Pool of Bethesda
The Pool of Bethesda lay by the sheep market in Jerusalem, ringed by five porches where 'a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered' waited for the troubling of the water, believed to bring healing to the first one in. There Jesus found a man who had been infirm for thirty-eight years and asked him the question that still probes every reader: 'Wilt thou be made whole?' The man answered with his obstacle - no one to carry him to the water - and Jesus bypassed the pool entirely: 'Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.' Immediately healed, the man walked off carrying his mat on the sabbath, igniting the controversy with the religious leaders that dominates John's Gospel from that chapter onward. For centuries skeptics doubted the pool's five porches ever existed - until archaeologists uncovered the twin pools with five colonnades exactly as John described.
Details
- Region
- Jerusalem
- Modern Location
- Near St. Anne's Church, Jerusalem
Key Passages
"Wilt Thou Be Made Whole?"
John 5:2-9
Thirty-eight years of waiting for the water, ended by a word - Jesus heals without the pool, the ritual, or even the man's expectation.
2ow there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.
Did You Know?
Skeptics long doubted John's 'five porches' - until excavations uncovered twin pools with four colonnades around the sides and a fifth across the middle, exactly five.
Bethesda means 'house of mercy' - a fitting name for the place where a man waited thirty-eight years for one.
The healed man didn't know who Jesus was until later - one of the few Gospel healings granted to someone who could not yet name his healer.