John 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

At a feast in Jerusalem, Jesus heals a man who had been disabled for thirty-eight years, telling him to pick up his mat and walk, and the healing takes place on the Sabbath. Because Jesus healed on the Sabbath and called God his own Father, the Jewish leaders persecute him and seek to kill him. Jesus then answers them at length, describing what the Son does at the Father's direction, the giving of life, the authority to judge, and the coming hour when the dead will hear his voice. He closes by naming the witnesses that speak for him: John, the works he does, the Father, and the writings of Moses.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • After these things there was a feast of the Jews.
   • Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2. 5:2
   • There is in Jerusalem a pool by the sheep gate or sheep place.
   • The pool is called Bethesda in the Hebrew tongue.
   • The pool has five porches.
3. 5:3
   • In these porches lay a great multitude of sick people.
   • Among them were blind people.
   • Among them were lame people.
   • Among them were people with withered limbs.
   • They were waiting for the moving of the water.
4. 5:4
   • An angel went down into the pool at a certain time.
   • The angel stirred up the water.
   • Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well.
   • The one who stepped in first was made well of whatever disease he had.
5. 5:5
   • A certain man was there.
   • That man had been in his infirmity thirty-eight years.
6. 5:6
   • Jesus saw the man lying there.
   • Jesus knew that the man had already been in that condition a long time.
   • Jesus asked the man whether he wanted to be made well.
7. 5:7
   • The sick man answered Jesus, calling him sir.
   • The sick man said he had no one to put him into the pool when the water was stirred.
   • The sick man said that while he was coming, another went down before him.
8. 5:8
   • Jesus told the man to rise.
   • Jesus told the man to take up his mat.
   • Jesus told the man to walk.
9. 5:9
   • Immediately the man was made well.
   • The man took up his mat.
   • The man walked.
   • That day was the sabbath.
10. 5:10
    • The Jews said to the man who had been cured that it was the sabbath.
    • The Jews said it was not lawful for him to carry his mat.
11. 5:11
    • The man answered them that the one who made him well told him to take up his mat and walk.
12. 5:12
    • They asked him who the man was that told him to take up his mat and walk.
13. 5:13
    • The man who was healed did not know who it was.
    • Jesus had withdrawn from the place.
    • A crowd was in that place.
14. 5:14
    • Afterward Jesus found the man in the temple.
    • Jesus told him that he had been made well.
    • Jesus told him to sin no more.
    • Jesus said this was so that nothing worse would happen to him.
15. 5:15
    • The man went away.
    • The man told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.
16. 5:16
    • Because of this the Jews persecuted Jesus.
    • The Jews sought to kill him.
    • The reason was that he did these things on the sabbath.
17. 5:17
    • Jesus answered them that his Father works until now.
    • Jesus said that he also works.
18. 5:18
    • Because of this the Jews sought all the more to kill him.
    • The reason was that he not only broke the sabbath.
    • The reason was also that he called God his own Father.
    • By calling God his own Father he made himself equal with God.
19. 5:19
    • Jesus answered and said to them.
    • Jesus said truly, truly, he says to them.
    • Jesus said the Son can do nothing of himself.
    • Jesus said the Son does only what he sees the Father doing.
    • Jesus said that whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.
20. 5:20
    • The Father loves the Son.
    • The Father shows the Son all things that he himself does.
    • The Father will show the Son greater works than these.
    • The purpose is that they may marvel.
21. 5:21
    • The Father raises the dead.
    • The Father gives them life.
    • In the same way the Son gives life to whom he wishes.
22. 5:22
    • The Father judges no one.
    • The Father has given all judgment to the Son.
23. 5:23
    • The purpose is that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father.
    • Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
24. 5:24
    • Jesus said truly, truly, he says to them.
    • Whoever hears his word and believes the one who sent him has eternal life.
    • Such a person does not come into judgment.
    • Such a person has passed from death into life.
25. 5:25
    • Jesus said truly, truly, he says to them.
    • An hour is coming.
    • That hour now is.
    • In that hour the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.
    • Those who hear will live.
26. 5:26
    • The Father has life in himself.
    • In the same way the Father has given to the Son to have life in himself.
27. 5:27
    • The Father has given the Son authority to execute judgment.
    • The reason is that he is the Son of man.
28. 5:28
    • Jesus told them not to marvel at this.
    • An hour is coming.
    • In that hour all who are in the graves will hear his voice.
29. 5:29
    • Those in the graves will come out.
    • Those who have done good will come out to a resurrection of life.
    • Those who have done evil will come out to a resurrection of judgment.
30. 5:30
    • Jesus said he can do nothing of himself.
    • Jesus said he judges as he hears.
    • Jesus said his judgment is just.
    • Jesus said the reason is that he does not seek his own will.
    • Jesus said he seeks the will of the one who sent him.
31. 5:31
    • Jesus said that if he bears witness about himself, his witness is not true.
32. 5:32
    • Jesus said there is another who bears witness about him.
    • Jesus said he knows that the witness that one bears about him is true.
33. 5:33
    • Jesus said they had sent to John.
    • Jesus said John has borne witness to the truth.
34. 5:34
    • Jesus said he does not receive testimony from man.
    • Jesus said he says these things so that they may be saved.
35. 5:35
    • Jesus said John was a burning and shining lamp.
    • Jesus said they were willing to rejoice for a time in his light.
36. 5:36
    • Jesus said he has witness greater than that of John.
    • Jesus said the Father has given him works to finish.
    • Jesus said the works that he does bear witness about him.
    • Jesus said those works testify that the Father has sent him.
37. 5:37
    • Jesus said the Father who sent him has himself borne witness about him.
    • Jesus said they have never heard the Father's voice.
    • Jesus said they have never seen the Father's form.
38. 5:38
    • Jesus said they do not have the Father's word abiding in them.
    • Jesus said the reason is that they do not believe the one the Father sent.
39. 5:39
    • Jesus spoke of their searching the scriptures.
    • Jesus said they think that in the scriptures they have eternal life.
    • Jesus said the scriptures are what testify about him.
40. 5:40
    • Jesus said they are unwilling to come to him.
    • Jesus said coming to him would give them life.
41. 5:41
    • Jesus said he does not receive glory from men.
42. 5:42
    • Jesus said he knows them.
    • Jesus said they do not have the love of God in themselves.
43. 5:43
    • Jesus said he has come in his Father's name.
    • Jesus said they do not receive him.
    • Jesus said that if another comes in his own name, they will receive that one.
44. 5:44
    • Jesus asked how they can believe.
    • Jesus said they receive glory from one another.
    • Jesus said they do not seek the glory that comes from the only God.
45. 5:45
    • Jesus told them not to think that he will accuse them to the Father.
    • Jesus said there is one who accuses them, namely Moses.
    • Jesus said they have set their hope on Moses.
46. 5:46
    • Jesus said that if they believed Moses, they would believe him.
    • Jesus said the reason is that Moses wrote about him.
47. 5:47
    • Jesus said they do not believe Moses' writings.
    • Jesus asked how they will believe his words.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

"A feast of the Jews" leaves the festival unnamed, and readers have argued ever since about which one it was. Adult Jewish men were expected to come to Jerusalem for three pilgrim festivals each year: Passover, Weeks (Pentecost) and Tabernacles. "Went up" is the standard idiom for traveling to Jerusalem, which sits high in the hill country, and is used no matter which direction the traveler comes from.

5:2

"Sheep market" fills a gap: the Greek has only the adjective "sheep-", with the noun left out, and most now supply "gate", the Sheep Gate in the north wall named in Nehemiah, through which animals for temple sacrifice were brought. The pool's name appears in the manuscripts in several forms (Bethesda, Bethzatha, Bethsaida); Bethesda is probably Aramaic for "house of mercy" or "house of outpouring". "The Hebrew tongue" in this Gospel normally means the Aramaic ordinarily spoken in Judea at the time. The "porches" were colonnades: roofed, open-sided walkways supported by columns, which gave shade. Excavation near the church of St. Anne has uncovered a double pool with colonnades on the four outer sides and one more along the wall dividing the two basins, which would make five.

5:3

Three 1611 words have shifted or dropped out of use. "Impotent" then meant simply without strength, with no sexual sense. "Halt" meant lame, unable to walk. "Withered" described a limb shrunken or wasted, whether from paralysis or from muscle loss.

5:4

This whole verse, together with the last clause of verse 3 ("waiting for the moving of the water"), is absent from the oldest surviving Greek manuscripts and is generally taken to be an explanation added by later copyists to account for the sick man's words in verse 7. Most modern Bibles leave it out, which is why their text jumps from verse 3 to verse 5. It is kept here because the King James has it.

5:5

Thirty-eight years was most of a lifetime then. People who could not work usually had to beg, and they depended on family or friends to carry them.

5:6

"Wilt thou be made whole?" is not a prediction about the future. In 1611 "wilt thou" meant "do you want", and "made whole" meant restored to health.

5:8

A "bed" of this kind was a poor man's bedding: a mat or pallet light enough to roll up and carry under one arm, not a piece of furniture.

5:9

The Sabbath was the seventh day, running from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, on which the law of Moses forbade work of any kind. The narrator holds this detail back until the healing is over, so the reader learns it at the same moment the objection is about to be raised.

5:10

In this Gospel "the Jews" usually means the Judean authorities in Jerusalem who question and oppose Jesus, not the Jewish people in general: Jesus, his disciples and the healed man are all themselves Jews. Their objection is not to the healing but to the carrying. Jeremiah 17 forbids carrying a burden through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath, and Jewish teachers of this period listed carrying an object from one domain to another among the categories of work the day excluded.

5:13

"Wist not" means did not know; "wist" is the past tense of the old verb "wit", to know, which survives in "to wit" and "unwitting". "Conveyed himself away" means slipped off quietly, not that anyone carried him.

5:14

The temple was not a single building but a large walled complex of courts and porticoes in the center of Jerusalem, open to crowds all day, which is why Jesus could come across one particular man there.

5:16

"Persecute" translates a Greek verb meaning to pursue or chase, and the tense implies a settled, continuing hostility rather than a single incident. The words "and sought to slay him" here are missing from the earliest manuscripts, which is why the modern translation beside this one does not have them in verse 16.

5:17

"Hitherto" means up to this present moment. The argument turns on a known difficulty: Genesis says God rested on the seventh day, yet Jewish teachers acknowledged that God keeps the world running on the Sabbath too, since babies are born and people die on that day. Jesus places his own activity in that category.

5:18

The Greek behind "his Father" uses an adjective meaning "his own, belonging to him personally". Jews commonly called God Father in a general sense, so it is that word, and not the title itself, that the authorities hear as a claim to stand on God's level.

5:19

"Verily, verily" renders "amen, amen". Amen is a Hebrew word meaning something like "surely, it is so", normally said after a statement by way of agreement. This Gospel has Jesus double it and put it at the front of a saying, a formula found nowhere else, marking what follows as a solemn assertion.

5:20

"Sheweth" is just the old spelling of shows. "Marvel" means to be astonished, and it does not carry the modern flavor of admiration; the amazement here is closer to shock.

5:21

"Quickeneth" meant makes alive, gives life to. The same sense survives in the phrase "the quick and the dead" and in "quickening", the moment a pregnant woman first feels the child move.

5:22

"Committed" here means handed over or entrusted. The word translated "judgment" covers the whole judicial act: hearing the case, reaching a decision, and passing sentence.

5:24

"Condemnation" translates the same word rendered "judgment" in verse 22, used here of the adverse outcome rather than the process. "Is passed from death unto life" uses a tense for a move already completed and still in force: the crossing has happened, not merely been promised.

5:25

"The hour" in this Gospel means an appointed moment, the time set for something to happen, not a stretch of sixty minutes.

5:27

In Hebrew and Aramaic idiom "son of man" simply means a human being, a member of the human race, and it is used that way throughout Ezekiel. In Daniel 7 it takes on more weight: one "like the Son of man" comes with the clouds of heaven and is given authority, glory and a kingdom. The Gospels have Jesus use the phrase of himself, and here it stands next to the granting of authority to judge.

5:29

"Damnation" in 1611 meant condemnation, an unfavorable verdict, and did not yet carry the narrowed modern sense; the Greek word is the same one rendered "judgment" earlier in the chapter. "Resurrection" means the dead rising bodily to life again, a hope held by the Pharisees and denied by the Sadducees, so a disputed point among Jesus's hearers rather than common ground.

5:31

"My witness is not true" is a legal statement, not an admission of lying. The word behind "true" means valid or admissible. Jewish law required a matter to be established by two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19), and an uncorroborated claim about oneself carried no weight in court, whether or not it was accurate.

5:33

This is John the Baptist, and the reference is to the delegation of priests and Levites the Jerusalem authorities sent out to question him earlier in this Gospel. "Bare witness" is the same courtroom language running through the whole passage: he gave testimony.

5:35

The word here is not the one this Gospel uses for "light" itself but the one for a lamp: a small oil lamp, which has to be lit by someone else, gives borrowed light, and eventually burns out. "For a season" means for a while, that is, during the months before John was imprisoned.

5:36

"Witness" again means testimony, evidence given. "To finish" means to bring to completion, to carry through to the end; the "works" are the things Jesus does, including the healing that started this argument.

5:37

"Shape" in 1611 meant outward form or appearance, with none of the modern sense of contour. The wording echoes Deuteronomy 4, where Israel at Sinai heard a voice but saw no form.

5:38

"Abiding" means remaining, staying put, taking up residence. The image is of a word that lodges in a person rather than passing through.

5:39

The Greek form behind "search" is identical whether it is a command ("search the scriptures") or a statement of fact ("you search the scriptures"), and translators have to pick one; the King James takes it as a command, most modern versions as a statement. "The scriptures" means the Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians later called the Old Testament, since nothing of the New Testament had been written.

5:41

"Honour" here translates a word that also means glory, reputation, the good opinion of others. It is the same word used twice in verse 44, so the point about praise from people and praise from God runs on a single term.

5:43

To come "in my Father's name" means to come as his authorized representative, the way an ambassador acts in a king's name and carries the king's authority rather than his own. Someone coming in his own name would be trading purely on his personal appeal.

5:44

The closing phrase is genuinely ambiguous in Greek and can be read either as "the glory that comes from the only God" or as "the glory that comes from God alone". Some manuscripts omit the word for God altogether, which would give "from the only one".

5:45

"Accuse" is courtroom language, to bring a charge against someone before a judge. "Moses" here stands for the writings of Moses, the first five books of the Bible; "in whom ye trust" carries the sense of where they have placed their hope, expecting those writings to speak in their favor.

5:46

In the first century the first five books of the Bible were commonly spoken of as written by Moses, so "he wrote of me" means those books are being claimed as testimony.

5:47

The contrast is between two different words: "writings" (literally the letters, what stands written and fixed) and "words" (spoken utterances, heard and gone). The argument runs from the harder case to the easier: if the permanent written testimony is not believed, a spoken claim has less chance still.

Where the Manuscripts Differ

Worth knowing before you stand up: a listener following a modern translation may not have this verse in front of them.

5:4

Most modern translations leave this verse out. It is in the Greek text the King James translators worked from, but not in the older manuscripts found since, so scholars generally take it as a copyist’s addition rather than part of the original.