Chapter Nine

1–41. The healing of the man blind from birth.

John 9:1. And as He passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. Christ, passing by on the road from the Temple, saw a man who was blind from birth, who probably was sitting at the gate of the Temple together with other blind beggars (see Acts 3:2). That the meeting with the blind man took place after Christ left the Temple (John 8:59) is indicated by the connecting particle “and” at the beginning of the first verse and the absence of such expressions as, for example, “after this” or “again,” which are placed where there is meant some interval between events (see John 2:12).

John 9:2. His disciples asked Him: Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? This time the Lord was accompanied by His disciples, of whose presence at the discourse of Christ with the Jews (John 8) was not mentioned. The disciples address the Lord with a question of a theoretical character: how to explain the fact that the blind man suffers so? Who is to blame for his difficult situation? In the Old Testament the disciples apparently could not find an explanation for this phenomenon. Indeed, although the law of Moses says that God punishes the children for the sins of the parents up to the third and fourth generation (Exod 20:5), on the other hand, the prophets foretold that with the coming of the Kingdom of the Messiah this order would be abolished and each would be punished only for his personal guilt (Jer 31:29 and following; Ezek 18:2 and following). This same Kingdom appeared to the apostles to have already come from the very moment when the Angels announced peace to all the world after the birth of Christ. And this blind man, apparently by his age, seemed to them to have been born already after Christ. How could God punish him for the sins of his parents already after the peace was established on earth? But the other explanation—personal guilt of the blind man himself—did not fit either, since this blind man had not yet had time to commit anything criminal before his birth. “So that he was born blind.” Here instead of “that” it would be necessary to put “so that” corresponding to the particle ἵνα placed here. Meanwhile, according to the general Jewish view, sickness still had to have as its cause someone’s guilt; and to think thus was given the impulse by Christ Himself (see John 5:14).

John 9:3. Jesus answered: It was not this man who sinned, nor his parents; rather it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. Christ does not recognize a universal character for such a rule. No special crime was committed either by the parents of the healed blind man or by him himself (which would be impossible in any case). The sickness was sent to the blind man so that the works of God might be revealed in him. This, of course, does not mean that the man was blinded so that subsequently the power of God might be revealed in him (Clement of Rome, Discourse XIX, 2) or the glory of the Son of God (as St. John Chrysostom interprets it), or so that one of God’s works might be accomplished in him. Christ only wants to say that in general, God’s providence toward men was revealed in the blind man, which for the most part remains hidden from human eyes. Yes, the works of God’s providence were not something clearly observable to people for a long time, but now they are being revealed in the activity of the Son of God—the Messiah. The healing of the blind man, which Christ was about to perform, He regarded as one of the manifestations of Divine providence toward men.

John 9:4. I must work the works of Him who sent Me, while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. John 9:5. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. “Yes,” as it were says Christ, “and the action which I am about to perform upon the blind man is only one link in the chain of many works of My calling. I must accomplish many such works, but very little time remains. I must hasten. Soon the night will come, that is, the opportunity to act visibly, openly for all will be taken from Me.” “I am the light of the world.” Christ proclaims the Gospel of salvation to all (see John 8:12), just as the sun always sends perceptible light to people (John 11:9). As the true light of the world, Christ wishes to drive away the darkness in which the blind man lives, that is, to make him sighted. And since through this action of Christ the hidden activity of God will be revealed, it is clear that the healing of the blind man in the eyes of Christ had a symbolic meaning: it indicated that God wishes to heal the spiritually blind as well. The blind man is a symbol of man in his natural state, incapable of the proper understanding of the purpose of his existence, who needs the illumination of the light of Christ in order to attain true knowledge and begin a holy life, that is, to be born again (John 3:3-7) or to be freed through the Son (John 8:31-36). Thus Christ, by His last saying, gives a special symbolic character to the miracle that follows.

John 9:6. And having said this, He spit on the ground and made mud from the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the mud, John 9:7. and said to him: Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is translated: Sent). He went and washed, and came back seeing. The actions which Christ used in healing the man born blind have the same symbolic character. Instead of healing the blind man by a word alone, as Christ performed His miracles in other cases (see John 2:7), Christ makes “mud from the spittle,” anoints the eyes of the blind man with this mud, and sends him to wash in the pool of Siloam. The Evangelist himself clearly attaches great significance to these details. What did the first action mean? The wide-open eyes of the blind man gave the appearance that he was seeing. But Christ smears his eyes with dirt—let him not appear to be seeing if in reality he sees nothing! So too, a man who by nature does not have knowledge of truth and is even incapable of knowing it, but who nevertheless imagines that he possesses such knowledge, will have this false phantom of sight taken from him by the hand of Christ, so that he might afterwards receive true knowledge. To this negative action was joined another positive one, which was indicated by Christ’s command to the blind man to wash in the pool of Siloam. The Evangelist himself explains to us the meaning of this command. The name of the spring to which Christ sent the blind man means, according to John’s interpretation, “sent” (Siloam, or more precisely in Hebrew, Shiloh). John apparently sees in the Siloam spring a symbol of the Messiah sent by God to illuminate men.

John 9:8. Then the neighbors and those who had previously seen him as a beggar said: “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg? John 9:9. Some said: “It is he.” Others said: “No, but he is like him.” But he kept saying: “I am the one. John 9:10. Then they asked him: “How were your eyes opened? John 9:11. He answered: “The man called Jesus made mud, anointed my eyes, and said to me: Go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and I received my sight. John 9:12. Then they said to him: where is He? He answered: I do not know. The blind man carried out Christ’s instruction without delay. He was naturally motivated by a desire to use any means available to cure his disease, and on the other hand, rumors about Christ as a miraculous healer may have reached him (John 5:5-9). Thus, the beginnings of faith in him were already present. But after receiving healing, he did not seek out Christ, but hurried home. In conversations with his neighbors and other people who had seen him sit before at the temple gates, he spoke of his benefactor as a man almost unknown to him—he knew only what his Healer’s name was, but where He was found was unknown to the healed man.

John 9:13. They brought the former blind man to the Pharisees. John 9:14. And it was a Sabbath when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. After some time, the most zealous of the Jews in observing the law of Moses brought the healed blind man to the Pharisees. They could not reconcile themselves to the thought that some miracleworker had appeared who performed healings on the Sabbath, when even such, properly speaking, insignificant works were forbidden—for example, the preparation of mud from spittle. The Pharisees, to whom they brought Christ, were considered specialists in determining what could and could not be done on the Sabbath. Where these Pharisees were at this time is not mentioned.

John 9:15. The Pharisees also asked him how he gained his sight. He said to them: He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see. John 9:16. Then some of the Pharisees said: This Man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath. Others said: How can a sinful man perform such miracles? And there was division among them. John 9:17. They say again to the blind man: What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes? He said: He is a prophet. John 9:18. Then the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had gained sight, until they called the parents of him who had gained his sight— Among the gathered Pharisees, there was no unity of opinion regarding this case. To settle the question of how a man could have performed a miracle while violating the law of Moses, the Pharisees decided to question the healed man again. When the healed man expressed confidence before them that Christ was a “prophet”—that is, one in direct communion with God—the Pharisees, whom the evangelist now calls Jews because of their hostile attitude toward Christ (cf. John 6:41), resolved to maintain that no healing had taken place at all. In hope of finding support for this assertion, they invited the parents of the healed man.

John 9:19. and asked them: Is this your son, of whom you say that he was born blind? How then does he now see? John 9:20. His parents answered them in response: We know that this is our son and that he was born blind— John 9:21. but how he now sees, we do not know, or who opened his eyes, we do not know. He is of age; ask him himself; let him speak about himself. John 9:22. So his parents answered this way, because they feared the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that whoever confessed Him as the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. John 9:23. For this reason his parents said: He is of age; ask him himself. To the question of the Pharisees about whether the blind man was truly their son, the parents of the blind man answered that he was indeed their own son and that he was born blind. How his healing came about, they did not know, because they were not present at it. They said nothing about Christ as the cause of their son’s healing because, as the evangelist notes, they feared the Jews—that is, the members of the Sanhedrin (cf. John 7:48)—who had decided to excommunicate believers in Christ from the synagogue or from the Jewish community. One who was excommunicated was deprived of certain important privileges; for example, circumcisions could not be performed in his house, the dead could not be mourned there, and finally, no one except his wife or children could approach him closer than four cubits.

John 9:24. So they called a second time the man who had been blind, and said to him: Give glory to God; we know that this Man is a sinner. John 9:25. He answered them: Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I know, that I was blind, and now I see. The Pharisees now wanted to extract some testimony against Christ from the healed man. Perhaps they expected the healed man to say that Christ had used some incantatory formulas in performing the healing (cf. Matt 12:24 and following). Now they had agreed among themselves regarding their view of Christ. “We know,” they say, “that this Man is a sinner!” The healed man was supposed, at their demand, to “give glory to God”—that is, to reveal in complete sincerity everything he knew about Christ (cf. Josh 7:19). But he did not wish to engage in arguments about whether Christ was a sinner or not; for him it was quite enough to know only that Christ had healed him of his blindness.

John 9:26. They asked him again: What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes? John 9:27. He answered them: I already told you, and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again? Or do you also wish to become His disciples? Then the Pharisees asked again about the manner of the healing that Christ employed, but the emboldened man asked them mockingly in return whether they too wished to become disciples of Christ.

John 9:28. And they reviled him and said: You are His disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. John 9:29. We know that God spoke with Moses; but as for this One, we do not know where He comes from. The Pharisees, of course, felt offended by such a reply from a man belonging to the “accursed rabble” (cf. John 7:49). Their irritation prompted them to revile the healed man (ἐλοιδόρησαν, which the Russian translation renders as “reviled”). They call him a disciple of Christ, though in fact he was not yet such, and they proudly proclaim themselves disciples of Moses. In this they contradict their previous statement (“we know,” verse 24); they now say they do not know where Christ comes from—that is, where He obtained His teaching and powers. They are afraid to say now, as they had said before, that Christ is a sinner and therefore not from God, because the fact of the healing Christ performed was visible to all.

John 9:30. The man who had gained his sight answered them: This is indeed marvelous, that you do not know where He comes from, and yet He opened my eyes. John 9:31. But we know that God does not listen to sinners; but if anyone is godly and does the will of God, He listens to him. John 9:32. From the beginning of the world it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of one born blind. John 9:33. If He were not from God, He could not do anything. Taking advantage of the difficult position of the Pharisees, the healed man not without humor points to his own healing, which should, it seems, have clarified for the Pharisees who Christ is. He reminds the learned Pharisees of what was, properly speaking, well known to every Israelite (“we know”), namely that piety and the fulfilling of God’s will is the condition for being heard in prayer. The healed man sees precisely such a case of being heard in the miracle accomplished upon him by Christ (cf. John 11:41 and following). In doing so, he praises Christ for accomplishing a miracle upon him of which no one had ever before heard, and concludes that Christ is from God.

John 9:34. They answered him: You were wholly born in sins, and you teach us? And they cast him out. The exasperated Pharisees declared to the healed man that he was clearly born in sin, burdened with sins from the very moment of his appearance in the world. The Pharisees said this, bearing in mind his former illness, which in their opinion was caused by the healed man’s sins (cf. Ps 50:7). Then they cast him out. In this way they clearly showed that they had nothing to say against the truth the simple man had spoken (verse 31). The man who suffered for Christ, for his part, showed through all his actions that in him gradually took place a transition from the trust he first had in Christ as a miraculous healer to faith in Him as a messenger from God, as a pious and powerful Intercessor, to whom God gives the power to perform miracles.

John 9:35. Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and finding him, said to him: Do you believe in the Son of God? John 9:36. He answered and said: And who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him? John 9:37. Jesus said to him: You have both seen Him, and He is speaking with you. John 9:38. He said: I believe, Lord! And he worshiped Him. When Christ heard from someone that the Pharisees had cast out the healed man, He approached him in order to help him attain complete faith in Him. Meeting him, Christ asked him: “Do you believe in the Son of God”? By this Christ showed the healed man that He was aware of how this man had defended Him before the Pharisees. The healed man, as was mentioned above, affirmed that Jesus is from God (verse 33). In this confession already lay the germ of faith in Jesus as the God-sent Messiah. For the blind man had to reason that Christ would not have sent him in vain to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam. He could not fail to understand that his healer was hinting at the coming of “a messenger from God” (Siloam means “sent”). At that time the Jews, especially those afflicted by misfortune like the blind man, thought only of the messenger who was supposed to come from God to ease their sufferings, of that Messiah who was promised by the prophets. And naturally, in the heart of the blind man could flare up the hope: Is not this healer who has turned to him that very Messiah whom he too was awaiting? For this Man has accomplished a miracle never before heard of... And so Christ goes to meet the need of the healed man to know the truth and brings his thought about Himself to complete maturity. He asks the healed man: Does he believe in Him as the Messiah? (The term “Son of God” here undoubtedly had a theocratic meaning rather than a metaphysical one; it denoted in the present case “Messiah,” because the healed man could only understand it in this sense at this time). The healed man gladly goes to meet Christ, asking: “And who is He?” Feeling that the Messiah is near him, he is, as it were, saying: “Where is He? Quickly, let me go to Him!” And his desire comes to fulfillment. Christ tells him that he has already “seen” the Messiah—seen, of course, when his eyes were opened. The Messiah now stands before him (“speaks with you”). After this, the healed man confessed his faith in Christ as the promised Messiah, and worshiped Him as the Divine Messenger (cf. John 4:24).

John 9:39. And Jesus said: I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind. John 9:40. Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard this, and said to Him: Are we also blind? John 9:41. Jesus said to them: If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now because you say, “We see,” your guilt remains. The different attitudes toward Christ on the part of the Pharisees and the healed blind man prompted the Lord to express the proposition that He came into this world for judgment over people, so that the blind would see and the seeing would become blind. The word “judgment” (κρῖμα) here does not mean judicial proceedings (κρίσις), carried out according to known laws and rules; Christ did not come for this at this time (cf. John 3:17). By “judgment” here should be understood the consequences that the appearance of Christ with the preaching of the Gospel will have for people: some will prove capable of receiving this preaching, others will not. In this the difference between people, which until now was hidden, will be revealed. One can say that “judgment” here means what happens in a person’s soul (cf. Rev 17:1; Rom 3:8). The Pharisees understood Christ’s words to mean that He was calling them blind—of course, spiritually—giving them to understand that only from Him could they find healing from their blindness. But this offends them. Do they need such a service from Christ? It seems they are sufficiently enlightened people! But Christ remarks to them that it would be much better if they were blind—that is, knowing nothing of the truth at all. In that case it would be possible to help them, as Christ helped the man born blind, and they “would have no guilt”—that is, they would not be guilty of stubborn resistance to Christ, which arises from their false confidence that they already know the truth. The Pharisees pride themselves on their knowledge of the law or, as the apostle Paul says, consider themselves called to teach the ignorant, because in their law they see an absolute, unchanging “standard of knowledge and truth” (Rom 2:20). Such people, who feel no need for spiritual healing, of course, cannot be helped! John’s purpose in including this account in his Gospel was probably to show Christian readers by means of a concrete example that Christ is the “light of the world” and gives “the light of life” to those who seek Him (cf. John 8:12), while to those who do not accept His testimony and reject Him, He will bring judgment, consisting in the fact that they will remain in the darkness of ignorance and sin. John includes the details of the interrogation that the Pharisees conducted of the healed man and his parents in order to show how the Pharisees tried in every way to convince the people that Christ did not perform any miracle at all. Earlier John portrayed how the Jews did not accept Christ’s word (John 7), and now he adds that they did not wish to acknowledge even the deed He performed. In former times they dared not dispute the very fact of the miracle (John 5); now they have gone so far as to deny even the performance of the miracle itself. It is clear that, on the one hand, their hatred of Christ greatly increased, and on the other, they decided to suppress any sympathy for Christ among the people, even by distorting facts. Thus, the position of Christ becomes critical... * * * Zahn, Holtzmann, and some others read, according to some ancient texts, this question thus: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” But hardly is such a change in the text well-founded. Although Christ did designate Himself as the Son of Man, this expression was not in common use among the Jews to denote the Messiah, and the blind man might not have understood what Christ meant by this expression.