John 5:2-9
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
2 Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep [Gate][a] a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.(A) 3 In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.[b] [4 ][c] 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be well?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”(B) 9 Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.(C)
Now that day was a sabbath.
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- 5:2 There is no noun with Sheep. “Gate” is supplied on the grounds that there must have been a gate in the NE wall of the temple area where animals for sacrifice were brought in; cf. Neh 3:1, 32; 12:39. Hebrew: more precisely, Aramaic. Bethesda: preferred to variants “Be(th)zatha” and “Bethsaida”; bêt-’ešdatayīn is given as the name of a double pool northeast of the temple area in the Qumran Copper Roll. Five porticoes: a pool excavated in Jerusalem actually has five porticoes.
- 5:3 The Caesarean and Western recensions, followed by the Vulgate, add “waiting for the movement of the water.” Apparently an intermittent spring in the pool bubbled up occasionally (see Jn 5:7). This turbulence was believed to cure.
- 5:4 Toward the end of the second century in the West and among the fourth-century Greek Fathers, an additional verse was known: “For [from time to time] an angel of the Lord used to come down into the pool; and the water was stirred up, so the first one to get in [after the stirring of the water] was healed of whatever disease afflicted him.” The angel was a popular explanation of the turbulence and the healing powers attributed to it. This verse is missing from all early Greek manuscripts and the earliest versions, including the original Vulgate. Its vocabulary is markedly non-Johannine.
John 5:16
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
16 Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a sabbath.(A)
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Matthew 12:11-12
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
11 [a]He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep that falls into a pit on the sabbath will not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable a person is than a sheep. So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.”
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Luke 14:5
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
5 Then he said to them, “Who among you, if your son or ox[a] falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”(A)
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