The man born blind
Sight given by Jesus. Sight restored. John 9:1-41.
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This story is also an episode of about 16 minutes: the passage read word for word, the place and the time, two imagined scenes, and Brian's own thoughts, with music. The audio file plays here, or download the MP3. The same episode is on YouTube with pictures and captions.
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What led up to it
Jesus is in Jerusalem and has just escaped an attempt to stone Him in the temple. Walking along, He sees a man who has been blind from birth and who sits and begs. It is the Sabbath.
What happens
The disciples ask whose sin caused the blindness, the man's or his parents'. Jesus says neither. He makes mud, puts it on the man's eyes, and sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. He comes back seeing. His neighbours argue over whether he is the same man. The Pharisees question him, then his parents, then him again. He will not say what they want him to say, and they throw him out. Jesus goes and finds him, and the man believes and worships.
In their shoes
This is the longest account of a blind person in Scripture, and most of it happens after the healing. While he is blind, people talk about him in front of him as a question in theology. Once he can see, his neighbours doubt he is the same person, his parents are afraid to stand with him, and the authorities call him a liar and a sinner. Through it all he holds to the one thing he knows: "I was blind, but now I see!" He also walked to the pool with mud on his eyes, still blind, on the word of a man he had never seen. And when everyone else has put him out, Jesus comes looking for him.
From Brian
This one makes me cry because of what Jesus first says: "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him." That is what I pray for daily: that God uses my blindness for His glory in the things I do, the things I say, and the way I treat others, especially those who need help the most and who have, according to many, absolutely nothing to give back.
One of my first true walk-by-faith moments came during rehabilitation training at the Hines VA hospital outside Chicago. At the end of training I did a drop-off test: I was let out of a car in a suburban business district with the task of finding a grocery store about five blocks away on my own. Unless I got into serious physical danger, I was not to be helped. I had to trust my new skills to make that trip without any sight. It was terrifying, exhilarating and liberating all at once. I think of the man born blind making his way to the Pool of Siloam, on faith.
He was blind from birth and had never had sight. From a physiological standpoint his visual cortex would never have developed; it takes a child about six years of seeing to learn to tell faces apart. He washed the mud off and "received" sight. Jesus did not only heal the eyes; He must have given the man a way to process what the eyes now sent. We have accounts of people who regained sight or got it for the first time and could not make sense of the images. Mike May, who had sight restored as an adult, still cannot recognize faces and still uses braille and mobility aids.
People did not recognize him, and I think that is partly the sheer size of what had happened. If I walked up to someone who has only known me blind and suddenly I could see, I would talk differently and carry myself differently. I would still turn my head toward sounds, that is natural, but I would react to visual cues I do not react to now.
The Pharisees went straight to whether the healing was lawful, not whether it had happened.
When the parents said "Ask him. He is old enough to speak for himself," it was for the wrong reason, fear, but notice what it is. Usually a blind person's escort gets asked what the blind person wants. This may be the first recorded moment of self-advocacy for a blind man, and it was unintentional.
The way he argues with the Pharisees is simply amazing. He would never have had access to Scripture or learning, and yet with a plain explanation he cuts through the arguments of the experts, in Jerusalem, and wins. That he would even speak back to a Pharisee is remarkable. His parents were obviously terrified.
It is hard to express what that man must have felt when he finally recognized Jesus, after Jesus sought him out. I am so grateful to Jesus for what He did for that one blind man.
A common plea was "Gain merit by me." How humbling, to call out in effect: I have so little to offer you that your kindness to me will gain you righteousness. In Nigeria today, by the figures I have seen, about seventy percent of blind people still have to beg to survive.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
The Pool of Siloam lies at the south end of Jerusalem, at the lowest point of the ancient city. Josephus, who knew the city before it fell, calls Siloam "a fountain which hath sweet water in it, and this in great plenty also."
Source: Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, Book V, chapter 4, section 1 (Whiston translation).
The water comes from the Gihon spring in the Kidron Valley through a tunnel cut by King Hezekiah, so that a besieging army could not reach the spring and the city could still drink. Edersheim adds that this explains the name: Siloam, "sent," a conduit.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Book IV, chapter VII; compare 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:30.
The pool Jesus sent the man to was lost for nineteen centuries. In 2004, workers repairing a sewer uncovered stone steps, and archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron identified the pool of the Second Temple period: a large stone-lined basin with steps on at least three sides, built in sets of five, apparently for changing water levels. It was destroyed when Jerusalem fell in 70 AD and buried under silt. Pilgrims arriving for the feasts likely washed there before climbing to the Temple, so it may have served as a ritual bath.
Source: Wikipedia, "Pool of Siloam," revision of 20 June 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Siloam had a place in the feast that frames John 7 to 9. At the Feast of Tabernacles a priest went down in procession to the pool, filled a golden pitcher, and carried the water back up to pour on the altar while the trumpets sounded. Edersheim places this healing on the Sabbath just after that feast ended, with Jesus on His way into the Temple. The man was being sent to wash in water the whole city had just watched carried up to God.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Book IV, chapters VII and IX.
Blind beggars were a familiar sight. The Temple entrance was the chosen place for those who asked for alms, and a common plea was "Gain merit by me." The blind were held to be specially entitled to charity. Eye disease was common and there was no real treatment; the Bible encyclopedia of 1915 names the lack of any remedy for ophthalmia as one reason begging was so widespread.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Book IV, chapter IX; International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entries "Begging" and "Blindness."
The disciples' question was a common one. Edersheim writes that rabbis meeting such a person would ask by what sin the affliction had come, and that it was a widespread view that the merits or faults of parents showed in their children. Jesus's answer in verse 3 cut across both ideas.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Book IV, chapter IX.
Jesus used saliva and mud. Edersheim notes that saliva was commonly thought to help diseases of the eye, and that making clay and anointing on the Sabbath were among the things the religious teachers counted as work, which is why the day matters so much in the argument that follows.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Book IV, chapter IX.
How far did he walk? The modern figures, as Wikipedia reports them from an Israeli guide, put the pool at about 625 metres above sea level and the Temple Mount at about 740, a drop of some 115 metres over a straight-line distance of about 634 metres. The pool was the lowest place in the city. A blind man with mud on his eyes went down that slope through the streets, and came back up it seeing.
Source: Wikipedia, "Pool of Siloam," revision of 20 June 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), citing an Israeli guide of 1980.
The ground between the Temple and the pool is a valley. Josephus describes the Valley of the Cheesemongers running between the upper and lower city down to Siloam, with steep slopes on either side. Excavators have reported a stepped and tiled street running from near the Temple Mount down to the pool, which they take to be the way worshippers used between the two.
Source: Josephus, The Wars of the Jews (Whiston translation), Book V, chapter 4; Wikipedia, "Pool of Siloam," revision of 20 June 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), quoting a Jerusalem Post report of 26 January 2006.
At the end of the walk there were steps. Excavators in the 1880s recorded a stairway of 34 rock-cut steps leading up from the pool's forecourt, and the pool found in 2004 has steps on at least three sides, in sets of five with landings between. For a man who could not see, the last part of the journey was a staircase down to water.
Source: Wikipedia, "Pool of Siloam," revision of 20 June 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The passage
John 9:1-41
1 Now as Jesus was passing by, He saw a man blind from birth,
2 and His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him.
4 While it is daytime, we must do the works of Him who sent Me. Night is coming, when no one can work.
5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
6 When Jesus had said this, He spit on the ground, made some mud, and applied it to the man’s eyes.
7 Then He told him, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing.
8 At this, his neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging began to ask, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?”
9 Some claimed that he was, but others said, “No, he just looks like him.” But the man kept saying, “I am the one.”
10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
11 He answered, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and anointed my eyes, and He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and received my sight.”
12 “Where is He?” they asked. “I do not know,” he answered.
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind.
14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened his eyes was a Sabbath.
15 So the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. The man answered, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”
16 Because of this, some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for He does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a sinful man perform such signs?” And there was division among them.
17 So once again they asked the man who had been blind, “What do you say about Him, since it was your eyes He opened?” “He is a prophet,” the man replied.
18 The Jews still did not believe that the man had been blind and had received his sight until they summoned his parents
19 and asked, “Is this your son, the one you say was born blind? So how is it that he can now see?”
20 His parents answered, “We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind.
21 But how he can now see or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him. He is old enough to speak for himself.”
22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews. For the Jews had already determined that anyone who confessed Jesus as the Christ would be put out of the synagogue.
23 That was why his parents said, “He is old enough. Ask him.”
24 So a second time they called for the man who had been blind and said, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.”
25 He answered, “Whether He is a sinner I do not know. There is one thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see!”
26 “What did He do to you?” they asked. “How did He open your eyes?”
27 He replied, “I already told you, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become His disciples?”
28 Then they heaped insults on him and said, “You are His disciple; we are disciples of Moses.
29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but we do not know where this man is from.”
30 “That is remarkable indeed!” the man said. “You do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes.
31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but He does listen to the one who worships Him and does His will.
32 Never before has anyone heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind.
33 If this man were not from God, He could do no such thing.”
34 They replied, “You were born in utter sin, and you are instructing us?” And they threw him out.
35 When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, He found the man and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 “Who is He, Sir?” he replied. “Tell me so that I may believe in Him.”
37 “You have already seen Him,” Jesus answered. “He is the One speaking with you.”
38 “Lord, I believe,” he said. And he worshiped Jesus.
39 Then Jesus declared, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind.”
40 Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard this, and they asked Him, “Are we blind too?”
41 “If you were blind,” Jesus replied, “you would not be guilty of sin. But since you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”