John 9 - Cornerstone Biblical Commentary

9:1-41 This story has been a favorite for scholars trying to recover the “life-setting” of John’s Gospel in his community (Bultmann, Haenchen, Martyn). For instance, when it says the man’s parents were afraid of being “expelled from the synagogue,” higher critics see this as fitting John’s own time, when Christians had been expelled from synagogues (from the mid-80s on). This interpretation, however, is unnecessary. It simply means that the parents would be placed under the ban, and it does not have to stem from a later historical situation. There is nothing in the story that does not fit into the period of Jesus’ life (cf. note on 9:22).

9:2 Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins? The suffering of children due to their parents’ sins is found in Exod 20:5; Deut 5:9. The possibility of a child sinning in the womb is discussed in Genesis Rabbah 63:6 in terms of Jacob and Esau struggling in the womb (Gen 25:22) on the basis of Ps 58:3, “These wicked people are born sinners; even from birth [lit., ‘from the womb’] they have lied and gone their own way.”

9:3 This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. The Gr. hina [TG2443, ZG2671] (so that), as rendered here, indicates that the man’s blindness did not occur because of sin but for the sake of God’s power being shown. The phrase “This happened” does not appear in the Greek but is supplied by the NLT (cf. NIV) for clarity. But there is another way to understand this—namely, to connect the purpose clause to what follows: “So that the power of God may be seen in him, we must quickly carry out the tasks . . .” (so Poirier 1996, Burge). If this were correct, Jesus would not be saying that God allowed the man to be blind for a higher purpose but simply would be saying why they must act quickly. This view is quite possible but perhaps not quite as likely because the context seems to indicate that Jesus was answering their question as to the reason for the man’s blindness. It is also possible that this is linked with Jesus’ time in Samaria and his positive reception there (see Köstenberger).

9:4 We must . . . us. Some mss have “me” in place of “us” here. “Me” is supported by B D 070 (itd) syrpal copsa geo1; this was most likely the original reading. The mss that have “us” (66 75 א* copbo) appear to have made the change to better match the opening “we.” The same is true of those that replace the opening “we” with “I” (א1 A C Q Y f1.13 33 ). Cf. NLT mg.

9:7 Go wash yourself. Some scholars (e.g., Cullmann, Brown) believe the washing of the eyes is symbolic of baptism as a salvific act; however, there is no evidence in the text for such an interpretation (cf. Schnackenburg, Carson).

9:14 because it was on the Sabbath. The NLT makes the Sabbath the reason why the people took the man to the Pharisees. Actually, the Sabbath is the reason the Pharisees use to condemn Jesus. By making clay he was working on the Sabbath, and further, he was not supposed to heal a person on the Sabbath unless it was a life-threatening illness.

9:16 Some of the Pharisees said, . . . Others said. The division of the Pharisees on this issue follows generally the party lines of the Pharisees. Some (the school of Shammai, the more conservative branch) followed the letter of the law—Jesus’ working on the Sabbath made him a sinner. Others (the school of Hillel, less conservative) followed the spirit of the law and considered the facts of the case—Jesus had performed a good work (so Bruce).

9:22 expelled from the synagogue. Carson (1991:369-370) shows how many (e.g., Barrett, Martyn) explain this as anachronistic, pointing to a late-first-century date. The verb occurs only in John in the NT, and seems to reflect the rewriting (c. AD 85–90) of the Twelfth Benediction (from the Eighteen Benedictions that Jews recited three times a day), which excluded Christian Jews from the synagogue. The ban in Jesus’ day allowed participation in religious exercises, so it is argued that the later date is best. However, there are good reasons to doubt this scenario: (1) Luke 12:8-9 gives corroborative evidence that a test of Christian heresy involving expulsion from the synagogue did indeed occur during Jesus’ life. (2) There is evidence of excommunication before the time of Jesus, as in the first century BC (m. Ta’anith 3:8), and Paul was expelled (Acts 13:50) long before AD 85–90. (3) There is considerable debate regarding the rewritten Twelfth Benediction, and the wording could have been aimed at other Jewish sectarians and not Christians. (4) Horbury (1982) argues convincingly that a ban against heresy existed long before 85 AD and that the reworked Twelfth Benediction actually reinforced it with the intent of preventing Christians and others from serving as officers in the synagogue. (5) John’s literal statement in 9:22 that the Jews “had announced” (ēdē . . . sunetetheinto) about putting these people out of the synagogue recognizes that this practice predated Jesus. (6) The idea of confessing Jesus as Messiah makes perfect sense during his lifetime. In short, the evidence supports the historical veracity of this story.

9:31 We know. The man had almost joined the ranks of the followers of Jesus. At this stage, he may well have been a partial believer like those in 2:23-25. Earlier he had said that Jesus was “a prophet” (9:17), and here he said that Jesus had come “from God” (9:33). His faith continued to develop.

9:35 Son of Man. This is a strange title here, and one would expect more simply “Son” or “Son of God.” In fact, several later mss have “Son of God” (A L 038 044 070 0250 f1,13 itmss syrp,h). But there is excellent support for “Son of Man” (66 75 א B D W itd syrs cop), and “Son of Man” is the more difficult reading (i.e., it is more likely that it would have been changed). Thus, it is probably the original reading.

9:38-39a “Yes, Lord, I believe!” the man said. And he worshiped Jesus. Then Jesus told him. Some ancient mss (75 א* W itb copac2,sa MS) have not included this section. It is possible that the words may have been added later on the basis of baptismal liturgy. Brown (1966:380-381) suggests that “the words were an addition stemming from the association of John 9 with the baptismal liturgy and catechesis.” Porter (1967) affirms the same. But it is also possible that the words are original due to the weight of evidence in favor of their inclusion (66 A B C D ). Metzger (1994:195) argues that the words were accidentally omitted or that perhaps the omission was the result of an editorial omission made to unify the teaching in 9:37, 39.

9:39 I entered this world to render judgment. Many quote Bultmann here (1971:341-342): “This is the paradox of the revelation, that in order to bring grace it must also give offence, and so can turn to judgment. In order to be grace it must uncover sin; he who resists this binds himself to his sin, and so through the revelation sin for the first time becomes definitive.”

9:41 If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty. This can be understood three ways: (1) if you realized you were blind, you could come to me in faith and have your guilt removed (Whitacre); (2) if you were in complete darkness and had no light at all, you would not be guilty of the sin of unbelief, for you would have acted in ignorance (Morris, Carson); or (3) if you were only physically blind, that would not be a sin and not keep you from being healed (Ridderbos). The first is attractive but has to read more into the language than is viable. The third does not quite fit the symbolic cast of 9:39-41. The second is the most viable.

Jesus had fulfilled the major events of the Festival of Shelters by declaring himself “the light of the world” (8:12) and by shedding his light on the Jewish crowds. Next, he demonstrated this light by healing a blind man and showing that the Pharisees were blind (9:39-41). What Jesus said of himself in chapter 8 is shown to be true by his miracle in this passage. The healing of the blind had never occurred before (9:32), so for the Jews, this should have been proof positive that the Messiah had indeed arrived.

This is a brilliantly written story; it centers on a series of interrogations (9:8-12, 13-17, 18-23, 24-34) sandwiched between an opening and a closing (9:1-7, 35-41, see Schnackenburg, Beasley-Murray, Burge). The movement in the story is quite explicit: the man begins blind and proceeds to physical sight and then to spiritual sight; in contrast, the Pharisees claim to have spiritual sight and by the end are shown to be blind. There is a subtheme, as well—the importance of taking a public stand for Jesus (cf. Luke 12:8). The parents and then the man himself were called upon to publicly side either with Jesus or the leaders. There was no middle ground. It is interesting that, like the Samaritan woman, the man was never named; the emphasis is more on the symbolism of the story and the spiritual nuances than on the individuals involved.

The reason they must do so “quickly” (lit., “while it is day”) is that “the night is coming” when “no one can work” (9:4). “Day” refers to the time when Jesus was with them on earth, and the “night” refers to a time of darkness when he would be taken from them. The “light of the world” was with them now (Cf. 12:35-36, “Walk in the light while you can, so the darkness will not overtake you”), but the night was coming (Cf. 13:30, Judas leaves at night; 20:1, the women come to the tomb while it is still dark). The “night” refers not so much to the period after the Spirit is poured out (who is, in a sense, the continuing presence of Jesus with his disciples) but rather to the time between the Cross and the coming of the Spirit (so Carson). During that time, they did not work but rather experienced the resurrection appearances (the first 40 days, Acts 1:3) and then waited in the upper room and at the Temple, rejoicing during the other ten days before Pentecost (50 days after Passover, cf. Luke 24:53; Acts 1:13-14). Still, during the time before his departure, Jesus continued to be “the light of the world,” and his followers rejoiced in the day he brings. This is the theme of the chapter, as the “Light” brings “light” to the man born blind.

The actual process of this healing is very strange to the modern mind. The idea of Jesus spitting on the ground, making a mud pack of it (the clay is associated by the early Fathers with the creation of mankind from dust, Gen 2:7 [Irenaeus Heresies 15.2]), and putting the pack on the man’s eyes is repugnant to most of us. Similar miracles utilizing spittle occur at Mark 7:33 (a deaf and dumb man) and 8:23 (a blind man). In the ancient world, the spittle of a holy man was viewed as having healing powers (t. Sanhedrin 12:10), and Jesus was accommodating himself to the level of the man’s faith. He told the man to wash the mud off his eyes at the pool of Siloam (cf. 2 Kgs 5:10-14, Naaman washing in the Jordan to cure his leprosy), southwest of the city by the valley of Hinnom. John brought out the meaning of the name Siloam, “sent” (from the Heb. shiloakh [TH7971, ZH8938]), undoubtedly emphasizing that Jesus was doing the work of God as the sent one, God’s envoy (stressed throughout chs 5–8), and possibly also creating a wordplay with Jesus “sending” the man to the pool.

The trouble starts with the fact that the healing took place on the Sabbath (9:14)—the same situation as the healing in 5:1-15. The Pharisees had developed a series of oral traditions regarding what constituted work prohibited on the Sabbath. Jesus had broken three of the rules: (1) healing was only allowed on the Sabbath in a life-threatening situation; (2) some rabbis believed that anointing the eyes on the Sabbath was wrong; and (3) kneading was disallowed, and making a mud poultice was a type of kneading (so Beasley-Murray, Blomberg). When the Pharisees heard the man recount his story to this effect, the result was division, as usual (9:16; Cf. 6:60-71; 7:12-13, 30-31, 40-44; 10:19-21). The reaction of some was what one would expect: Jesus was not “from God” (para theou, cf. this phrase in the Gr. of 1:6 regarding the Baptist), for he was working on the Sabbath. He must be a false prophet, for he did not keep the Torah. Yet others were not so sure. An “ordinary sinner” could hardly perform “such miraculous signs,” they stated. He had not just performed any miracle (Deut 13:1-5 warned of false prophets doing miracles)—he had healed a blind man, one blind from birth.

The Pharisees came back to the healed man a second time and asked for his “opinion about this man who healed” him (9:17). In 5:15, the crippled man who had been healed reported Jesus to the authorities. Here, the reaction was just the opposite. He confessed, “I think he must be a prophet.” His spiritual development is evident here. At first, he only knew of his healer as “the man they call Jesus.” He had obviously been reflecting on the implications of this and was now ready to acknowledge him as a prophet. He had not yet understood Jesus as the prophet (i.e., the “prophet like Moses”; Cf. 1:21; 6:14), but he probably saw him in the Elijah/Elisha mold—a miracle-working prophet (cf. the Samaritan woman in 4:19). Several (Carson, Keener, Köstenberger) note how the man becomes a model disciple as he progresses in his understanding of Jesus as healer (9:11), then prophet (9:17), one to be followed (9:27), one from God (9:33), and finally, the Lord to be worshiped (9:38).

The parents refused to be used in this way (9:20-21), undoubtedly sensing the negative intention of the Pharisees. They were willing to affirm the basic facts—he was indeed their son and he was indeed born blind. They were not willing to go beyond that. They had no idea how he was healed or who did it. They demanded, “Ask him. He is old enough.” A child became an adult at age 13 and could then be legally interrogated. The ball was back in the court of the leaders, and their ploy had failed to work. John then explains why the man’s parents were so cautious. They were “afraid of the Jewish leaders” because the word had gone out that they had threatened to use the ban on “anyone saying Jesus was the Messiah” (9:22). As Whitacre says (1999:243), “This scene is full of tragedy, for these parents are not allowed to give thanks to God for the great thing he has done for their son. They must have agonized over the blindness and begging he was forced into. Now he has been miraculously healed, and they must put aside the overwhelming parental joy and knuckle under to the goons from the committee for the investigation of un-Jewish activity, as it were.”

The Pharisees’ frustration is apparent. They had to go back to the beginning: “How did he heal you?” (9:26). The formerly blind man seems to have realized the lack of honest searching on their part and so went on the offensive, saying, “Didn’t you listen?” He had had it with their double-edged questions and realized they were not searching for what had really happened. He then turned to biting irony: “Do you want to become his disciples, too?” He wanted to expose their lack of desire to know the truth. At this, they showed their true colors, as they began to curse him (9:28). This does not refer to profanity but to calling down the covenant curses for blasphemy (cf. Lev 24:10-16; Num 15:30). This is a key to the whole debate between Jesus and the Jews. They were “disciples of Moses,” while in their view anyone who followed Jesus was his disciple and could not follow Moses. They had artificially set up an absolute dichotomy between Jesus and Moses; to believe in one meant rejecting the other. They believed that God revealed his law to Moses (Num 12:8) and viewed Jesus as a contrary upstart. But in this attitude they were actually rejecting Moses because they had rejected the one Moses wrote about. Witherington (1995:184) says, “This, of course, is precisely the problem—not knowing Jesus’ origins and destiny leads to inevitable misunderstanding of Jesus and his work.”

The man’s sarcasm against the leaders increased, as he said, “Why, that’s very strange!” (9:30). He found the unbelief of the leaders rather remarkable in light of the simple fact that Jesus healed the blind. That is the one thing their radical skepticism was unable to answer. How could they say they “don’t know where this man comes from”? It should have been rather obvious since none of them could heal the blind. God must have had a very special relationship with this Jesus. The one area in which the healed man was in agreement with the leaders was the fact that “God doesn’t listen to sinners” (Cf. 9:24), but that was as far as it went. He went on to say that God does “hear those who worship him and do his will” (9:31). The point is that only a godly man could do such a thing, especially since the particular miracle, the healing of the blind, had never occurred before. His logic was impeccable. Such a miracle could not mean anything other than that Jesus was indeed “from God.” A false prophet could perform some miracles, but not this one.

Stymied in their attempt to get the man to turn against Jesus, the leaders turned against him (9:34). They had been upstaged by his arguments and so reacted viscerally, in a sense saying, “You have no right to teach us.” As Pharisees, they looked down on anyone without proper training, let alone a former beggar. They returned to the mistaken logic of 9:2; since he was born blind, he must have been “born a total sinner.” Before, they had said that sin brought physical blindness; now they claimed his sin had brought spiritual blindness. They were wrong again (so Burge). He was accused of the same thing as Jesus (9:24)—being a sinner. They also proved once more that they were unteachable and completely closed to the truth. As will be stated explicitly in 9:40-41, the truly blind ones were the Jewish leaders.

Why do we find the “Son of Man” title here? “Son of God” is more frequent in John and would make more sense (cf. note on 9:35). However, Jesus as “the Son of Man” in John is the one who brings life and judgment (1:51; 3:13-14; 5:26-27; 8:28; esp. 6:27, “[seek] the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you”). It is the Son of Man who rewards the man’s belief with life here and then brings judgment upon the blind Pharisees in 9:39-41. As Son of Man, Jesus unites heaven and earth (1:51), provides salvation via the Cross (8:28), and discloses divine truth to the world. Obviously, the man could not understand much of this, but the reader is expected to see the larger picture. In 3:14-15, the lifting up of the Son of Man is a call to believe in him and have eternal life. This story acts out that same challenge. The man responded immediately, saying, “I want to believe in him.” He had no idea who this “Son of Man” was, but he knew God had done something astounding in his life, and he wanted to believe. (Contrast this with the crowd’s “Who is this Son of Man?” in 12:34, where they do not want to believe.)

As with the Samaritan woman (4:26), Jesus told the healed man that the one he was seeking was indeed the very one he was seeing (a second miracle of coming to sight!) and speaking with (9:37). The Pharisees looked and saw a false prophet they despised, while the man was now looking on the face of the very Son of Man who brings eternal life. The man did not hesitate at all but immediately cried out, “Yes, Lord, I believe!” (9:38). Then he prostrated himself before Jesus in worship. What a moment! The first time he actually saw Jesus, he found out he was also looking upon the face of the Son of Man. Though he worshiped, the man surely did not recognize Jesus as God himself at this stage (cf. Thomas in 20:28); he was worshiping the God who acted in Jesus (so Schnackenburg, Beasley-Murray). Yet at the same time, such obeisance in the Bible is indicative of a theophany (cf. Gen 18:2; Judg 13:15-22), so the man was symbolically recognizing more than he realized (so Brown, Carson).

Jesus gave life to the man but then explained to him the other side of his mission as Son of Man: rendering judgment, which in this story means “to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind” (9:39). This was in actuality the “moral of the story,” helping the healed man “to grasp that the miracle that opened his eyes, and the ensuing debate with the religious authorities, constituted an acted parable about sight and blindness in the spiritual realm” (Carson 1991:377). The growing openness of the man to truth and the developing rejection of the leaders is the story in a nutshell. Brown (1966:377) shows how three times the man had confessed his ignorance (9:12, 25, 36), while three other times the Pharisees bragged of how much they knew (9:16, 24, 29). Jesus’ statement in 9:39 might well contain an allusion to Isaiah 6:10, which he quotes in 12:40: “The Lord has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts.” As with Pharaoh, God may well judge those who turn a blind eye to him by making them even more blind. The message is quite clear: Those of us who acknowledge our blindness and turn to Christ in belief will receive sight, but those who go on pretending they know the truth will descend further and further into darkness and be rendered blind by God. We must choose between Jesus and self, between light and darkness, between life and death.

Jesus was speaking loud enough for the crowds as well as for the man himself. Some Pharisees heard him and asked the natural question, “Are you saying we’re blind?” They had just enough perception to realize Jesus was speaking of spiritual blindness (they would not have asked if they were thinking of physical blindness) but not enough to catch the true meaning of what he had just said. Jesus’ response was indirect yet powerful. He began by saying that if they were completely in darkness and failed to understand spiritual realities, they would not have sinned in acting as they did (cf. Rom 5:13). They could not have been blamed for acting in ignorance (Morris 1995:497). The problem was that they claimed they saw spiritual realities, and so their guilt remained. “In contrast to the man who had received his double sight, the Pharisees had sight but no light. They were spiritually blind, though they thought they were enlightened” (Comfort 1994:92). The light of God had shone upon them in the person of his Son, Jesus, and their arrogant assumption of their law had led them to reject that light. They stood before God completely guilty of the primary sin of unbelief.

It is common to see this as synonymous with the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Spirit (Mark 3:29 and parallels; so Barrett, Sanders, Carson), but that goes beyond the language here. It is better to see this as serious rejection but not irredeemable (so Bruce, Kysar). This is a warning to all who think they have the answers and ignore the clear demands of Jesus in the Word of God. There is only one way to eternal salvation, and that is through the atoning sacrifice of Christ, not the self-righteous efforts of any person or religious movement.