John 5:3

John 5:3, in plain English

The walkways around the pool were crowded with sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed people. It was a place of enormous suffering and desperate hope.

Why it's here

These were people who had been forgotten by society. They gathered at this pool because they had nowhere else to go.

Who's speaking

The Gospel writer describes the scene so you can feel the weight of human suffering that Jesus walked into.

Where it sits in the story

Imagine rows and rows of people in pain, all hoping for a miracle. This was not a pleasant place, but Jesus chose to enter it. He always goes to the places of deepest need.

The scholarly reading

The colonnades sheltered a multitude (plēthos) of sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed individuals. These covered walkways served as a makeshift hospital for those seeking healing from the pool's reputed curative powers.

Language and setting

The catalog of ailments (blind, lame, paralyzed) echoes prophetic descriptions of those whom the Messiah would heal (Isaiah 35:5-6), creating an implicit messianic claim through the healing that follows.

Voice

The narrator describes the scene of human suffering that surrounds the pool, establishing the desperate context for Jesus' encounter.

Significance

The porticoes are filled with human misery: the blind, the lame, the paralyzed, all waiting for something to change their situation. Into this scene of accumulated suffering, Jesus walks with purpose.

1Some time later there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool with five covered colonnades, which in Hebrew is called Bethesda.

3On these walkways lay a great number of the sick, the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.

5One man there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.

Read all of John 5 — A man who has been an invalid for thirty-eight years is told to pick up his mat and walk. The Pharisees are more concerned about the day of the week.