developed form of expression in which His relation to the Father, and His own Office and Power, are presented. We can understand how, from the very first, all this should have been laid before the teachers of Israel. But in view of the organic development of Christ's teaching, we could scarcely expect it to have been expressed in such very full terms, till near the close of His Ministry. [1 Even Strauss admits, that the discourse contains nothing which might not have been spoken by Christ. His objection to its authenticity, on the ground of the analogies to it in certain portions of the Fourth Gospel and of the Epistles of St. John, is a curious instance of critical argumentation (Leben Jesu, i. p. 646).]
But we are anticipating. The narrative transports us at once to what, at the time, seems to have been a well-known locality in Jerusalem, though all attempts to identify it, or even to explain the name Bethesda, have hitherto failed. All we know is, that it was a pool enclosed within five porches, by the sheep-market, presumably close to the 'Sheep-Gate.' [a Neh. iii. 1, 32; xii. 39.] This, as seems most likely, opened from the busy northern suburb of markets, bazaars, and workshops, eastwards upon the road which led over the Mount of Olives and Bethany to Jericho. [2 Comp. specially Riehm's Handworterb. ad voc] In that case, most probability would attach to the identification of the Pool Bethesda with a pool somewhat north of the so-called Birket Israil. At present it is wholly filled with rubbish, but in the time of the Crusaders it seems to have borne the name of the Sheep-pond, and, it was thought, traces of the five porches could still be detected. Be this as it may, it certainly bore in the 'Hebrew' or rather Aramaean, 'tongue,' the name Bethesda. No doubt this name was designative, though the common explanations, Beth Chisda (so most modern writers, and Watkins) 'House of Mercy' (?), Beth Istebha (Delitzsch), 'House of Porches,' and Beth Zeytha (Westcott) 'House of the Olive', seem all unsatisfactory. More probability attaches
to the rendering Beth Asutha (Wunsche), or Beth Asyatha, 'House of Healing.' But as this derivation offers linguistic difficulties, we would suggest that the second part of the name (Beth-Esda) was really a Greek word Armaised. Here two different derivations suggest themselves. The root-word of Esda might either express to 'become well', Beth , or something akin to the Rabbinic Zit [3 Said when people sneezed, like 'Prosit!'] (). In that case, the designation would agree with an ancient reading of the name, Bethzatha. Or else, the name Bethesda might combine, according to a not uncommon Rabbinic practice, the Hebrew Beth with some Aramaised form derived from the Greek word , 'to boil' or 'bubble up' (subst.); in which case it would mean 'the House of Bubbling- up,' viz. water. Any of the three derivations just suggested would not only give an apt designation for the pool, but explain why St. John, contrary to his usual practice, does not give a Greek equivalent for a Hebrew term.
All this is, however, of very subordinate importance, compared with the marvellous facts of the narrative itself. In the five porches surrounding this pool lay 'a great multitude of the impotent,' in anxious hope of a miraculous cure. We can picture to ourselves the scene. The popular superstitions, [1 Indeed, belief in 'holy wells' seems to have been very common in ancient times. From the cuneiform inscriptions it appears to have been even entertained by the ancient Babylonians.] which gave rise to what we would regard as a peculiarly painful exhibition of human misery of body and soul, is strictly true to the times and the people. Even now travellers describe a similar concourse of poor crippled sufferers, on their miserable pallets or on rugs, around the mineral springs near Tiberias, filling, in true Oriental fashion, the air with their lamentations. In the present instance there would be even more occasion for this than around any ordinary thermal spring. For the popular idea was, that an Angel descended into the water, causing it to bubble up, and that only he who first stepped into the pool would be cured. As thus only one person could obtain benefit, we may imagine the lamentations of the 'many' who would, perhaps, day by day, be disappointed in their hopes. This bubbling up of the water was, of course, due not to supernatural but to physical causes. Such intermittent springs are not uncommon, and to this day the so-called 'Fountain of the Virgin' in Jerusalem exhibits the phenomenon. It is scarcely necessary to say, that the Gospel-narrative does not ascribe this 'troubling of the waters' to Angelic agency, nor endorses the belief, that only the first who afterwards entered them, could be healed. This was evidently the belief of the impotent man, as of all the waiting multitude, [a St. John v.] But the words in verse 4 of our Authorised Version, and perhaps, also, the last clause of verse 3, are admittedly an interpolation. [2 I must here refer to the critical discussion in Canon Westcott's Commentary on St. John. I only wish I could without unfairness transport to these pages the results of his masterly criticism of this chapter.]
In another part of this book it is explained at length, [3 See the Appendix on 'Angels.'] how Jewish belief at the time attached such agency to Angels, and how it localised (so to speak) special Angels in springs and rivers; and we shall have presently to show, what were the popular notions about miraculous cures. If, however, the belief about Bethesda arose merely from the mistaken ideas about the cause of this bubbling of the water, the question would naturally suggest itself, whether any such cases as those described had ever really occurred, and, if not, how such a superstition could have continued. But that such healing might actually occur in the circumstances, no one would be prepared to deny, who has read the accounts of pilgrimages to places of miraculous cure, or who considers the influence of a firm expectancy on the imagination, especially in diseases which have their origin in the nervous system. This view of the matter is
confirmed, and Scripture still further vindicated from even the faintest appearance of endorsing the popular superstition, by the use of the article in the expression 'a multitude of the impotent' ( ), which marks this impotence as used in the generic sense, while the special diseases, afterwards enumerated without the article, are ranged under it as instances of those who were thus impotent. Such use of the Greek term, as not applying to any one specific malady, is vindicated by a reference to St. Matt. viii. 17 and St. Mark vi. 56, and by its employment by the physician Luke. It is, of course, not intended to imply, that the distempers to which this designation is given had all their origin in the nervous system; but we argue that, if the term 'impotent' was the general, of which the diseases mentioned in verse 3 were the specific, in other words, that, if it was an 'impotence,' of which these were the various manifestations, it may indicate, that they all, so far as relieved, had one common source, and this, as we would suggest, in the nervous system. [1 Another term for 'sick' in the N. T. is (St. Matt. xiv. 14; St. Mark vi. 5,13; xvi. 18; (comp. Ecclus. vii. 35). This corresponds to the Hebrew Mai. i. 8. In 1 Cor. xi. 30 the two words are used together, and .]
With all reverence, we can in some measure understand, what feelings must have stirred the heart of Jesus, in view of this suffering, waiting 'great multitude.' Why, indeed, did He go into those five porches, since He had neither disease to cure, nor cry for help and come to Him from those who looked for relief to far other means? Not, surely, from curiosity. But as one longs to escape from the stifling atmosphere of a scene of worldly pomp, with its glitter and unreality, into the clearness of the evening-air, so our Lord may have longed to pass from the glitter and unreality of those who held rule in the Temple, or who occupied the seat of Moses in their Academies, to what was the atmosphere of His Life on earth, His real Work, among that suffering, ignorant multitude, which, in its sorrow, raised a piteous, longing cry for help where it had been misdirected to seek it.
And thus we can here also perceive the deep internal connection between Christ's miracle of healing 'the impotent man' and the address of mingled sadness and severity, [a St. John v. 17-47.] in which He afterwards set before the Masters in Israel the one truth fundamental in all things. We have only, so to speak, to reverse the formal order and succession of that discourse, to gain an insight into what prompted Jesus to go to Bethesda, and by His power to perform this healing. [1 Such a logical inversion seems necessary in passing from the objective to the subjective.] He had been in the Temple at the Feast; He had necessarily been in contact, it could not be otherwise, when in the Temple, with the great ones of Israel. What a stifling atmosphere there of glitter and unreality! What had He in common with those who 'received glory one of another, and the glory which cometh from the One only God' they sought not? [b ver. 44.] How could such men believe? The first meaning, and the object of His Life and Work, was as entirely different from their aims and perceptions, as were the respective springs of their inner being. They clung and appealed to Moses; to Moses, whose successors they claimed to be, let them go! [c w. 45-47.] Their elaborate searching and sifting of the Law in hope that, by a subtle analysis of its every particle and letter, by inferences from, and a careful drawing of a prohibitive hedge around, its letter, they would possess themselves of eternal life, [d ver. 39.] what did it all come to? Utterly self-deceived, and far from the truth in their elaborate attempts to outdo each other in local ingenuity, they would, while rejecting the Messiah sent from God, at last become the victims of a coarse Messianic impostor, [e vv. 40-43.] And even in the present, what was it all? Only the letter, the outward! All the lessons of their past miraculous history had been utterly lost on them.
What had there been of the merely outward in its miracles and revelations? [f ver. 37.] It had been the witness of the Father; but this was the very element which, amidst their handling of the external form, they perceived not. Nay, not only the unheard Voice of the Father, but also the heard voice of the Prophets, a voice which they might have heard even in John the Baptist. They heard, but did not perceive it, just as, in increasing measure, Christ's sayings and doings, and the Father and Flis testimony, were not perceived. And so all hastened
