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Session 9 of 21Book of John

The Man Born Blind

Chapter 9; A healing, a hearing, and a synagogue ban

Where this chapter sits

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Right now: John the Baptist is beheaded (AD 29)

Setting: Jerusalem (Pool of Siloam)

By Bea Zalel

John 9

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  1. Now as Jesus was passing by, He saw a man blind from birth,
  2. and His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
  3. Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him.
  4. While it is daytime, we must do the works of Him who sent Me. Night is coming, when no one can work.
  5. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
  6. When Jesus had said this, He spit on the ground, made some mud, and applied it to the man's eyes.
  7. Then He told him, "Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam" (which means "Sent"). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing.
  8. At this, his neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging began to ask, "Isn't this the man who used to sit and beg?"
  9. Some claimed that he was, but others said, "No, he just looks like him." But the man kept saying, "I am the one."
  10. "How then were your eyes opened?" they asked.
  11. He answered, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and anointed my eyes, and He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and received my sight."
  12. "Where is He?" they asked. "I do not know," he answered.
  13. They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind.
  14. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened his eyes was a Sabbath.
  15. So the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. The man answered, "He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see."
  16. Because of this, some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for He does not keep the Sabbath." But others said, "How can a sinful man perform such signs?" And there was division among them.
  17. So once again they asked the man who had been blind, "What do you say about Him, since it was your eyes He opened?" "He is a prophet," the man replied.
  18. The Jews still did not believe that the man had been blind and had received his sight until they summoned his parents
  19. and asked, "Is this your son, the one you say was born blind? So how is it that he can now see?"
  20. His parents answered, "We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind.
  21. But how he can now see or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him. He is old enough to speak for himself."
  22. His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews. For the Jews had already determined that anyone who confessed Jesus as the Christ would be put out of the synagogue.
  23. That was why his parents said, "He is old enough. Ask him."
  24. So a second time they called for the man who had been blind and said, "Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner."
  25. He answered, "Whether He is a sinner I do not know. There is one thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see!"
  26. "What did He do to you?" they asked. "How did He open your eyes?"
  27. He replied, "I already told you, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become His disciples?"
  28. Then they heaped insults on him and said, "You are His disciple; we are disciples of Moses.
  29. We know that God spoke to Moses, but we do not know where this man is from."
  30. "That is remarkable indeed!" the man said. "You do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes.
  31. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but He does listen to the one who worships Him and does His will.
  32. Never before has anyone heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind.
  33. If this man were not from God, He could do no such thing."
  34. They replied, "You were born in utter sin, and you are instructing us?" And they threw him out.
  35. When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, He found the man and said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"
  36. "Who is He, Sir?" he replied. "Tell me so that I may believe in Him."
  37. "You have already seen Him," Jesus answered. "He is the One speaking with you."
  38. "Lord, I believe," he said. And he worshiped Jesus.
  39. Then Jesus declared, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind."
  40. Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard this, and they asked Him, "Are we blind too?"
  41. "If you were blind," Jesus replied, "you would not be guilty of sin. But since you claim you can see, your guilt remains."

Inline text: Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain. Compare with the John 9 chapter in your preferred translation via the link above.

Theme

Picture the man before the miracle. In a 1st-century Mediterranean city there were no ramps. There were no welfare programs, no guide dogs and no Braille. A blind adult lived as a near-total dependent. If a family could afford an extra mouth that brought in no field labor and no trade income, he stayed home. If they could not (and most could not) he sat at a temple gate or a pool with a wooden bowl. He waited for the alms that Paul names as one of the basic Christian gifts in Romans 12:8. The disciples' question in verse 2, "who sinned, this man or his parents," is not theological cruelty. It is the popular common sense of the day. Job had already complicated this assumption centuries earlier. Still, on the streets the old equation held: visible disability equals invisible guilt. The parents in verses 18 through 23 seem to live close enough to be called in. Yet they speak of their grown son as if he were a stranger. He has been outside the household economy for a long time.

Jesus sends him to wash in the pool of Siloam. John pauses the story to translate the Hebrew. "Shiloah" means "sent." The pool was no minor landmark. It was the southern end of Hezekiah's tunnel, the 8th-century BCE engineering marvel that carried water from the Gihon spring inside the city walls (2 Kings 20:20; 2 Chronicles 32:30). Every year at Sukkot the priests walked down to Siloam in procession. They drew water in a golden pitcher and carried it up to the temple for the libation Jesus had referenced two chapters earlier. Israeli archaeologists excavated the pool in 2004 and its broad limestone steps are still visible today. So when Jesus tells a blind beggar to wash in the "sent" pool, John is stacking puns the way a rabbi would stack midrash. The blind man is sent to the sent pool by the sent one. A Gentile reader hears a simple healing. A Jewish reader hears the temple's own water politics rerouted through a single Galilean teacher.

Then verse 22 introduces a Greek word that probably shaped John's whole community: "aposynagogos," which means expelled from the synagogue. The text says the leaders had "already agreed" that anyone confessing Jesus as Messiah would be put out. To a modern reader this can sound abstract, like losing a club membership. In a 1st-century Jewish town it was anything but. To be expelled meant the local kosher butcher would not sell to you. No observant family would arrange a marriage for your children. No contract you signed would be enforced in the village court. Your children's Torah education ended at the door. Often it meant your own parents recited the prayer for the dead over you. J. Louis Martyn argued that John is writing for readers who have actually lived through this. They had probably been pushed out in the wake of the Birkat ha-Minim, the "blessing against heretics" added to the synagogue prayers around 85 to 90 CE that effectively flushed Jewish Christians out. The blind man's solitary defiance in verse 33 is, for John's first readers, a portrait of themselves.

Lincoln calls chapter 9 the most theologically elegant in the whole gospel. The reason is the symmetry. The man who could not see ends able to see and to worship (v38). The leaders who could see end the chapter blind (v41). A Gentile reader raised on mystery-religion language would have heard "enlightenment" comfortably. Pagan initiations regularly used the vocabulary of sight and darkness. A Jewish reader heard something harder. He heard the cadence of Isaiah 6:9 through 10, the prophet's commission to a people who would "see and not perceive." John quotes that very passage openly at 12:40 to explain the leaders' rejection of Jesus. Brown notes that the chapter is also a courtroom in miniature. The blind man is questioned three separate times. Each round he sees a little more clearly. By the last round his physical sight and his confession of faith become the same act.

Supporting cross-references

2 Kings 20:20 →2 Chronicles 32:30 →Isaiah 6:9-10 →Job 1 →John 12:40 →Romans 12:8 →

Discussion questions

  1. Imagine a blind beggar at your village's temple gate your whole life. Your synagogue's official theology says his condition is his parents' fault. How would your assumptions about who deserves help quietly shape what you saw when you walked past him?
  2. The pool of Siloam carried temple-grade religious weight in the world Jesus walked. What does it tell you about Jesus's method that he sent a man to a politically charged sacred site for a private, almost unspectacular healing?
  3. Being expelled from the synagogue cost people their marriages, their butcher, their schooling and sometimes their parents. Sit with the blind man's exchange in verses 24 through 34 knowing what his "I do not know, but one thing I know" line is about to cost him. Where in your own life have you spoken a true sentence that you knew would be expensive?
  4. John lets the chapter end with the leaders insisting they see and Jesus naming that very insistence as their blindness. What kind of confidence about your own vision makes a person hardest to heal?

Further reading

  • History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel— J. Louis MartynThe foundational study on the aposynagogos community context. Martyn's two-level reading of John 9 still shapes most academic commentary.
  • The Gospel According to John (Anchor Bible, vol. 1)— Raymond E. BrownDetailed verse-by-verse work on the trial structure of chapter 9 and its courtroom irony.
  • The Gospel According to Saint John— Andrew T. LincolnLincoln treats chapter 9 as John's most theologically symmetrical unit. Strong on the sight-and-blindness reversal.
  • Israel Antiquities Authority, Pool of Siloam excavation reportsThe 2004 excavation reports document the steps where 1st-century pilgrims, and the blind man of John 9, would have washed.
  • BibleProject, Gospel of John overviewAccessible visual overview of John's signs and the sight motif. Helpful before group discussion.