Do You Want to Be Healed?

John gives a long and precise duration, emphasizing the chronic nature of the man's condition. The narrative explicitly says Jesus knows the man has been in this condition for a long time. The question is not caused by failure to notice the obvious. He responds by describing his obstacle. This need not indicate unwillingness. His practical meaning may be: "Yes, but I cannot reach the means of healing I know." The statement gives the scene a social dimension. The man lacks someone to help him. This is the narrative turn. Jesus does not improve the man's access to his expected solution but acts in another way entirely. The man makes no confession of faith before the healing and later does not initially know who Jesus is. The story should not be used to blame failed healing on insufficient faith. Some later manuscripts and older translations contain an explanation that an angel stirred the water and the first person entering afterward was healed. The longer wording is absent from several early and important Greek witnesses and is widely regarded as a later explanatory addition. The man's own reference to the stirred water remains in verse 7. John describes a pool complex with five colonnades. Archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem make such a structure historically intelligible. Verse 9 ends by noting that it was the Sabbath, opening the next conflict over the mat, healing, and Jesus' relationship with the Father. In John 5:14 Jesus later tells the man not to sin anymore. This should not automatically be taken as proof that his thirty-eight years of illness were caused by a particular personal sin. John 9 also challenges a simple equation between illness and personal sin.

Independent English translation from the Greek text, using SBLGNT as the primary Greek edition. The longer explanation about an angel stirring the water in John 5:3b--4 is not included because it is absent from several early and important Greek manuscripts.