How Many Years? (5:1–9)
It’s the theology, not the devil, that’s in the details.
Israel’s story is, at many of its crucial turns, a story of waiting. From Egypt to Canaan, from exile to return, the people of God find themselves repeatedly suspended between promise and fulfillment, unable to cross into what God has prepared. John places Jesus in the midst of that long story when he brings him to the Pool of Bethesda, where a man has lain, unable to move, for 38 years (John 5:5).
The number is not incidental. Deuteronomy 2:14 states that Israel spent 38 years in a weakened state between Kadesh-barnea and the brook Zered, the period of divine judgment after the spies’ failure, when the generation that left Egypt died and Israel could not advance. The total wilderness sojourn rounded to forty, a number so familiar it has become shorthand for the whole. However, thirty-eight years was the precise period of stagnation. John’s detail is intentional: the man at Bethesda isn’t just a sick person; he symbolizes Israel, waiting at the waters, unable to cross into God’s rest in the Promised Land.
The Pool of Bethesda, found only in John’s Gospel, was surrounded by five porticoes filled with the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed (John 5:2–3). Into that scene of accumulated suffering comes Jesus. He approaches one man and asks a question that can sound almost cruel: “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6). The question probes something deeper than physical desire. The man’s answer reveals his disorientation; he explains only why healing has been impossible, cataloging his lack of help (John 5:7). He does not answer the question. He cannot yet see the one standing before him clearly enough to ask.
Jesus does not wait for a better answer. He commands, and the man is healed immediately, picks up his mat, and walks (John 5:8–9).
John notes, almost as an aside, that the day was a Sabbath (John 5:9). The detail will ignite the controversy ahead, but it carries its own weight here. The Sabbath was Israel’s sign of covenant rest, the day that pointed toward the completed work of God (Gen 2:2–3). That Jesus heals on the Sabbath is not a violation of it but a fulfillment of what it always signified. The thirty-eight-year wait is over. What the law could not accomplish, Jesus does in a word.
The Sabbath and National Identity (5:10–17)
John 5 begins with Jesus healing a man at the pool on the Sabbath. The Jews tell the man who had been healed that it was not lawful for him to carry his bed on the Sabbath. Likewise, John states that they were persecuting Jesus “because he was doing these things on the Sabbath” (5:16).
It seems unbelievable to us that anyone could be angered by a miraculous healing simply because it happened on the Sabbath, but we need to keep two historical points in mind. First, the people went into exile because they broke God’s commandments, including the Sabbath laws. In fact, the exile punishment is directly linked to the Sabbath in Lev 26:34-35. Second, just a few hundred years earlier, practices that were clearly Jewish—such as food laws, circumcision, and Sabbath observance—had been explicitly banned by the Greeks in an effort to erase Jewish identity. As a result, these practices became a key part of Jewish national and religious identity.
So the Jewish concern with Sabbath keeping isn’t just about “Hey, you’re not supposed to be doing that on this day.” It’s deeper than that. Breaking the Sabbath law not only caused exile but also represented a break from national and religious identity. There’s much more at stake with the Sabbath than just following or breaking a commandment, which is why the Jewish people in Jesus’ day reacted so strongly.
Thanks for that explanation! Would have never made that connection between Israel and this man at the pool. He, too, waited to be delivered! Makes me wonder how often we don’t see Jesus act in our lives because we are sitting by a pool waiting for help that can only come from
God.