The pool of Bethesda
Blind people among the crowd and at the table. No change in sight is described. John 5:1-9.
What led up to it
Jesus is in Jerusalem for a feast. Near the Sheep Gate is a pool with five covered walkways.
What happens
A great number of people lie there: the sick, the blind, the lame and the paralyzed. Jesus speaks to one man, who has been unable to walk for thirty-eight years and has no one to help him into the water. Jesus tells him to get up and walk, and he does.
In their shoes
The man healed here is lame, not blind. The blind are part of the crowd left lying on the walkways. The passage gives a picture of where disabled people gathered in the city, and the man's own words describe the place: no one to help, and someone else always getting there first. It is a different town from Bethsaida, where the blind man of Mark 8 was healed; the names are easily confused.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
The pool was in the north of the city near the Sheep Gate, where the road came in from the Mount of Olives, Bethany and Jericho. The site identified today lies beside the Church of St. Anne, near the gate now called the Lions' Gate, and was excavated in the 19th century.
Source: Wikipedia, "Pool of Bethesda," revision of 22 July 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book III, chapter XII.
It began in the eighth century BC as a reservoir made by damming a small valley, and a second pool was added about 200 BC. The excavated pools are some thirteen metres deep, which is why the old idea that sheep were washed there is now thought unlikely. In the century before Jesus, caves beside the pools were made into small baths used for healing or religion, and some scholars think the crowd of sick people in John 5 reflects a place already known for cures.
Source: Wikipedia, "Pool of Bethesda," revision of 22 July 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Matthew Henry read the covered walkways as a place where human charity met God's mercy: "nature has provided remedies, but men must provide hospitals." He thought the blind, the lame and the paralyzed were named because, being least able to get themselves into the water, they waited longest.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on John 5.
The name probably means "house of mercy" or "house of grace." Edersheim, in 1883, admitted that every attempt to explain it had failed; the modern view rests on Hebrew and Aramaic roots and fits a place where the sick gathered hoping for healing.
Source: Wikipedia, "Pool of Bethesda," revision of 22 July 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book III, chapter XII.
The passage
John 5:1-9
1 Some time later there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool with five covered colonnades, which in Hebrew is called Bethesda.
3 On these walkways lay a great number of the sick, the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.
5 One man there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him lying there and realized that he had spent a long time in this condition, He asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am on my way, someone else goes in before me.”
8 Then Jesus told him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.”
9 Immediately the man was made well, and he picked up his mat and began to walk. Now this happened on the Sabbath day,