoes” or “colonnades,” and the “multitude of the sick, blind, lame, or shriveled up” lying there (Joh_5:3). The most important ancient witnesses (including P75, B, the Vulgate, and Coptic versions) give the name as “Bethsaida” (P66 offers a slight variation of this), Others (including א and 33) have “Bethzatha,” and still others “Belzetha” (D, and the old Latin), or “Bethesda” (A, C, and the majority of later manuscipts). Conventional wisdom is quick to dismiss “Bethsaida” because it appears to be based on a confusion between this pool in Jerusalem and the town in Galilee that was home to Philip, Andrew, and Simon Peter (see Joh_1:44; Joh_12:21). [See Metzger, Textual Commentary, 208.] Yet this author is quite capable of letting a single name do double duty for two different towns or places (see “Bethany” in Joh_1:28, in Joh_11:1, Joh_11:18, and in Joh_12:1). If he did so here, scribes might well have tried to correct him (just as Origen did at Joh_1:28), by changing “Bethsaida” to “Bethzatha” or “Bethesda” on the basis of what was known about this section of Jerusalem, [Josephus writes of a hill in Jerusalem called “Bezetha,” opposite the Antonia fortress, which gave its name to an area known also as Caenopolis, or “New City” (see War 5.149-51). But “New City” is not the translation of “Bezetha.” George Adam Smith pointed out that this name “cannot mean New-City: probably it stands for Beth-zaith, ‘house’ or ‘district’ of olives” (Jerusalem, 1.244). While “Beth-zaith” is likely a variation of “Bethzatha,” it is also close enough to “Bethsaida” to suggest that the earliest manuscripts (P66, P75, and B) represent not just an assimilation to Joh_1:44, but were in touch with the original name of the place (see 1Ma_7:19 and R. H. Charles, APOT, 1.91, n. 19).] or this pool in particular. [Probably with this pool in mind, the Copper Scroll at Qumran (3Q15, col. 11) refers to “Bet-Eshtadatain” (a dual form in Hebrew, implying twin pools) as “the reservoir where you enter the small pool” (G. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English [Allen Lane: Penguin, 1997], 588).] This is at least as likely as a change in the opposite direction, and for this reason we have followed the earliest manuscripts in reading the name as “Bethsaida” (see n. [Josephus writes of a hill in Jerusalem called “Bezetha,” opposite the Antonia fortress, which gave its name to an area known also as Caenopolis, or “New City” (see War 5.149-51). But “New City” is not the translation of “Bezetha.” George Adam Smith pointed out that this name “cannot mean New-City: probably it stands for Beth-zaith, ‘house’ or ‘district’ of olives” (Jerusalem, 1.244). While “Beth-zaith” is likely a variation of “Bethzatha,” it is also close enough to “Bethsaida” to suggest that the earliest manuscripts (P66, P75, and B) represent not just an assimilation to Joh_1:44, but were in touch with the original name of the place (see 1Ma_7:19 and R. H. Charles, APOT, 1.91, n. 19).]). The “five porticoes,” or covered colonnades, [Among modern interpreters the five colonnades are commonly visualized as framing a square or rectangular pool on four sides, with one additional portico or colonnade in the center dividing the pool into two bathing areas (thus matching the twin pools of the Copper Scroll; see n. 12). This is possible but by no means certain (see Robinson, Priority of John, 55, who comments that such a description fits “reservoirs for supplying water to the temple area of the city,” but “would have been highly unsuitable for a healing sanctuary” because invalids who entered the pool would have been “in imminent danger of drowning”). Robinson points instead to certain small grottoes discovered at a lower level “with steps leading down to them, together with some rectangular stone basins presumably for washing” (56; see also Mackowski, Jerusalem, 81; J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem as Jesus Knew It, 98).] should not be interpreted allegorically, any more than the “six stone water jars” at Cana (Joh_2:6) or the Samaritan woman’s “five husbands” (Joh_4:18). [Allegorical interpretations are as old as Augustine: “That water, then—namely that people—was shut in by the five books of Moses, as by five porches. But those books brought forth the sick, not healed them. For the law convicted, not acquitted sinners” (Tractates on ; NPNF, 1st ser., 7.111).] The five porticoes simply contribute to the impression of a great amount of space, [“Five porticoes” was one more than the four surrounding the outer court of the Jerusalem temple, according to Josephus (see, for example, Josephus, Antiquities 15.395-402; War 5.190-92; also Mackowski, Jerusalem, 123-28).] appropriate to the “multitude” (Joh_5:3) of those who gathered there.

In this story Jesus takes the initiative.

The man didn’t come to Jesus asking to be healed.

Jesus came to where the man was and asked him if he wanted to be healed.

This unlike the royal official in 4:47-8, who came to Jesus asking for his dying son to be healed.

Jesus doesn’t simply ask, “What do you want?”

Jesus asks the man, “Do you want to be healed?”

John 5:7 ESV

7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”

The man suggests there is no one to put him in the pool.

The people think the pool has healing powers, but we are not told whether this is true or not.

The reader wonders why the man never got there in all that time.

John 5:8 ESV

8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”

Jesus ignores the healing power of the pool.

The man was probably hinting that Jesus might help him get to the pool when the water started moving.

The pool is forgotten.

Jesus skips to the final solution: healing.

These words are identical to the words Jesus spoke to the many in , “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk”.

In that story the many had friends, unlike this man, who carried the man.

They made a whole in the roof of an unhappy home owner, who was hosting Jesus.

In both cases the healing was immediate.

So, why mention the mat?

In this story the mat is the man’s property, and he’s not coming back to the Pool of Siloam.

He is out of this place!

John 5:9 ESV

9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.

Jesus asked the question, but He knew the answer: He asked, “Do you want to be healed?” Jesus provided the means to deliver the answer the man wanted - and the man was healed. Instantly.

But this was on the Sabbath.

There were some who would have told Jesus, “You shouldn’t have ought ta done that on the Sabbath.”

The Jews believed that not even God works on the Sabbath, so the command of God was that the Jewish people should not work on the Sabbath.

So, now the story takes a turn, and becomes a story not about a miraculous healing of a man who could not walk, but a story about the true meaning of the Sabbath for those who follow Christ.

We are not told this is the Sabbath until this verse.

Sort of like a Jack in the box, “Surprise!”

So, what is this story going to tell us about the meaning of the Sabbath for Jesus Christ and His followers?

At the end of verse Joh_5:3, the manuscripts diverge. Codex D and some of the old Latin add “paralytics” to the list, possibly because of a similar-sounding story in the synoptic Gospels in which Jesus says, “Get up, pick up your mat and go home,” to a man explicitly called a “paralytic” (Mar_2:10-11; see also Mat_9:6). D had only a few followers in the Latin tradition, but other manuscripts made far more sweeping changes. The first, shorter addition, “waiting for the moving of the water,” appeared also in D and its followers, but in a wide range of later manuscripts and versions as well. Its effect is to explain why so many sick people would congregate in these five covered colonnades at the Bethsaida pool. They were waiting for something, and the reader can infer already that “the moving of the water” in some way represented an opportunity for healing (see Joh_5:7). A much longer addition explains why in much greater detail: “For an angel of the Lord would come down from time to time in the pool and stir up the water. The first one in after the stirring of the water would get well from whatever disease he had.” [Some early manuscripts (D and some old Latin) have the first of these but not the second; others (such as A), the second without the first. But the earliest and most reliable witnesses (including P66, P75, א, B, C*, and 33) have neither. The first variant appears to have been added by scribes to prepare the reader for the sick man’s statement in verse Joh_5:7; the second, to explain further why the water was stirred and why healing properties were attributed to its movement. See Metzger, Textual Commentary, 209.] Interestingly, all the main verbs in this added material confirm the impression that this was not a single event that happened on one memorable day, but something that happened again and again as a common occurrence. [The verbs are all imperfects with the same iterative quality as the κατέκειτο of verse Joh_5:3. This is confirmed by the phrase κατὰ καιρόν (“from time to time”). These verbs are κατέβαινεν (“would come down”) or (in some manuscripts) ἐλούετο (“would bathe”); also ἐτάρασσε (“would stir up”), ὐγιὴς ἐγίνετο (“would get well”), and κατείχετο (“had”).]

These additions (especially the second one) obviously make the Gospel’s readers much more knowledgeable about the situation than they would otherwise be—too knowledgeable, in fact. [Whether the longer addition is based on a scribe’s imagination or on local legend, it has the effect of endorsing the supposed healing qualities of the pool by attributing them to “an angel of the Lord” (ἄγγελος κυρίου). It is doubtful that the author wants to do this, given the fact that Jesus completely bypasses the pool in healing the man with a word. Moreover, despite the promise of angels “going up and coming down over the Son of man” (Joh_1:51), angels play only a very minor role in this Gospel (see only Joh_12:29; Joh_20:12).] All we are supposed to know for the moment is that a large crowd of the sick and disabled gathered regularly at a famous pool in Jerusalem. Our attention is meant to focus on “a certain man” (Joh_5:5) [Gr. τις ἄνθρωπος; compare τις βασιλικός (“a certain royal official,” Joh_4:46). Just as he was first the “royal official” (Joh_4:46, Joh_4:49), then “the man” (Joh_4:50), then “the father” (Joh_4:53), so the man in this story is called “a certain man” (Joh_5:5), then “the sick man” (Joh_5:7), “him who had been cured” (Joh_5:10), “he who had been healed” (Joh_5:13), and finally just “the man” (Joh_5:15).] and his experience “there” (ekei). We will learn of what went on at the pool not from a narrative aside by the author (which is what Joh_5:4 would be if it were genuine), but from the narrative itself. We will see the man through Jesus’ eyes (Joh_5:6), hear the man’s own account of his predicament (

John 5:10 ESV

10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.”

Joh_5:7), and witness a miracle (Joh_5:8-9). The only piece of information we are given in advance is how long the man has been sick—“thirty-eight years.” Here again commentators have looked for allegorical meanings (see n. [Allegorical interpretations are as old as Augustine: “That water, then—namely that people—was shut in by the five books of Moses, as by five porches. But those books brought forth the sick, not healed them. For the law convicted, not acquitted sinners” (Tractates on ; NPNF, 1st ser., 7.111).]), but again unconvincingly. [See, for example, Deu_2:14, “And the length of time we had traveled from Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the Wadi Zered was thirty-eight years, until the entire generation of warriors had perished from the camp, as the Lord had sworn concerning them” (NRSV; see Marsh, 250). Augustine makes a much more elaborate argument: “If, therefore, the number forty possesses the perfecting of the law, and the law is fulfilled only in the twin precepts of love, why dost thou wonder that he was weak and sick, who was short of forty by two?” (Tractates on ; NPNF, 1st ser., 7.113).] More likely, this is a tradition handed down from the time the story was first heard, remembered, and retold, serving here to heighten the impression of a knowledgeable (if not omniscient) author-narrator. [Similar information is given at times in the synoptic Gospels and Acts; for example, “twelve years” (Mar_5:25); “eighteen years” (Luk_13:11); “eight years” (Act_9:33). Here (as in Luk_13:11), the time reference may have something to do with the charge of Sabbath breaking (see Joh_5:9): if the man had waited this long for healing, what would one more day have mattered? (presumably Jesus would have answered as he does in Luk_13:16).] The man’s “sickness,” like that of the royal official’s son at Cana (Joh_4:46) is not named (see also Joh_6:2; Joh_11:3-4). In the earlier incident we learned that it involved a “fever” (Joh_4:52), and in this instance we learn that it makes him unable to walk or get into the water.

Joh_5:6 Arriving in Jerusalem (Joh_5:1), Jesus surveyed the whole scene just described (or so we can assume), but what we are explicitly told that he “saw” is the one man “lying” there, [Gr. τοῦτον … κατακείμενον.] the man to whom we have just been introduced. When Jesus “found out [“Found out” is literally “knew” (γνούς), or “came to know.” Jesus’ knowledge is not supernatural here (as in Joh_2:25, where the verb γινώσκειν is imperfect), but natural (as in Joh_4:1, aorist, as here). Presumably Jesus learned that the man had been sick a long time by being told. If he had known it by divine omniscience, he would have known precisely how long (“thirty-eight years,” Joh_5:5), but the text never claims that he knew that.] that he had been like that [Literally, “that he already had a long time.” The main verb of the clause, “had” (ἔχει, more literally “has,” historic present), echoes the notice in the preceding verse that the man “had been” (ἔχων) sick (literally, “in his sickness”) for thirty-eight years. “In his sickness” (ἐν τῇ ἀσθενείᾳ αὐτοῦ) is implied here as well. Hence our translation, “he had been like that” (for this use of ἔχειν in reference to the time or circumstances of one’s life, see BDAG, 422).] for a long time,” he asked the man, “Do you want [theleis] to get well?” In contrast to his encounter with the royal official at Cana (Joh_4:47-48), Jesus now takes the initiative to heal. His question is straightforward. It carries no hidden rebuke or psychological analysis, as if to say, “Do you really want to get well, or have you become quite comfortable in your life of dependency all these years?” [Lindars hints at such a reading (215): “It is possible to imagine that Jesus’ question has been prompted by the fact that the man has made no attempt to reach the water when it last bubbled up. His reply will then appear to be quite dignified and free from bitterness. The answer is, ‘Yes, but experience has taught me that it is hopeless to try.’ ” But this would have required a different framing of the question: “Don’t you want [οὐ θέλεις] to get well?” (see J. Staley, “Stumbling in the Dark, Reaching for the Light: Reading Character in and 9,” Semeia 53 [1991], 71, n. 8). Moreover, it implies that Jesus is taking account of information which the reader cannot yet know (except from later scribal tradition!). This is possible but not likely.] Instead, Jesus is asking, “What do you want? What can I do for you?” He is saying just what he said to blind Bartimaeus in Mark: “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mar_10:51). [Contrast the leper in Mark, to whom it was a matter of what Jesus “wanted”: “If you want [ἐὰν θέλῃς], you are able to make me clean” (Mar_1:40), and whom Jesus promptly answered, “I want to [θέλω]. Be clean” (Mar_1:41).] Bartimaeus had an answer ready (“that I might see,” Mar_10:51), but here Jesus supplies the obvious answer for the sick man: “to get well.” [Gr. ὑγιὴς γενέσθαι.] “Well” or “healthy” is used only of this healing in John’s Gospel, and it is used repeatedly (see Joh_5:9, Joh_5:11, Joh_5:14, Joh_5:15, and Joh_7:23, as well as the scribal addition in Joh_5:4). To “get well” is as generalized and unspecific as being “sick.” John’s Gospel is not interested in the clinical details or symptoms of the illnesses Jesus cured, only in his ability to make things right by giving life to those in need (see Joh_4:50, Joh_4:53, “your son lives”).

The mat

Joh_5:7 The sick man hears Jesus’ words simply as an offer of help from a kind stranger, so he suggests something Jesus might do for him. “Sir,” [The designation κύριε is “Sir” here, as in the case of the Samaritan woman (Joh_4:11, Joh_4:15, Joh_4:19), not “Lord,” as on the lips of the royal official (Joh_4:49). The sick man attributes no supernatural healing powers to Jesus at this point.] he replies, “I have no one [literally, “no man”] [Gr. ἄνθρωπον οὐκ ἔχω.] to put [“Put” is literally “throw” (βάλῃ), but the verb βάλλειν is common in this weakened sense (BDAG, 163; see, for example, Joh_13:5; Joh_18:11; Joh_20:25).] me into the pool when the water is stirred up.” He needs “a man” (probably male in this instance), either a slave [On ἄνθρωπος as a slave or servant, see BDAG, 81.] or a good friend, [To a modern reader familiar with all the Gospels, the contrast with Mar_2:3-4 is striking. There the paralyzed man had not one but four faithful companions to carry him on his mat to the roof and let him down from there to be healed. It is difficult to say whether or not the writer of John’s Gospel knows this story and is tacitly acknowledging the contrast.] to assist him, and Jesus is a likely candidate. Without the “helps to the reader” provided by later scribes (see Joh_5:3, and n. [Some early manuscripts (D and some old Latin) have the first of these but not the second; others (such as A), the second without the first. But the earliest and most reliable witnesses (including P66, P75, א, B, C*, and 33) have neither. The first variant appears to have been added by scribes to prepare the reader for the sick man’s statement in verse Joh_5:7; the second, to explain further why the water was stirred and why healing properties were attributed to its movement. See Metzger, Textual Commentary, 209.]), we are left to infer that the pool must have had healing qualities (or at least that the sick man thought it did), and that these qualities were in effect only at certain times when the pool was “stirred up,” [Gr. ταράχθῃ.] presumably by an intermittent spring of some sort. “Whenever I get there,” the sick man complains, “someone else goes down ahead of me.” [The scribe or scribes responsible for the explanation added in later manuscripts (Joh_5:4) seem to have interpreted this to mean that only the “first one” (πρῶτος) into the pool after the stirring of the water would be healed, but the language of Joh_5:7 does not require this. “Someone else” (ἄλλος is indefinite, and need not be limited to just one person.] There is reason to suspect his motives. Unless others in the “multitude” at the pool (Joh_5:4) had a slave or close friend by their side, most of them were in the same situation as he. No such healthy companions are mentioned in the author’s opening sketch of the scene (Joh_5:3). The reader is left wondering. In trying to recruit Jesus to help him, is the sick man gaining an unfair advantage? [His complaint, with its emphatic “I” and its close juxtaposition of ἐγώ and ἄλλος, sounds whining and self-centered: “whenever I get there [ἐν ᾧ δὲ ἔρχομαι ἐγώ], someone else [ἄλλος] goes down ahead of me.”]

Joh_5:8 Jesus will have none of it. Instead, ignoring the pool and its supposed healing powers, he tells the man, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” The setting of the incident, so elaborately introduced (Joh_5:2-3), is virtually forgotten. Jesus and the sick man are still at the pool, but it no longer matters. They could be anywhere. Readers familiar with other Gospels will remember a story in which Jesus and a paralytic are in Galilee, not Jerusalem, and in a house, not by a pool. Unlike the sick man here, this man had friends to help him (not one but four!) who carried him on a “mat” (Mar_2:4), [A “mat” (κράβατος, as here) was a poor man’s bed that could also serve as a pallet or stretcher (see BDAG, 563). Matthew and Luke prefer other terms, such as κλίνη (Mat_9:2, Mat_9:6; Luk_5:18), or its diminutive κλινίδιον (Luk_5:19, Luk_5:24).] and dug through a roof to get to Jesus. Jesus’ words to this man were the same: “Get up, pick up your mat and walk” (Mar_2:9). In both instances the healing was immediate, and the ensuing action matched the command almost word for word. The paralytic “got up and at once [Gr. καὶ εὐθύς.] picked up his mat and went out” (Mar_2:12). In our story, “all at once [Gr. καὶ εὐθέως.] the man was well, and he picked up his mat and walked” (

Joh_5:9).

The Jews make an entrance now.

A natural question to ask in both stories is, Why mention the “mat”? Why not just say “Get up and walk?” [At one point in the Markan story of the paralytic, Matthew and Luke change Jesus’ command to exactly that (Mat_9:5; Luk_5:23). At that moment, Jesus is simply deliberating what he might say.Two verses later, when he actually says it, Matthew and Luke follow Mark’s wording more closely: “Get up, pick up your mat and go to your house” (Mat_9:6; Luk_5:24). When he obeys, Mark and Luke have him taking his mat (Mar_2:12; Luk_5:25), while Matthew simply states that he “got up and went to his house” (Mat_9:8).] In Mark the answer is fairly clear. The paralytic was brought in to Jesus on a “mat,” but now he no longer needs it. Carrying his mat signals his newfound independence and marks his departure from the scene. He does not walk simply to demonstrate his ability to walk, but he goes home, and because the mat is his property he takes it with him (see Mar_2:11, Mar_2:12). In John’s Gospel, although the mat has not been mentioned before, the reader can infer something similar. In telling the sick man, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk,” Jesus is not saying, “Get up and walk around to prove to everyone that you are healed.” He is saying, “Get up, leave this place and take your mat with you, because you aren’t coming back. You don’t need to stay here any longer.” [Up to this point the “mat” seems more at home in the Markan story than here, suggesting that details from that story might have influenced the telling of this one. But as soon as the Sabbath is mentioned (Joh_5:9), the place of the mat, and the act of carrying of the mat, in the story becomes unmistakably clear.]

They don’t like what they see: A man carrying a mat.

Joh_5:9 The notice that the man “got well” recalls Jesus’ initial question whether he wanted to “get well” (Joh_5:6). [Gr. ὑγιὴς γενέσθαι, in verse Joh_5:6; ἐγένετο ὑγιής here.] Whatever doubts there may have been about the man’s motives (see Joh_5:7), Jesus knows that he truly wants to “get well,” and he grants his wish unreservedly, with no requirement, or even any mention, of “faith” (contrast Joh_4:50, Joh_4:53; also Mar_2:5). The story now takes a decisive turn, with the abrupt comment that “it was the Sabbath that day” (Joh_5:9). The notice, like some other narrative asides in John (see Joh_1:24, Joh_1:28; Joh_3:24), comes belatedly. Both here and later in the case of the blind man at the pool of Siloam (Joh_9:14), the author waits until the healing is over to tell us that it is the Sabbath, in contrast to several healing stories in other Gospels in which we know from the start that this will be an issue (see Mar_2:23; Mar_3:2; Luk_13:10; Luk_14:3). The effect of the news is to change the story’s direction. Its setting is the weekly Sabbath now, not simply an unnamed yearly “festival of the Jews” (Joh_5:1), and the Sabbath will determine the story line from here on.

This is actually a violation of the Sabbath.

Later in this chapter they will accuse Jesus of violating the Sabbath because he told the man to do this.

This carrying the mat, was one of the 39 activities specifically mentioned in the Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments.

The Babylonian Talmud, Volumes 1–20: Original Text, Edited, Corrected, Formulated, and Translated into English Chapter VII: The General Rule concerning the Principal Acts of Labor on Sabbath

MISHNA II.: The principal acts of labor (prohibited on the Sabbath) are forty less one—viz.: Sowing, ploughing, reaping, binding into sheaves, threshing, winnowing, fruit-cleaning, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, wool-shearing, bleaching, combing, dyeing, spinning, warping, making two spindle-trees, weaving two threads, separating two threads (in the warp), tying a knot, untying a knot, sewing on with two stitches, tearing in order to sew together with two stitches, hunting deer, slaughtering the same, skinning them, salting them, preparing the hide, scraping the hair off, cutting it, writing two (single) letters (characters), erasing in order to write two letters, building, demolishing (in order to rebuild), kindling, extinguishing (fire), hammering, transferring from one place into another. These are the principal acts of labor—forty less one.

The Babylonian Talmud, Volumes 1–20: Original Text, Edited, Corrected, Formulated, and Translated into English Chapter VII: The General Rule concerning the Principal Acts of Labor on Sabbath

This man was caught red handed.

What mat?

The one in your hand.

And Jesus put him up to it.

Jesus got the man out of one jam and put him in another one.

What is the man going to say to get out of this?

Do you think Jesus didn’t know this was going to happen?

I think we can be sure Jesus intended for this to happen.

Why?

John 5:11–12 ESV

11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’ ” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?”

Are we to infer that Jesus knew this when he told the sick man to carry off his mat? From what we know of the Johannine Jesus, we can be sure that nothing he says or does is unintentional. He knew exactly what he was doing, and his command to “Get up, pick up your mat and walk” was a deliberate challenge to the religious authorities in Jerusalem and their Sabbath laws. [Schnackenburg (2.97) makes precisely this point, even though he considers it a secondary feature of the narrative: “The evangelist makes it look like deliberate provocation.… Originally, Jesus’ instruction was simply part of the pattern of the story (compare Mar_2:11), but the evangelist uses it to show how Jesus is bound to carry out only the will of his Father and to ‘work’ when he sees the Father ‘working’ (verses Joh_5:17, Joh_5:19), even if this means conflict with the Jewish sabbath laws.” Provocation may also be implied by the initial reference to the length of the man’s infirmity (Joh_5:5): if he had been sick for thirty-eight years, what harm could be done by waiting another day to avoid the Sabbath?] With their words, “it is not lawful,” [Gr. οὐκ ἐξεστίν.] the issue is joined (compare Mar_2:24, Mar_2:26; Mar_3:4). If not a Sabbath breaker himself, Jesus has at least contributed to the delinquency of one. [In the first Sabbath dispute in the Synoptics (Mar_2:23-28 and par.), the issue is similarly the action of those associated with Jesus, not Jesus himself.]

This man, who was healed by Jesus, throws Jesus under the bus!

He didn’t say, “The devil made me do it?”

He didn’t even say, “Jesus made me do it.”

He said, “The man who healed me made me do it.”

And, I think Jesus knew the man was going to do it from the moment he healed the man.

The man acknowledges that Jesus healed him.

The Jews don’t care.

Jesus ignored the healing powers of the Pool of Siloam.

The Jews ignore Jesus’ powers of healing.

In their minds it would have been much better to have the man remain crippled.

But, just who was that unnamed man who healed this formerly crippled man?

Was it someone who carried him to the pool of Siloam?

Was it a Pharisee?

Was it a Saducee?

Was it one of the disciples?

Was it a doctor?

Who was it?

John 5:13 ESV

13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.

Remember this had been a crowded place with lots and lots of people.

The man didn’t know Jesus’ name.

Jesus ducked out in the midst of the crowd.

John 5:14 ESV

14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”

“afterward” or “after these things” indicates a period of time passes.

Jesus finds the man.

Not the man who is looking for Jesus.

He finds the man in the Temple.

Jesus tells the man two things:

Jesus does not say, “Follow me.”

“You are well” - remember when you weren’t.

Jesus gives the man a very difficult command: “Sin no more.”

“Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”

Until now there has been no mention of forgiveness, or confession of sin.

On Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem we are told that Jesus knows what is in the person. ().

So, we should not be surprised that Jesus knew this man was a sinner, after every man is a sinner.

What does the warning mean, “that nothing worse may happen to you”?

We can assume that Jesus is telling the man that his sins have been forgiven.

In fact, being forgiven is a healing of the soul, just as much as being able to walk was a healing of the man’s physical body.

We know that the Bible teaches that sickness is a product of sin.

We also know that if you become very sick, you will die.

Death is the something “worse” Jesus is talking about.

John 5:15 ESV

15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

The man ...

Makes no reply.

He doesn’t give Jesus any word of thanks.

He offers no expression of faith.

Does this mean believe in Jesus, or has he just thrown Jesus under the bus?

John 5:16

John 5:16 ESV

16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.

The Jews become determined to get Jesus.

Jesus probably did a lot of similar things on the Sabbath.

The Gospel writer seems convinced that Jesus really did breath the Sabbath.

“He was doing these things on the Sabbath.

Jesus probably did a lot of other similar things on the Sabbath that made them angry.

John 5:17 ESV

17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

This explains why Jesus broke the Sabbath.

Jesus breaks the Sabbath because His Father breaks the Sabbath.

God the Father never really stopped working.

He’s still working.

So, Jesus is still working, even on the Sabbath.

The man threw Jesus under the bus.

Is Jesus throwing God the Father under the bus?

Of course not!

Jesus point is that God hasn’t stopped working.

We’re all still here.

The sun rises on the Sabbath as well as all the other days.

The lights haven’t gone out all over the universe.

God is still working, holding creation together.

The point is: God is violating the Sabbath.

And, if God violates the Sabbath.

And Jesus is God.

Then Jesus will also violate the Sabbath.

So, don’t you get any ideas about violating the Sabbath because you aren’t God.

So, how would you expect the Jews to respond to an answer like that?

Joh_5:13 For now the question of “who it was” goes unanswered. Jesus’ identity remains a mystery to those who do not believe. “He who had been healed” did not know Jesus’ name, and could not point him out because “Jesus had ducked out [Gr. ἐξένευσεν. Colloquial English (“ducked out”) captures quite well the sense of the verb, which suggests a dodge or a turning of the head (compare νεύει, Joh_13:24, and see Barrett, 255; also Field, Notes, 88, 100).]—there was a crowd in the place.” The implication is that he made his escape quite intentionally, knowing what the authorities had in mind. [This is the first of several instances in which an elusive Jesus escapes potential arrest or even stoning, sometimes with the notice that “his hour had not yet come” (Joh_7:30; Joh_8:20; also Joh_7:32-34, Joh_7:45-46; Joh_8:59; Joh_10:39; Joh_12:36; and see Luk_4:30).] The “crowd in the place” [Gr. ὄχλου ὄντος ἐν τῷ τόπῷ.] brings the narrative back to the opening description of “the place” (the pool at Bethsaida, Joh_5:2), and the “multitude” of the sick lying there (Joh_5:3). Yet this “crowd” cannot simply be identified with that “multitude,” for it seems to be made up of onlookers standing and milling around, more like the ubiquitous “crowds” in Mark’s Gospel. As we have seen, the healing could have happened anywhere, but the author reminds us again of the pool and the opening scene, just in time to set the stage for an abrupt change of venue to a very different kind of “place.”

Joh_5:14 “After these things” again (as in Joh_5:1) marks an undisclosed time lapse and a break in the narrative. At the first Passover (Joh_2:14), Jesus had “found in the temple” money changers and sellers of livestock. This time, at another “festival of the Jews” (see Joh_5:1) he “finds” the man he had healed, again “in the temple.” [Gr. εὑρίσκει … ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ.] Presumably the temple was his destination from the start, when he “went up to Jerusalem” for the festival (

Do you think they might be feeling like someone just threw them under the bus?

Joh_5:1), until he was caught up in the scene at the pool. Having left that “place” abruptly (Joh_5:13), he would inevitably go to the temple, “the place where one must worship” (Joh_4:20), [See Joh_11:48, where Caiaphas the Chief Priest fears that the Romans will take away “our place [ἡμῶν τὸν τόπον] and our nation.”] above all at Jewish festivals. In short, Jesus had reasons to be in the temple that had nothing to do with the man at the pool. Still, their meeting is not a chance encounter. Jesus “finds” the man quite intentionally, just as he “found” Philip (Joh_1:43) when he enlisted him as a disciple, just as Andrew “found” Simon Peter (Joh_1:41) and Philip “found” Nathanael (Joh_1:45). [See also Joh_9:35, where Jesus “found” the man born blind and asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of man?”]

Instead of “Follow me” (Joh_1:43), Jesus makes a more modest—but at the same time more ominous—demand. First he reminds the man of the miracle at the pool: “Look, you have gotten well.” [Gr. ἴδε ὑγιὴς γέγονας (see Joh_5:6, Joh_5:9, Joh_5:11).] Then he adds the thinly veiled warning, “Don’t sin any more, [Gr. μηκέτι ἁμάρτανε.] or something worse may happen to you.” If the notice that “it was the Sabbath that day” (Joh_5:9) caught the reader up short and changed the course of the story, so too does this belated warning from Jesus. It is the first occurrence of the verb “to sin” in John’s Gospel. Neither the first disciples, nor Nathanael, nor Nicodemus, nor even the Samaritan woman (despite Joh_4:18), were said to have “sinned.” Nor did the healing of the royal official’s son address any “sins” of either the child or the father. [The one place in Johannine tradition where sin does enter the picture is the story inserted in the majority of later manuscripts about a woman caught in adultery (). Possibly the language of Joh_5:14 has influenced the ending of that story, where Jesus’ last words to the woman are “Nor do I condemn you. Go, and from now on sin no more” (μηκέτι ἁμάρτανε, Joh_8:11). But there Jesus adds no warning about “something worse.”] The reader may have sensed a certain selfishness and duplicity in the behavior of the sick man at the pool, but there has been no hint up to now that Jesus judged or condemned him, or for that matter forgave him. All he said was “Do you want to get well?” (Joh_5:6), and “Get up, pick up your mat and walk” (Joh_5:8). Yet if we remember Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem, we will also remember that he “knew what was in the person” (Joh_2:25). If Jesus knew “what was in” people in general (enough not to “entrust himself” to them), we need not be surprised that he knew what was in this particular man—specifically that he was a sinner. Jesus would hardly have failed to notice what even the attentive reader is able to infer. Yet why does Jesus issue this warning? “Look, you have gotten well” is what we expect (see Joh_5:6, Joh_5:9, Joh_5:11, Joh_5:15). “Don’t sin any more, or something worse will happen to you,” is not. It sounds as if it belongs in that other story, the one in which Jesus proposed healing someone with the words, “Your sins are forgiven” (Mar_2:5), and then demonstrated dramatically that “Your sins are forgiven” and “Get up, pick up your mat and walk” amount to the same thing (Mar_2:9-12). No such demonstration has taken place here, yet the man Jesus healed is supposed to understand that “Look, you have gotten well” is equivalent to “Look, your sins are forgiven.” Or if he does not understand it, at least the reader is expected to. Either way, the warning follows as a logical corollary.

This story in John’s Gospel and the story of the paralytic in Mark appear to be intertwined in the Gospel tradition. At least one detail, as we have seen—the picking up of the mat—turned out to be even more at home in this story than in the other, because of the issue of working on the Sabbath. Now we find that another—the link between healing and the forgiveness of sin—was integral to the Markan story from the start, but comes in here almost as an afterthought. While Mark’s account of the paralytic helps us fill in the gaps and make sense of the narrative in John, can we assume that John’s readers would have been familiar with Mark? Probably not. Without help from Mark, what do we make of Jesus’ warning to the man he had healed? It implies that a connection between sickness and personal sin is at least a distinct possibility. The possibility is later raised explicitly by Jesus’ disciples on encountering the beggar who was blind from birth (Joh_9:2), and Jesus did not claim that such a connection was unthinkable, only that it did not apply in that instance (Joh_9:3). On the other hand, the issue never came up in the case of the royal official’s son, nor does it when Jesus learns of the illness of his friend Lazarus (Joh_11:3). Jesus in this Gospel views sickness first of all as an opportunity for healing and salvation (see Joh_9:3-4; Joh_11:4), not as a punishment for sin, and the same is true here.

John 5:18 ESV

18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

At most there is an analogy between sin and sickness in that both can lead to death or not, depending on circumstances and severity. “Lord, come down before my little child dies!” the royal official said (Joh_4:49), and Jesus assures his disciples that the illness of Lazarus will not “lead to death” (Joh_11:4). In heated debate, Jesus warns his hostile questioners, “You will die in your sin” (Joh_8:21), or “in your sins” (Joh_8:24), and another Johannine writing draws a distinction between sin “leading to death” and sin “not leading to death” (1Jn_5:16-17). [Gr. πρὸς θάνατον, and μὴ πρὸς θάνατον respectively.] In the present passage, too, death (whether physical or spiritual) is presumably the “something worse” [Gr. χεῖρόν τι.] of which Jesus warns the man. [The warning is intentionally vague, as in the saying of Jesus, “The last things become worse than the first” (see Mat_12:45//Luk_11:26; also 2Pe_2:20).] His fate remains uncertain. The sick man has “gotten well,” and by implication his past sins have been forgiven, [We may compare not only Mar_2:5, Mar_2:9-10, but also Jas_5:15 : “And the prayer of faith will save the ailing one, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.” The latter is obviously not a perfect analogy because the sick person is a Christian believer (τις ἐν ὑμῖν, Joh_5:14).] yet he is not “born from above,” as Jesus told Nicodemus a person must be (see Joh_3:3, Joh_3:6). His status, like that of Nicodemus himself, is still undecided. We do not know, and will never know for certain, whether this man is one “who practices wicked things” and “does not come to the light” (Joh_3:20), or one who “comes to the light, so that his works will be revealed as works wrought in God” (Joh_3:21). But we can guess.

They weren’t laughing.

The authorities began pursuing Jesus to kill him.

He was a Sabbath breaker - true - but there is one who can righteously break the Sabbath because the Sabbath was created to glorify Him, not to condemn Him.

We set time aside to glorify God.

But God doesn’t really need to set time aside to glorify Himself, that’s our job.

They finally caught on that Jesus was calling God His Father, and now it really bothered them.

When he had thrown the money changers out of the Temple he called the Temple His Father’s house, but they never objected then ().

This time they don’t try to understand what Jesus means by “work”. More on that later.

The Jews only hear:

“My father”

Claims to be equal with God.

The Gospel writer’s conclusions:

Jesus did break the Sabbath to show who He is.

Jesus did claim to be equal with God.

“I am working”

Could be a claim to be the Messiah.

Could be a claim to be equal to God.

The second claim is of greater concern to the Jewish pursuers.

Making oneself equal to God was blasphemy, and was a denial of the Jewish understanding of monothesism.

But Jesus really is God.

Will you believe in Jesus now?

Joh_5:15 The immediate outlook is not good. The man said nothing in reply, no word of thanks, no expression of belief, no commitment to stop sinning. Instead, he “went away [Gr. ἀπῆλθεν.] and told the Jews that it was Jesus who made him well.” Much later, after the raising of Lazarus, we will hear of many who “had come to Mary and seen the things he had done” and “believed in him” (Joh_11:45), and of others who instead “went off [Gr. ἀπῆλθον.] to the Pharisees and told them the things Jesus had done” (Joh_11:46). Those who were not believers became informants, and their information led to the Sanhedrin’s decision that Jesus must die (see Joh_11:47-53). The long process that ended with that decision begins here at this early “festival of the Jews,” and here too the informant is not a believer, at least not yet and perhaps never. As soon as Jesus said to him, “Don’t sin any more,” he “went away” and did exactly that. As for the “something worse” awaiting him, it is left to our imaginations.

Joh_5:16 “The Jews” at Jerusalem did not care that “it was Jesus who made him well” (Joh_5:15), only that Jesus had done so by telling him to pick up his mat (Joh_5:12). “For this” [Gr. διὰ τοῦτο, “on account of this,” or “for this reason.”] they “pursued” or “persecuted” Jesus. Here, as at the beginning of the chapter, the imperfect tenses are noteworthy. The verb “pursued” (ediōkon, imperfect) describes a repeated or constant action, a fixed policy of regarding Jesus as a marked man. [Much later Jesus will look back on this fixed policy as if it were a single completed act, telling his disciples: “if they persecuted me [ἐδίωξαν, aorist], they will persecute you” (Joh_15:20).] If we assume that this was already the case in light of his actions in the temple earlier, then it could be translated “kept pursuing.” But if it was not (and we have no evidence that it was), then the verb should be rendered “began pursuing,” and this is the course we have followed in translation. By the same token, what Jesus “did” on the Sabbath is not viewed here as a single act of healing, but as part of a regular pattern of behavior. Probably we are meant to conclude that Jesus “did such things [Edwin Abbott, after commenting that “the evangelist seems to indicate a ‘beginning’ to persecute, dating from a special act,” added that “perhaps ‘these things’ means ‘such things as this’ ” (Johannine Grammar, 337). Translating ταῦτα as “such things” is a way of doing justice to the iterative quality of the imperfect ἐποίει, referring to things Jesus did repeatedly or customarily.] on the Sabbath” more than once, even though only one instance has been given (see Joh_20:30; Joh_21:25). [Later Jesus will speak of “one work” he has done on the Sabbath (Joh_7:21, with Joh_7:23), but we also hear of crowds who followed him “because they had seen the signs he had been doing for those who were sick” (Joh_6:2). These signs (whether on the Sabbath or not) are not all recorded, but we know that Jesus will heal on the Sabbath at least one more time (see Joh_9:14).] It is important to note that this was the perception not only of “the Jews” but of the Gospel writer. Like the other Gospel writers, he is convinced that Jesus actually did violate Sabbath law, but equally convinced that he was fully justified in doing so.

With the pronouncement, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working,” Jesus injects himself into the equation. The result is a kind of riddle, [Curiously, it is not listed among Jesus’ riddles in Tom Thatcher’s survey, The Riddles of Jesus in John (184-87). It is difficult to see why Joh_2:16, for example, is included and Joh_5:17 is not. Thatcher admits, “This list may not be exhaustive. Other large sections of FG in which Jesus speaks of his identity and mission, such as chapters 5 and 15, may include statements which FE understood to be riddles but which cannot be identified by these criteria” (187). Possibly he excludes Joh_5:17 because “the Jews” expressed no confusion (see his four criteria, 183), but essentially they drew a blank (Joh_5:18), just as they did after the pronouncement in Joh_2:16 (see Joh_2:18).] open to several possible interpretations. Does it mean that after creating the world God continued working until now, but that now Jesus takes over in God’s place? Or does it mean that God continued working and is still at work, only now through Jesus the Son? [“Until now” (ἕως ἄρτι) can refer to conditions prevailing up to, but not including, the present (Joh_2:10; Joh_16:24), or to conditions up to and including the present, and beyond (1Jn_2:9, and probably here).] Or that God has been at work ever since creation, first through the preexistent Son and now through the incarnate Son? Or is it simply that God is still at work, and Jesus is God’s imitator, like a son apprenticed to his father? [As has often been noted, the words in themselves and out of context could simply be read, “My father has always been a working man, and I’m a working man too”! On the apprenticed son, see Dodd, Historical Tradition, 386, n. 2, and in RHPR 42 (1962), 107-15] There is no sure way to tell what the relation is between the Father’s work and the work of the Son. Interpretations will vary according to the degree of sophistication the reader brings to the text. The implication in any event is that because God breaks the Sabbath Jesus can do so as well, and for that reason alone the “riddle” (if that is the right word) is highly provocative. [In its implication, the pronouncement is comparable to the principle laid down in all three synoptic Gospels that “the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath” (see Mat_12:8, Mar_2:28; and Luk_6:5).] Beyond this, all the reader has to go on is Jesus’ earlier comment to his disciples that “My food is that I might do the will of the One who sent me and complete his work” (ergon, Joh_4:34). Not surprisingly, he now identifies “the One who sent me” unmistakably as “my Father” (compare Joh_2:16), implicitly claiming for himself the title of God’s “One and Only” (Joh_1:14, Joh_1:18; Joh_3:16), or “Son” sent into the world (see Joh_3:17, Joh_3:34-35). The stage is set for a confrontation, or more precisely a series of confrontations, not limited to a single occasion, or to one Sabbath or one unnamed festival, but spanning the rest of the first half of John’s Gospel (chapters 5-12).

Joh_5:18 The answer to Jesus’ “answer” echoes Joh_5:16, where “for this,” that is, for healing on the Sabbath, the Jerusalem authorities “began pursuing” Jesus. Here too it is “for this,” [Again, διὰ τοῦτο (see above, n. 66).] for what he has just said, that they “kept seeking all the more to kill him.” The reader now learns that when the authorities “began pursuing” Jesus (Joh_5:16), their intent was “to kill.” [Gr. ἀποκτεῖναι.] Now they are “all the more” [Gr. μᾶλλον.] determined to do so, and they will persist in this intent throughout the Gospel (see Joh_7:1, Joh_7:19, Joh_7:20, Joh_7:25; Joh_8:37, Joh_8:40; Joh_11:53; Joh_18:31). [Abbott, by contrast (Johannine Grammar, 568), suggests that μᾶλλον signals a change of plans: “they rather sought to kill him [than merely to persecute him as before].” But the verses listed confirm the reader’s impression that “pursuing” or “persecuting” Jesus always entailed seeking his death (compare Schnackenburg, 2.462, n. 31). The same will be true of the persecution of Jesus’ disciples (see Joh_15:20-21; Joh_16:2).] Again the imperfect tenses are conspicuous. They “kept seeking” to kill Jesus, not only because he was breaking the Sabbath on a regular basis—in their eyes “abolishing” it [Gr. ἔλυεν. The verb λύειν in relation to the Sabbath (as here), or the law (see Joh_7:23; also Mat_5:19), or the Scripture (see Joh_10:35), appears to mean more than simply transgress or violate or disregard, but rather to annul, destroy, or abolish (see BDAG, 607). It is never used of the Sabbath in any of the other Gospels.]—but for an even deeper reason: he “was claiming God as his own Father.” [“Claiming” is ἔλεγεν. That is, he was “saying that” God was his Father.] They are referring of course to what he has just said, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (Joh_5:17), but they make no explicit attempt to interpret what he means either by his “work” or the Father’s “work.” All they seem to hear is the expression, “my Father.” [Gr. ὁ πατήρ μου. Odeberg (The Fourth Gospel, 203) disagrees, commenting that Jesus’ blasphemy “consisted not in his calling the Holy One his Father, but in his presuming upon a peculiar sonship in virtue of which he had the right of performing the same ‘continual work’ as his Father.” In short, he was a rebellious Son, saying in effect, “ ‘I am equal with, as good as, my Father.’ ”] That, perhaps together with his use of the emphatic

“I” (kagō) is what provokes them. From it they conclude three things: that Jesus is referring to God, that he is claiming God as “his own Father,” and therefore that he is claiming to be “equal to God.” [Gr. ἴσον τῷ θεῷ.]

As far as the Gospel writer is concerned, these are perfectly legitimate conclusions: Jesus did “break the Sabbath,” [The verb “break” (ἔλυεν) could imply that Jesus did away with, or abolished, the Sabbath (see BDAG, 607). Yet the notice simply reinforces what was said in verse Joh_5:16 (that Jesus “did such things” on the Sabbath). To the Jewish authorities this may have been tantamount to abolishing the Sabbath, yet they would also have assumed that one man cannot “abolish” an ordinance of God, only violate it. Jesus will later be charged not with abolishing the Sabbath, but simply “not keeping” it (οὐ τηρεῖ, Joh_9:16). As for the Gospel writer, what is said here must be read in light of what Jesus says elsewhere, that one legitimately keeps the Sabbath by healing or doing good (see Joh_7:23; also Mar_3:4; Luk_13:16; Luk_14:3).] he did claim God as “his own Father,” and he did claim to be “equal to God.” [The emphasis is somewhat different from Paul’s in Php_2:6, where Jesus did not consider “being equal to God” (τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ) something to be “grasped” or “seized” (ἁρπαγμόν). To the author of John, this would have been because equality with God was already his.] The text presents these affirmations not simply as what “the Jews” thought Jesus was saying, but as what he was saying, and what was in fact the case. [Contrast Dodd, who argues that “if the evangelist had been asked whether or not he intended to affirm that Christ was ἴσος τῷ θεῷ, he would have replied that ἴσος, whether affirmed or denied, is not the proper term to use in this context” (Interpretation, 327-28). On the contrary, it is precisely the term of the Gospel writer’s choosing, not as a straw man or a misconception that needs to be corrected, but as a true characterization of Jesus. It only needs to be elaborated and spelled out, and this Jesus will do in the discourse that follows. Still, Dodd’s discussion of the matter (320-28) is highly illuminating.] Yet the repeated mention of “the Jews” (Joh_5:16, Joh_5:18) also highlights the fact that such claims were highly problematic within Judaism, as much so or more than breaking the Sabbath. Philo, for example, even while acknowledging that “to imitate God’s works is a pious act,” cautioned that “the mind shows itself to be without God and full of self-love, when it deems itself as on a par with God; [Gr. ἴσος εἶναι θεῷ.] and, whereas passivity is its true part, looks on itself as an agent. When God sows and plants noble qualities in the soul, the mind that says, ‘I plant’ is guilty of impiety.” [Allegory of the Laws 1.48-49 (LCL, 1.177). The Apostle Paul, significantly, once said the very thing Philo warned against (ἐγὼ ἐφύτευσα, “I planted”), but was quick to add, “but God made it grow” (1Co_3:6). Here too we will see Jesus adding crucial qualifications in the discourse that follows.] Philo’s warning against the emphatic “I” (egō) suggests that in John as well part of the offense may be traceable to Jesus’ emphatic conclusion, “and I am working.” [Gr. κἀγὼ ἐργάζομαι.] Jesus’ claim that God was “his own Father” [Gr. πατέρα ἴδιον.] meant that God was (in C. H. Dodd’s words) “his father in a sense other than that in which any Israelite might speak of Him as ‘our Father in heaven.’ ” [Dodd, Interpretation, 325.] This could mean that he was speaking as Israel’s Messiah, [See, for example, (NRSV) 2Sa_7:14, “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me,” and Psa_89:26-27, “He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation!’ I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” This is in keeping with what the reader already knows about Jesus: that he is both “Son of God” and “King of Israel” (see Joh_1:49).] or it could mean (as both “the Jews” and the Gospel writer assume) that he was speaking as a divine being. To the Gospel writer these are not mutually exclusive options, but to Jesus’ questioners the latter was the primary concern. In a later confrontation they will say, “It’s not about a good work that we stone you, but about blasphemy, and because you, being a man, are making yourself God” (Joh_10:33). [The grammar is similar: “making himself [ἑαυτὸν ποιῶν] equal to God” (Joh_5:18), and “make yourself [ποιεῖς σεαυτόν] God” (Joh_10:33).] To the Jewish mind, making oneself “equal to God” (Joh_5:18) represented at the very least a first step toward the outright blasphemy of making oneself “God” (theos, Joh_10:33), [In the Graeco-Roman world, the often-quoted words of Apollonius of Tyana assume only a difference of degree between the two designations: “Other men regard me as the equal of the gods [ἰσόθεον], and some of them even as a god [θεόν], but until now my own country alone ignores me” (Philostratus, Epistle 44).] and in that sense a denial of Jewish monotheism. [Judaism guarded its monotheism rigorously against any notion of “two Powers” (שׁתי רשׁיות) or authorities, or a “second God” (see the classic discussions in G. F. Moore, Judaism, 1.364-67; Odeberg, The Fourth Gospel, 203-4; and Dodd, Interpretation, 324-27). See Sifre Deuteronomy §329, adducing Deu_32:39 (“there is no god beside me”) as the correct reply both to those who say “there is no authority” and those who say “there are two authorities in heaven” (J. Neusner, Sifre to Deuteronomy: An Analytical Translation [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987], 2.374). So too Mekilta to : “Scripture, therefore, would not let the nations of the world have an excuse for saying that there are two Powers, but declares: ‘I am the Lord thy God.’ ” And “Rabbi Nathan says: From this one can cite a refutation of the heretics who say: There are two Powers” (Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael [trans. J. Z. Lauterbach; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1976], 2.231-32).] Yet the reader of the Gospel has known from the start that “God” (theos) is exactly what Jesus is (see Joh_1:1, Joh_1:18), so that to hear it from Jesus’ own lips (implicitly) and from his opponents (explicitly) comes as no surprise, but as confirmation. With the notice that the issue is “not only” (ou monon) the Sabbath, but Jesus’ claims about himself, we move decisively from the realm of legal observance to the realm of christology. The question “Who is the man?” (Joh_5:12) will more and more take center stage. Jesus’ answer (Joh_5:19-47) will primarily address that question, and only secondarily (and indirectly) the issue of the Sabbath.

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