Pool of Bethesda #69

The Pool of Bethesda was a pair of large water pools in Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, surrounded by covered walkways where the sick and disabled waited. It is known from the fifth chapter of John’s Gospel, where Jesus heals a man who had been unable to walk for thirty-eight years (John 5:1-9). The account is one of several in John that combine a miracle with a sharp debate over the Sabbath.

Biblical Significance

John reports that Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews, and that there was in the city “by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches” (John 5:1-2). The Sheep Gate is mentioned in Nehemiah as the gate the high priest Eliashib and his fellow priests rebuilt and dedicated (Nehemiah 3:1). Many invalids lay under the colonnades, and Jesus singled out one man and asked, “Wilt thou be made whole?” The man explained that he had no one to help him into the water when it was stirred. Jesus told him, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk,” and the man was healed immediately (John 5:5-9).

Two textual notes are worth knowing. The name of the pool varies in the ancient manuscripts, appearing as Bethesda, Bethzatha, and in some copies Bethsaida. The explanation about an angel stirring the water, found in a few late manuscripts as part of verse 3 and verse 4, is absent from the earliest and best manuscripts, and most modern translations either omit it or place it in a footnote. The rest of the story does not depend on it.

Because the healing happened on the Sabbath, the man was challenged for carrying his mat, and Jesus was challenged for healing on that day (John 5:9-16). Jesus answered, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17), a claim that his opponents understood as making himself equal with God (John 5:18). Later, Jesus finds the man in the temple and warns him to sin no more (John 5:14).

Today

The site lies in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, next to the Crusader-era Church of Saint Anne. Excavations from the nineteenth century onward, and especially later work, uncovered a large complex of two adjoining pools separated by a wall, cut into the rock and fed by rainwater channels. The layout fits John’s mention of five colonnades, since porticoes on four sides plus one across the dividing wall would make five. Remains of Byzantine and Crusader churches were built over the pools, reflecting the long memory of the place as a site of healing.

For many years, critics doubted that John’s description could refer to a real place, but the excavations gave strong archaeological support to it. Some scholars have also connected the site with a place named in the Copper Scroll from Qumran, though that suggestion is debated. Visitors can see the excavated pools today, along with the well-preserved church of Saint Anne beside them.