John 5:4 - Printer Friendly

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KJV: For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

NKJV: For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had.

This verse is not typically found in modern translations. Those which include it often note that it is not found in older or more reliable manuscripts. The disputed text indicates that an angel would agitate the water of the pool, and the first invalid into the water after that would be healed. This raises theological questions, such as why God would make healing into a contest, or express miraculous power in such a random yet repetitive way.

According to manuscript evidence, the most likely answer is that these words were not part of the original text of the gospel of John. They might have been written in a margin, as a note, or a traditional explanation of the pool. At some point, the note might have been inadvertently copied into the main body and absorbed as part of the text.

Ultimately, this is a better example of biblical reliability than of biblical weakness. Verses such as this represent the most extreme version of "variants" found in scriptural manuscripts. Accepted or not, the text has no bearing on any doctrine, belief, or other meaningful facts of the faith. In other words, its exclusion isn't important, and if it were included, it wouldn't overwhelm the rest of what the Bible says on related topics. The Bible is an amazingly well-preserved and well-documented work.

John 5:1–15 contains the third of John's seven ''signs'' of Christ. A man crippled for decades expresses no prior knowledge of Jesus, nor an immediate desire to be healed. Jesus heals the man and tells him to walk. For carrying his mat—working—local religious leaders then confront the man. Yet he still doesn't know who Jesus is. Jesus meets the man in the temple and warns him about the dangers of sin. Once the city's leaders find out that Jesus was responsible for the healing, they will confront Him for violating the Sabbath, and for claiming to be equal with God.

Jesus again returns to Jerusalem, as required for the various feast days. While there, He heals a man who had been crippled for nearly forty years. Since this occurred on the Sabbath, local religious leaders are angry. In fact, they are more upset with Jesus for working on the Sabbath than amazed at His miracle. In response, Jesus offers an important perspective on evidence. Jesus refers to human testimony, scriptural testimony, and miracles as reasons to believe His declarations. Christ also lays claim to many of the attributes of God, making a clear claim to divinity.

Chapters 1 through 4 showed Jesus avoiding major publicity. Here, in chapter 5, He will begin to openly challenge the local religious leaders. This chapter is Jesus' first major answer to His critics in this gospel. The fact that Jesus is willing to heal on the Sabbath sets up a theme of His upcoming disagreements with the Pharisees. Jesus also provides an important perspective on the relationship between evidence and faith, which He will expand on in later chapters. This chapter also establishes a key point made by Jesus' critics: His claims to be God.

The disciple John wrote the gospel of John decades after the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written. The author assumes that a reader is already familiar with the content of these other works. So, John presents a different perspective, with a greater emphasis on meaning. John uses seven miracles—which he calls "signs"— to prove that Jesus is, in fact, God incarnate. Some of the most well-known verses in the Bible are found here. None is more famous than the one-sentence summary of the gospel found in John 3:16.