The Pool of Bethesda: Where Jesus Healed The Paralytic

John 5:1-18

The Third Sign: Healing the Sick

5 After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ² By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda^[a] in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. ³ Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed.^[b]

⁵ One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?”

⁷ “Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”

⁸ “Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk.

Now that day was the Sabbath, ¹⁰ and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath. The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.”

¹¹ He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

¹² “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked. ¹³ But the man who was healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.^[c]

¹⁴ After this, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” ¹⁵ The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶ Therefore, the Jews began persecuting Jesus^[d] because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.

Honoring the Father and the Son

¹⁷ Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.” ¹⁸ This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.