John 5: 1-9, Pool of Sadness

The apostle John covers a number of incidents in Jerusalem, in contrast to the other gospels reports about Galilee. In both regions Jesus gets into trouble with the religious authorities for healing on the Sabbath.

John 5: 1- 8, Pool of illness and sadness
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 
3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 
6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 

9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath.

Jesus is back in Jerusalem, at an unnamed festival.  This time he visits a place inhabited by the ill and disabled. John provides a fair amount of identification of the pool at Bethesda, presumably having traveled there with Jesus.

We don't really have a verse 4. Some old Greek manuscripts,  considered less trustworthy, add, at the end of verse 3, an explanatory passage, several lines of Greek that translate as "and they [the blind, lame and paralyzed] waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease he had."  In medieval manuscripts, this sentence was verse 4 but due to its lack of authenticity, has been removed in most modern translations.

Jesus asks the man if he wants to be healed and the man says, "Yes, but I don't have anyone to help me into the water." (The added material, above, is an attempt to explain why the man wants into the water. ) In response, Jesus shrugs -- that myth is irrelevant -- and simply says, "Get up!" The man responds immediately and gets up. (What was that like? How did the man know to use old unresponsive legs?)

The passage ends on an ominous note -- this happened on the Sabbath, the day at the end of the week where no one was to work.  This prohibited "work" included carrying one's mat ... and healing others!