Bible Notes. Man at the Pool of Bethesda. John 5:1-9, After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Transcription

1 Bible Notes Biblos Foundation Man at the Pool of Bethesda John 5:1-9, 14 1 After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Scholars do not agree on what feast this was Passover, Pentecost, or Feast of the Tabernacles. There is no way of knowing for certain. 2 Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. John is speaking of the area northeast of the Temple where the sheep were brought into Jerusalem for sacrifice; and the name of the pool was Bethesda (AB John i-xii.206). Bethesda means house of mercy. In this century the pool described in John has been discovered and excavated in Jerusalem on the property of the White Fathers near St. Anne s Church. The pool was trapezoidal in form, feet wide by 315 feet long, divided by a central partition. There were colonnades on four sides and on the partition thus, John s five porticoes. Stairways in the corners permitted descent into the pools (AB John i-xii.207). The word porch commonly means a covered place surrounding a building where people could sit in hot or wet weather. In this healing, it might have meant five covered areas where the sick could rest until the troubling of the water. Could the five porches symbolize the five physical senses where man has made his bed? 3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. Impotent in Greek is astheneo, which means people who were weak and feeble by long disease (Thayer 80). Halt is cholos and means deprived of a foot, maimed, crippled (Thayer 674). 4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. Copyright 2011 Biblos Foundation Bible Notes are prepared exclusively for paid members of Biblos Foundation. Duplication prohibited except with permission. To join, please visit

2 Man at the Pool of Bethesda for February 28, 2010 page 2 The water at certain times of the year was thought to have healing properties if it was agitated, perhaps by a spring bubbling up from underneath. This doesn t mean an angel was seen by anyone, but perhaps the people could see the effects of something troubling the water, and then they would descend into it. The men who could descend into the water while it was agitated would be healed, not immediately, but over a period of time. 5 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. This suggests that the number is symbolic, e.g., the 38 years of wandering in Deut. 2:14. It was one of the ways of underlining the hopelessness of the case (AB John i-xii.207). We know not what his disease was. We know only that it disabled him from walking, and that it was of very long standing. It was doubtless regarded as incurable (Barnes 287). Somehow this man had shattered his nervous system by a life of sensual indulgence and it manifested itself in some form of paralysis. Confinement to a bed for thirty-eight years would leave the sufferer so weak he would be unable to walk or even stand for any length of time. His case would be hopeless. Jesus selected for his attention the person who seemed most needy. Since he had been afflicted for thirty-eight years, he must have been well on in years. Jesus question must have seemed rather naïve to him. Who would not want to be healed from utter helplessness? Yet the question also implies an appeal to the will, which the long years of discouragement may have paralyzed. Jesus thus challenged the man s will to be cured (EBC 9.62). 6 When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? Could anyone doubt that a sick man would like to be made whole, or that the patients came thither, and this man had returned again and again, just in hope of a cure? But our Lord asked the question, first, to fasten attention upon Himself; next, by making him detail his case, to deepen in him the feeling of entire helplessness; and further, by so singular a question, to beget in his desponding heart the hope of a cure (Jamieson 3.380). Jesus asks a profound question to the man at the pool of Bethesda, dealing with his thought only: Wilt thou be made whole? It seems like an inane question to one who had been sitting around this pool for thirty-eight years, waiting, hoping, looking for healing that never seemed to come. But what Jesus really asks him is this: Do you want to recover, or are you mentally comfortable in this place, talking to your friends about the ills of the body, settled in the familiar routine? The man had made his bed in this place where there was great resistance to the possibility of being made whole. Copyright 2011 Biblos Foundation Biblos Foundation Bible Notes are prepared exclusively for paid members of Biblos Foundation. Duplication prohibited except with permission. To join, please visit

3 Man at the Pool of Bethesda for February 28, 2010 page 3 7 The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. The man begins to make excuses for not making it into the water his friends did not help him, it wasn t really his fault. 8 Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. Jesus did not physically help the man up. What is required for the healing of a paralytic condition that had lasted practically a lifetime? He would have to leave his old way of thinking, his view of himself as a sinner, and see himself as the son of God. Bed can be used as a metaphor for several states and stages of consciousness. Bed can represent birth, the sick-bed, sleep and apathy, the death-bed, lust and sensuality because all take place in bed. We are to take up our bed, our consciousness of life in matter, and walk. The bed no longer dominates us, because God has given His children dominion over the bed. The command of Jesus is the same as that given to the paralytic let down through the roof in Mark 2:11. Bed here is koine the word for a pallet or mattress used by the poor as bedding (AB John i-xii.208). Jesus asked him to do the impossible, to stand on his feet, pick up his bedroll, and go his way. Renewed by the miraculous influx of new power, the man responded at once and did so (EBC 9.62). 9 And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath. This healing of the man who had been ill for so long, required no recovery period, no recuperation, no physical therapy. Jesus spoke the word and immediately he was made whole and walked. 14 Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. The word whole is used five times in this healing. In Greek it is hygies and means to be sound in body, to restore one to health, and metaphorically it means teaching which does not deviate from the truth (Thayer 634). Jesus interest in the man is implied in the word find. Apparently Jesus searched for him because he Copyright 2011 Biblos Foundation Biblos Foundation Bible Notes are prepared exclusively for paid members of Biblos Foundation. Duplication prohibited except with permission. To join, please visit

4 Man at the Pool of Bethesda for February 28, 2010 page 4 was prompted by concern for his spiritual state as well as for his physical illness. The command stop sinning presupposes the possibility that the man s affliction may have been caused by his own sin (EBC 9.63). Thou art made whole, Jesus calls to his remembrance the fact that he was healed, in order that he might admonish him not to sin again. By this expression it was implied that the infirmity of this man was caused by sin, perhaps by vice in his youth. His crime or dissipation had brought on him this long and distressing affliction. Jesus shows him that he knew the cause of his sickness, and takes occasion to warn him not to repeat it (Barnes 288). Before the man s healing was permanent, he needed to understand that he must sin no more, as Jesus instructed him. Mrs. Eddy explains the relationship between sin and sickness in her writings: No. 31:21-22 Physical and mental healing were one and the same with this master Metaphysician. S&H 392:4-5 To cure a bodily ailment, every broken moral law should be taken into account and the error be rebuked. S&H 419:1 (only) A moral question may hinder the recovery of the sick. S&H 411:20-21 The procuring cause and foundation of all sickness is fear, ignorance, or sin. Copyright 2011 Biblos Foundation Biblos Foundation Bible Notes are prepared exclusively for paid members of Biblos Foundation. Duplication prohibited except with permission. To join, please visit

5 Man at the Pool of Bethesda for February 28, 2010 page 5... Angel of Bethesda by Katharine J. Smith From The Christian Science Journal, October Article made available by The Ark: Christian Science Collection. Click here for a free trial of The Ark: Click here to purchase The Ark: Copyright 2011 Biblos Foundation Biblos Foundation Bible Notes are prepared exclusively for paid members of Biblos Foundation. Duplication prohibited except with permission. To join, please visit

6 that he did. Is not this because the effort to see truth is still largely material rather than spiritual? It was from a spiritual height that St. John the revelator beheld the truth of being which is to establish in human consciousness health, holiness, and immortality. It was also from the mountain peak of purified thought, with vision daily clarified by watching and prayer, that our Leader poured forth her rich treasures of love and wisdom, gathered through years of patient labor in the cause of humanity. Shall we be less consecrated to the highest service? Shall it not be said of all Christian Scientists, to whom much is forgiven, that the same love much, brighter reflection of Love? Every human activity becomes hallowed when the transient nature of mortal vision is being subordinated to the mental outlook which can see only spiritual good in our fellow men and in all God's universe. To attain to this mental attitude, the inexhaustible resources of God are ours. He withholds nothing, "no good thing," from those who trust Him. With an expanded vision, a deeper apprehension of the greatness of the truth revealed in Christian Science, combined with fidelity and wholehearted devotion to our divine Principle, what victories over the errors of mortal consciousness await every one of us! ANGEL OF BETHESDA KATHARINE J. SMITH TO the earnest Christian Scientist, who pauses appalled before the seemingly modern drift of ingratitude, which temporarily ignores some splendid instance of sudden and obvious healing, there should come speedy comfort and renewed patience, patience because of the willingness of the Master to trust his finished work to his Father's approbation alone, and comfort because the witness is not a pioneer in his discouragement, nor is ingratitude a modern tendency. The Christian Scientist should be swift in remembering enough of his own past experience with the outworn and the unreal, and be slow, therefore, in his judgment of those whose conduct bears a likeness to his own discarded past. In remembering, he will be living his thanks to God in lovingly and tolerantly forbearing with his neighbor, rather than in condemning the unspiritual tendencies of the age, for an "age" may be defined as an instant of peril, as an hour of activity, or as a cycle of stagnation. Had the compensation which Jesus found in his unparalleled ministry been bounded by human recognition and gratitude, much less by human understanding, it is reasonable to believe that he would have retired with his mother and friends from historic Cana, where our first miraculous record of him is cited, into unrecorded obscurity. In Cana, and in many other localities, by metaphysical means alone, he produced physical effects

7 which neither pagan, profane, infidel, agnostic, nor ritualistic test can ever strike out of the world's recorded history. Yet Jesus never stated that these effects, projected as he proved them to be from a background of divine cause, were associated with or dependent upon society's acceptance, understanding, or tolerance. The effects were produced, not because neither the blind man nor his parents had sinned, "but that the works of God should be made manifest." Defining obedience, Mrs. Eddy says that it is to be "never absent from your post, never off guard, never ill-humored, never unready to work for God" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 116), thereby impersonally describing those modern followers of Jesus who, like him, wait rather for their Father's approbation than for personal and timely recognition of duty well performed. Never absent from his post or out of season, Jesus, mingling with the Oriental throng on market day, once drew near the ancient infirmary of Bethesda with its five porches, in which "lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water." With what unlabored sureness does the chart of Christian Science discover to the student the location of his individual pool of Bethesda! No longer beyond the Mediterranean, in the lap of the storied East, but in his own separate consciousness, appears Bethesda with its five porches or personal senses, in which indeed lie a great multitude of impotent beliefs, "of blind, halt, withered," waiting for a significant and salutary shock, "waiting for the moving of the water." There was a popular and important expectation prevalent in the minds of the impotent and crippled ones who lay in the porches of Bethesda; it was that "an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water." Following the phenomenon of the troubling of the water, came the healing of whatsoever disease claimed him who first stepped in. The incident, as recorded in the fifth chapter of John's gospel, indicates that though Jesus showed little interest in the character of the disease, yet he did not ignore the victim's belief that "thirty and eight years" of wrong thinking had held the patient "in that case" described as "impotent." When Jesus put the question, "Wilt thou be made whole?" he was met by a complaint not unlike that which tempts the metaphysician of today, "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me." Suffering and impotent belief has waited full many a "thirty and eight years" to learn of Christ, Truth, that the angel of Bethesda awaits any right desire to know God. Let this inspirational desire stir the pool of stagnant material sense, and the Christian Science practitioner whose consecration is pure enough to summon the angel, to awaken righteous desire, will hear less frequently the plaintive paraphrase of the impotent man, "I have had several or many treatments and am not healed, while my friend who drew me to the hope of what Christian Science professes, was instantaneously healed." The alleged patient really needs no one

8 to push him into the pool, to entertain for him a right desire, or to acquaint him with a more "certain season" than the present, as Jesus demonstrated when he ordered the impotent man to take up his bed and walk, not into the pool but away from it! The record shows that the man immediately turned away from the pool of material sense, unlike his infirm predecessors who believed that their healing depended upon their stepping into the troubled and mysterious waters. If we follow the man who found joy and strength through Jesus' discernment of his patient's lack, we will note the man's temporary ignorance of or indifference to that spiritual agitation of his stagnant sense, which agitation necessarily preceded his healing. For a short time at least, he went about among the townfolk of Bethesda, walking it is true, but still mentally bound by the spell of mystification, wonderment, and unbelief of his friends, which pressed hard upon him because of his own spiritual ignorance. Does the modern mind consider ignorance as an ancient mental quality? Is the so-called patient of the Christian Scientist immediately better able to answer the question put by the impotent man's neighbors as to who or what had commanded him to take up his bed and walk? Can any who read pathos into the thirteenth verse of the fifth chapter of John's gospel hold himself above his prototype of Bethesda? "He that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place." Should it seem exasperating to him who has experienced "the calm, strong currents of true spirituality, the manifestations of which are health, purity, and self-immolation" (Science and Health, p. 99), the genuine and unspectacular moving of the waters, that one healed should "wist not" the Principle of his new-found wholeness, so long as a multitude of thronging thoughts crowd his mentality to the exclusion of Christ? As "afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple," so Christ, the searching Truth, at length comes upon the regenerate one "in the quiet sanctuary of earnest longings" (Science and Health, p. 15), "the secret place of the most High," from which the multitude of thronging, confusing thoughts is ever shut out. Only within that temple and far from the pool of vexatious material sense can man recognize how divinely he compares with his creator, and know the completeness of his stature, no longer dwarfed by ignorance or distorted by superstition and mystery; and only within the temple can he learn that the measure of his eternal health is to "sin no more." In our own time, in the Victorian age of discovery rather than in a modern age of unbelief, to a woman praying for release from the pain of mind and body, as softly as a slenderly shifting shadow marks the endialed hours of a mortal day, there passed under the lintel of her consciousness the single ray of pure inspiration, that life, forever inseparable from God, is wholly spiritual. It was the angel of Bethesda which came to Mrs. Eddy's consciousness, it was the spiritual truth troubling "the quiet surface of error"(science and Health, p. 254) and stirring a

9 diviner sense of life into a stagnant and unthinking world. Our Leader's career as a metaphysician and teacher of Christian Science, gives her students the right to continue in prayer and expectation that to every man will "afterward" appear the reason for the frequent praise and spoken gratitude which ascends in tribute to the angelic message of Christian Science, the whole statement of which is in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Within the covers of this book are one hundred pages of authenticated testimonies from persons healed through their own attentiveness to the written message of the book, persons who required no one to push them into the pool, yet who found that when their mental and spiritual agitation was greatest, there came to them the greater peace. To one already convinced, the tale of the hundreds of thousands of unrecorded Christian Science healings would be redundant, even as for a like reason there have been retained in the canonical New Testament only about twenty-seven individual instances of Jesus' healing of the afflicted. Yet, as we read in the final word of John's gospel, "There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." [Written for the Journal] "SONS OF GOD"* LAURA GERAHTY OH, healing words! that thwart the power of pain And bring the erring thought to light again, That, opening wide the rust-grown door of years, Proclaim man's heritage to list'ning ears. Oh, healing thought! that silently forgives, Knowing no breath of aught but goodness lives, That brings the sinner to his bended knee And bids God's child arise in sanctity. Oh, healing sight! that only soars to sing Above each moss-grown grave or broken wing, Denying e'er the power that seems to be; Claiming God's likeness in fraternity. Oh, healing kinship! Could we but define To answering thought this unity divine, Then would we know no sense of self but good, The "sons of God" expressed in brotherhood. *Reprinted because of transposition of lines in September Journal.

10 Man at the Pool of Bethesda for February 28, 2010 page 10 Sources: The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John (i-xii). Introduction, translation and notes by Raymond E. Brown. New York: Doubleday, Barnes, Albert. Barnes Notes on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Kregel, Eddy, Mary Baker. No and Yes. Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Concord Windows 95 version, CD-ROM. Eddy, Mary Baker. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Concord Windows 95 version, CD-ROM. The Expositor s Bible Commentary: John Acts. Ed. Frank E. Gaebelein et al. Vol. 9. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, Jamieson, Robert, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown. A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments. Vol. 3. Peabody: Hendrickson, Smith, Katherine J. Angel of Bethesda. The Christian Science Journal 32, no. 7,(October 1914): 381. Accessed via The Ark. Online subscription. Thayer, Joseph Henry, trans. The New Thayer s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Peabody: Hendrickson, Abbreviation key: AB = The Anchor Bible EBC = The Expositor s Bible Commentary Copyright 2011 Biblos Foundation Biblos Foundation Bible Notes are prepared exclusively for paid members of Biblos Foundation. Duplication prohibited except with permission. To join, please visit