John 9 - The New International Commentary

1 The opening words, “And as he was passing by,” are fully consistent with the notion that the temple discourse of the two previous chapters is over, and that a new sequence of events (at an undetermined time, but still in Jerusalem)* is under way. The same phrase* occurs in the synoptic Gospels at the call of Jesus’ disciples by the sea of Galilee (Mk 1:16), and again at the call of Levi (or Matthew) the tax collector (Mk 2:14; Mt 9:9).* This too is a “call” narrative of sorts, even though Jesus does not command the blind man to “Come after me,” or “Follow me” (as in the synoptic accounts), and the blind man is never explicitly enlisted into Jesus’ company of disciples.* Rather, the presence of the blind man, aided and abetted by the disciples’ question (v. 2), brings Jesus to a stop, and the story begins.

It is clearly important to the narrative that the man had been blind “from birth.” Judging from the disciples’ question (v. 2), this detail is not just something the Gospel writer is telling the reader, but is obvious to them and to Jesus, either somehow from the man’s appearance or because he was a well-known figure in the city.* Jesus talked about “birth” in the preceding chapter: birth from Abraham (8:33, 37, 39), legitimate versus illegitimate birth (8:41–42), and birth from God versus birth from the devil (8:44–47). Much earlier, speaking to Nicodemus, he drew a sharp contrast between physical birth and a new birth “from above,” or from “water and the Spirit” (3:3, 5; see also 1:13).* Now Jesus and his disciples encounter a case in which physical birth has left a person blind.* As the story goes on, the man’s “birth” defect will continue to be a major issue (see vv. 2–3, 19–20, 32, 34).

M. Jesus and the Man Born Blind (9:1–38)

And as he was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth, and his disciples asked him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be revealed in him. We must work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. When I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle and smeared the mud on the eyes. And he said to him, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam”—which means “sent.” So he went away and washed and came seeing.

Then the neighbors and those seeing him formerly, that he was a beggar, said, “Isn’t this the one who sits and begs?” Some said, “It is he”; others said, “No, but it is like him.” The man said, “It is I.” So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?” That one answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and smeared my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So when I went away and washed, I could see.” And they said to him, “Where is that man?” He said, “I don’t know.”

They brought him to the Pharisees, the man who was once blind. Now it was Sabbath on the day Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So again the Pharisees also asked him how he could see. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed and I see.” So some of the Pharisees were saying, “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath.” Others were saying, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” And there was a split among them. So they say to the blind man again, “What do you say about him, because he opened your eyes?” And he said that “He is a prophet.”

So the Jews did not believe about him that he was blind and could see, until they summoned the parents of the one himself who could see. And they asked them, saying, “This is your son, whom you say that he was born blind? How then does he see now?” So his parents answered and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we don’t know, or who opened his eyes we don’t know. Ask him, he is of age, he will speak for himself.” These things his parents said because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already reached an agreement that anyone who confessed that he was Christ would be put out of synagogue. This was why his parents said that “He is of age, ask him.”

So for a second time they summoned the man who was blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” That one answered, “If he is a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I know, that I was blind and now I see.” So they said to him, “What did he do for you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I told you already, and you did not hear. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” And they insulted him, and said, “You are that man’s disciple. We are Moses’ disciples. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we don’t know where he is from.” The man answered and said to them, “For what is amazing in this is that you don’t know where he is from, and he opened my eyes. We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is god-fearing and does his will, this one he hears. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of one born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing,” They answered and said to him, “You were born altogether in sins, and you are teaching us?” And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of man?” And that one answered and said, “And who is he, sir, that I might believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have not only seen him, but it is that one who is speaking with you.” And he said, “I believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.

Despite the efforts of copyists to link what happens next to what preceded at the Tent festival,* it is best to view this chapter as a new story. The narrative is linked only very loosely to the preceding discourse by the conjunction “And” (kai, v. 1). There is no way to know how long it was after the autumn Tent festival and Jesus’ departure from the temple (8:59) that the events described here are supposed to have taken place. All we are told is that by 10:22 “it was winter,” and that the time of the Dedication festival (now known as Hanukkah) had come. Presumably the events of 9:1–10:21 come somewhere between the two festivals, but except for the notice that the healing of the blind man took place on a Sabbath (see 9:14), no time frame is given.*

Having provided a grim example of aborted faith and illegitimate birth (8:30–59), the Gospel writer now adds a case study in genuine faith, and birth from above (see 3:3, 5). That a new story is beginning is signaled by the presence of Jesus’ disciples with him as he “was passing by” and “saw a man blind from birth” (v. 1). The disciples have been absent throughout the Tent festival (ever since 6:70, in fact), and they make only a cameo appearance here, just long enough to ask one question (v. 2), after which they disappear again, not to reappear until 11:7. The narrative itself consists of the healing of the blind man (vv. 1–7), followed by a succession of scenes between the man and his neighbors (vv. 8–12), the man and the Pharisees (vv. 13–17), his parents and the Pharisees (vv. 18–23), and again the man and the Pharisees, ending with his expulsion from the synagogue (vv. 24–34), after which Jesus finds him and brings him to faith (vv. 35–38).

2 If readers fail to notice the phrase “from birth,” Jesus’ disciples* are quick to call attention to it. “Rabbi, who sinned,” they ask Jesus, “this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (v. 2). The notion of “punishing the children for the sins of the fathers” (Exod 20:5; Deut 5:9, NIV; also Tobit 3:3–5) was common enough in the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism (though not without vigorous dissent; see Ezekiel 18). The notion that a person could be held accountable for his own sins prior to birth is less widely attested and therefore more problematic.* Possibly it arises not so much from a particular theological belief as simply an intuitive feeling that because God is just, human sinfulness must somehow lie at the root of all human misfortune.* The default assumption was that the victim was to blame, but in the case of someone born blind, the added possibility existed that it might be the parents.

3 While Jesus nowhere rules out such theorizing in principle (see above, 5:14; also Mk 2:5, 9),* in this instance he is quick to reject both alternatives: “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be revealed in him” (v. 3). What he is saying, of course, is not that the man and his parents are entirely without sin, but that sin is not the reason for the man’s predicament.* He views the man’s blindness from birth not as tragedy but as opportunity. This is commonly understood to mean that the man’s blindness affords Jesus an opportunity to work a miracle. The “works of God” are understood to be the works of Jesus.* But this interpretation overlooks the striking similarity between Jesus’ pronouncement here and at 3:21, at the end of his brief discourse to Nicodemus at the first Passover.* The parallel becomes clear when the two sayings are put side by side:

“Whoever does the truth comes to the Light, so that his works will be revealed* as works wrought in God”* (3:21).

“Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be revealed in him” (9:3).*

The parallel suggests that the man born blind is the Gospel writer’s prime example and embodiment of the person who “does the truth” and therefore “comes to the Light.” Consequently, a different interpretation of “the works of God” presents itself: that is, that they are not so much the miracles of Jesus as the working of God in the man’s life, even before he met Jesus, setting him apart as the Father’s gift to the Son (see, for example, 6:37, 39). As such, they are not fully “revealed” or disclosed in the miracle of restored sight, but only later, when the former blind man finally “comes to the Light” (3:21) by believing in Jesus (see 9:38).* For him the act of believing is not so much a “conversion experience” as a revelation of that which he is already, a person who by the power of God “does the truth” (3:21), in sharp contrast to the person “who practices wicked things” and who therefore “does not come to the Light, for fear his works will be exposed” (3:20). On this interpretation, verse 3 seems to have more to do with the blind man’s spiritual history than with the mission or miracles of Jesus.

4 So which interpretation is correct? Do “the works of God” have to do with the spiritual life of the man born blind, or with the mission and miracles of Jesus? Verses 1–3, as we have just seen, point to the former, while verses 4–5 accent the latter. “We must work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day,” Jesus continues, “Night is coming when no one can work” (v. 4). Having spoken generally of “the works of God” (v. 3), Jesus now seems to call attention to his own mission, and especially the healing he is about to perform. “The One who sent me” is by now a familiar phrase with reference to Jesus’ mission (see, for example, 4:34; 5:24, 30; 6:38; 7:16, 28, 33; 8:26, 29), but what is surprising is the plural “we must” (ἡμᾶς δεῖ) with which verse 4 begins: that is, “We must work the works of the One who sent me.”* It is commonly argued that Jesus is here enlisting or inviting his disciples (and by extension the readers of the Gospel) to join him in working the works of God,* but the difficulty is that the disciples play no part whatever in the blind man’s healing or in his coming to faith. In fact, from this point on they disappear from the story. More likely, by “we”* Jesus means himself and the blind man, as if to say, “He and I must work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day.”* In this case a distinction must be made between the way in which Jesus “works the works of the One who sent me,” and the way in which the blind man does so. Jesus clearly does so by carrying out his mission, that is, by healing the blind man. But how does the blind man “work the works” of God? Jesus was asked just that question three chapters earlier in Capernaum: “What shall we do that we might work the works of God?” (6:28), and he said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom that One sent” (6:29). There is no reason to suppose that Jesus would have answered the blind man any differently, and in fact the question of belief will emerge explicitly in the last encounter between the two (9:35–38).

The other striking feature of the pronouncement (in addition to the plural “we”) is its urgency: “We must,”* Jesus insists, “work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day,” adding the cautionary note that “Night is coming when no one can work.” Even those who understand “we” to refer to Jesus’ disciples or to the readership of the Gospel know that they are on shaky ground applying this pronouncement to the church’s mission in the present age. On such a view, “day” would be the time allotted for the proclamation of the Gospel, and “night” the time of judgment when it is too late for sinners to repent (as perhaps implied in the gospel song, “Work, for the Night Is Coming”). Most of the New Testament, by contrast, sees the present as “night” and the “day of the Lord” as just that, “day” (see Rom 13:12; 1 Thess 5:1–11; 2 Pet 1:19). The only way to give the pronouncement an application to the present is to view it in generalized human terms, with “day” as a person’s lifetime on earth, and “night” as senility or death.*

More to the point, as most interpreters recognize, is Jesus’ sense of his own time limitations in the Gospel of John. He has already told his mother, “My hour has not yet come,” with the implication that there was still time to act. Later he told his brothers, “My time is not yet here” (7:6), implying that his decisions and his itinerary were in God’s hand. Still later, the Gospel writer commented, not once but twice, that “his hour had not yet come,” implying that it was drawing near (7:30; 8:20). Jesus himself reinforced the first of these notices with the comment, “Yet a short time I am with you, and I go to the One who sent me” (7:33), and the second similarly with the words, “I go and you will seek me,” and “Where I go you cannot come” (8:21). Now he is saying it again, in different words. Time is running out, but there is still a window of opportunity,* not just for Jesus but for his disciples (see 11:9–10; 13:33; 16:16), and for all who hear his word (see 12:35–36), in this instance the blind man. Jesus will not be “passing by” again (see v. 1). When “day” turns into “night” (see 13:30), with the arrest and execution of Jesus, it will be too late for him. Therefore, “We,” says Jesus, “—he and I together—must work the works of the One who sent me as long as it is day. Night is coming when no one can work.”*

5 Because “day” calls to mind the imagery of “light” (see also 11:9), Jesus adds, “When I am in the world, I am the Light of the world” (v. 5). Here he reiterates the claim he made to the Pharisees at the Tent festival in the preceding chapter (8:12),* though without the characteristic egō eimi formula,* and without the accompanying invitation to “follow” and therefore “not walk in darkness,” but “have the light of life.” Instead of the latter, a story will be told in which those promises literally come true.* What better vindication of Jesus as “the Light of the world” than giving sight to a man born blind? At the same time, the pronouncement revisits the Gospel’s opening claim that “In him was life, and that life was the light of humans” (1:4), illuminating “every human being who comes into the world” (1:9)—even, as Jesus will now demonstrate, one who “came into the world” unable to see.

6 “Having said these things”* marks a transition (as later in 13:21 and 18:1) from speech (vv. 3–5) to action. The healing miracle is narrated quickly and concisely (vv. 6–7), with no wasted words. The blind man will repeat it himself four times, each time more concisely than before (vv. 11, 15, 25, and 30). All we are told is that Jesus “spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle and smeared the mud on the eyes” (v. 6). He neither introduces himself to the blind man, nor verifies that he was in fact born blind, nor does he ask him, “Do you want to get well?” (see 5:6). He simply acts. His use of spittle recalls two healing stories in Mark, one in which he put his fingers in the ears of a deaf mute and then “spit and touched the man’s tongue” (Mk 7:33, NIV), and another (specifically involving a blind man) in which he “spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him” (Mk 8:23, NIV), healing him in two stages (see vv. 24–25).* An interpretation as old as Irenaeus identifies Jesus’ action here as a mirror image of the work of God in creation.* In contrast to the healing of the sick man at the pool, Jesus healed “not by means of a word, but by outward action; doing this not without a purpose, … but that He might show forth the hand of God, that which at the beginning had moulded man.”* More specifically, he adds, “that which the artificer, the Word, had omitted to form in the womb [namely, the blind man’s eyes], He then supplied in public, that the works of God might be manifested in him, in order that we might not be seeking out another hand by which man was fashioned, nor another Father; knowing that this hand of God which formed us at the beginning, and which does form us in the womb, has in the last times sought us out who were lost, winning back His own, and taking up the lost sheep upon his shoulders, and with joy restoring it to the fold of life.”*

Many centuries have passed, yet no better interpretation of the verse has been offered.* As Irenaeus rightly saw, the accent is on the “mud,” not the spittle.* The latter is simply a means of making a ball of mud, lending realism to the narrative. A literal reenactment of Genesis would obviously have required Jesus’ “breath” rather than “spittle,” just as God “breathed” into Adam the breath of life (see Gen 2:7), but it would have destroyed the story’s credibility. For that “breath of life” the reader must wait until 20:22, where Jesus “breathed” (enephysēsen) on his disciples to give them the Spirit after his resurrection. The Spirit goes unmentioned in this account of Jesus and the blind man, but (in characteristically Johannine fashion) water takes the Spirit’s place.

7 To finish the healing, Jesus tells the blind man, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” The Gospel writer inserts a comment that “Siloam” means “sent,”* and then adds that the blind man “went away and came seeing” (v. 7). The etymology of the name (whatever its origin and whatever its merits)* is not strictly necessary to the story, but for that very reason is important to the author—and consequently to the reader. The one preeminently “sent” in this Gospel is Jesus himself (one need look no further than v. 4, “the One who sent me”), but John too was twice said to be “sent” (1:6; 3:28), as Jesus’ disciples will also be (4:38; 17:18; 20:21), and as the Spirit will be sent, whether by the Father (14:26) or by Jesus (15:26; 16:7). The perfect participle “sent” is used of John, but not of Jesus,* or the disciples, or the Spirit.* Still, in light of this Gospel’s use of water as an image for eternal life (4:14), or for the Spirit (see 3:5–6; 7:39), the notice that Siloam’s waters are “sent” points to their origin “from above,” whether immediately from the Gihon Spring up the hill, or ultimately (in the form of rain) “from heaven,” or “from God.”* Beyond that, the notice hints (without quite saying so) that Siloam’s waters, like the “water and Spirit” of which Nicodemus was told (3:5), will give the man born blind another birth, and therefore new eyes.* While Jesus promises nothing,* the blind man, without a word, “went away and washed and came seeing.”*

8–9 The preceding verse left it unclear precisely where the man “came” on returning from the pool of Siloam, and who was there to witness that he could now see. If he returned to the place where Jesus met him, Jesus was evidently no longer present, because later in the chapter he shows no sign of recognizing Jesus (see vv. 36–38). Whether in the same place or elsewhere, the first to notice him were “the neighbors and those seeing him formerly, that he was a beggar,”* and they are confused (v. 8). Although the term is not used, there is a division among them over his identity, recalling earlier “splits” in the crowd at the temple over the identity and behavior of Jesus (see 7:12, 25–27, 40–43). “Isn’t this the one who sits and begs?” they ask (v. 8), and they cannot agree among themselves, as “Some said, ‘It is he,’ ” and “others said, ‘No, but it is like him’ ” (v. 9).* Their confusion stems not just from possible changes in the man’s appearance and demeanor, but from their natural difficulty in believing that such a miracle could ever occur (see v. 32). Finally, the man speaks up and identifies himself in a manner recalling Jesus’ own repeated self-identification: “It is I”* (v. 9; see 4:26; 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58). While this is, strictly speaking, “an instance of a purely secular use of the phrase,”* it creates an effect strangely similar to what it would have had on Jesus’ lips, for it confirms the reality of the miracle, and consequently the presence in Jerusalem of a miracle worker.

10–12 “The neighbors and those seeing him formerly,” momentarily divided (v. 9), now speak with one voice. “How were your eyes opened?” (v. 10) they ask the former blind man.* This gives him his first opportunity to tell the story for himself, and he does so: “The man called Jesus made mud and smeared my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So when I went away and washed, I could see” (v. 11). From this we learn that Jesus must have introduced himself by name, even though the author has not told us so, but we learn little else. There is no mention of the spittle (which he probably knows nothing about), but only of the mud (which he would have felt), and the command Jesus gave him to “Go to Siloam and wash.”* Clearly, the accent is on Jesus. This is only the third time in the Gospel that anyone has spoken Jesus’ name, and this time the speaker is someone who knows nothing else about him (for example, that he was “son of Joseph,” or “from Nazareth”).* For now, he knows the healer simply as a man,* “the man called Jesus.” Later on, in defiance of the Pharisees, he will call him “the prophet” (v. 17) and a man “from God” (v. 32), but still later he will admit that he does not know who this “Jesus” is (“And who is he, sir, that I might believe in him?” v. 36).

The man’s neighbors, accordingly, having learned of the “how” (v. 11), now pursue the question of who this “man called Jesus” is and “where” he can be found. “Where is that man?” they ask, and the former blind man replies, “I don’t know” (v. 12). The question “Where is that man?”* echoes word for word the question of “the Jews” at the start of the Tent festival (7:11), reminding the reader that Jesus is still wanted by the religious authorities, and that his life is still in danger (see 5:18; 7:1, 19, 25; 8:37, 40, 59). That his whereabouts are unknown also hints that he is perhaps still, or again, “hidden” (see 8:59). After his brief encounter with the blind man, he seems to have “ducked out,” much as he did on an earlier occasion (5:13) after healing the sick man at Bethsaida. He will not be seen again until verse 35, where he is said to have “found” the former blind man again and questioned him about his belief.* For now, the neighbors and the Pharisees must content themselves with interrogating the former blind man, who functions in the narrative as Jesus’ surrogate, and for the Gospel writer as a kind of spokesman for the truth.

13–14 That the man’s “neighbors and those seeing him formerly, that he was a beggar” (v. 8) are not just curiosity seekers but are in some way in league with the religious authorities is clear from what they do next: “They brought him to the Pharisees, the man who was once blind” (v. 13). If not quite a citizens’ arrest, their action raises the seriousness of the interrogation, and consequently the sense of impending danger, to a higher level, signaled by the Gospel writer’s factual notice, “Now it was Sabbath on the day Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes” (v. 14; compare 5:9). Why does it matter that it was the Sabbath? Once again (as in 5:9), the issue will be Sabbath breaking, this time not by the one healed (in picking up his mat, 5:10), but by Jesus himself, who “made the mud and opened his eyes.”* The notice comes very late in the story, and changes the whole character of the story. From now on, Sabbath observance will be the overriding issue between the man born blind (who in a way becomes a stand-in for Jesus himself) and the Jewish authorities.*

15 The former blind man’s interrogation moves into a second stage, as “again the Pharisees also asked him how he could see” (v. 15a, as in v. 10, “How were your eyes opened?”). His answer is also the same, but more concise than before: “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed and I see” (v. 15b; compare v. 11). The repetition drives home the point that the man sticks to his story because it is true, yet at the same time the story grows shorter and simpler because readers of the Gospel can fill in the gaps for themselves. For example, the pool is not named this time, and (perhaps more significantly) the man does not say that Jesus “made mud” (as in vv. 6, 11, and 14), only that he “put mud on my eyes”—omitting the detail that may have provoked the charge of Sabbath breaking.

16 The simple answer provokes a “split”* among the Pharisees, not over what happened, but (like the ‘split’ in the crowd in 7:40–43) over the identity and character of Jesus, who made it happen (v. 16). “Some” of them concluded, “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath,” while “others” asked, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” At this point no one, not even he who was born blind, is suggesting that Jesus is more than “a man,” whether “the man called Jesus” (v. 11), or a “man from God,”* or “a sinful man” (v. 24).* A “man from God” would presumably be a prophet like John, “a man sent from God” (1:6). “Some” appealed to Sabbath law, arguing that no true prophet would break the Sabbath, while “others” appealed to the stubborn fact of the healing to reply that no “sinful man” could have performed “such signs.”*

The comment of this second group recalls those at the early Passover in Jerusalem who were said to have “believed” in Jesus on the basis of “the signs he was doing” (2:23), and Nicodemus, who told Jesus that “no one can do these signs you are doing unless God is with him” (3:2). They also sound like the “large crowd” that followed Jesus in Galilee “because they could see the signs he was doing for those who were sick” (6:2), and those in the crowd at the Tent festival who “believed in him,” saying “The Christ, when he comes, will he do more signs than this man did?” (7:31). “Signs” have not been mentioned since then, and Jesus has performed only one more. In none of the other instances was there conclusive evidence of genuine faith, and the same is true here. All that is evident that the Pharisees do not present a united front. There is indeed “a split” among them, but it is also true that the second group, even though not believers, function in the narrative as a voice of reason, speaking for the Gospel writer: “How can a sinful man do such signs?” How indeed?

17 The former blind man is drawn into the “split,” much as he was drawn into the previous dispute over his own identity (v. 9). This time the issue is not his identity but that of Jesus, as “they say to the blind man again, ‘What do you say about him, because he opened your eyes?’ ”* His answer is characteristically simple: “He is a prophet” (v. 17). It is unclear whether he is simply siding with those Pharisees who had asked, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” (v. 16), implying that he was in some sense a man “from God,” or whether he is saying something more. His reply could be also translated, “He is the Prophet,”* but this is as unlikely here as it would have been in the case of the Samaritan woman (see 4:19). Rather, he is doing little more than sticking to his story by suggesting that Jesus is “a prophet,” or “man from God,” perhaps in much the same sense that the Pharisees had determined that John was (see 5:33–35).* In identifying Jesus as “a prophet,” he is merely making explicit what one faction of the Pharisees (the “others” of v. 16) already implied.

18–19 The Pharisees, who are now called “the Jews” (the terms being still used interchangeably) seem to pay no attention to the man’s pronouncement that Jesus is “a prophet” (v. 17). Instead, we are told, “they did not believe* about him that he was blind and could see” without questioning his parents for verification. They seem to suspect either that he had his sight all along while pretending to be blind, or that he is a stranger now falsely claiming to be a beggar who was known to be blind. Instead of going to them, they “summoned the parents of the one himself who could see” (v. 18),* suggesting a formal interrogation (or inquisition) and raising the threat level still higher, primarily to their son, but also to them and in the long run also to Jesus. Presumably the former blind man is still present when they ask the parents, “This is your son, who you say that he was born blind?” (v. 19).* The emphatic “you say”* suggests that the authorities already have reason to believe that the parents will testify to exactly that, even if it means that some will blame them for their son’s condition (see v. 2). “How then does he see now?” they continue, repeating what they previously asked the man himself (v. 15), and what his neighbors asked him before that (v. 10). There is no reason the parents should have known that, not having been present at the healing, unless their son had told them. “The Jews” obviously do not like the answer they have been given, and are questioning the parents in the hope that their son may have told them a different story.

20–21 The parents provide little help. To the authorities’ first question, they reply, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind” (v. 20), telling them what they already seem to have known. To the second question, “How does he then see now?” they reply, “how he now sees we don’t know.” Then, surprisingly, they volunteer an answer to a third question that has not been asked: “or who opened his eyes we don’t know.” They understand that behind the question “How” is the more loaded question “Who”—that is, that the issue in the minds of the religious authorities is christological. Jesus, while not on the scene, is at the very center of the story. The neighbors recognized this when they asked, “Where is that man?” (v. 12), and the authorities’ real question now, as yet unspoken, is “Who is that man?” The parents, anticipating that question, are quick to insist, “We don’t know.” Finally, they end the conversation by urging the questioners to ask their son, because “he is of age, he will speak for himself” (v. 21). It is unclear whether or not the parents know that the authorities have already done that (see vv. 13–17), but if their son is in fact present (see n. 68), the opportunity exists for further interrogation right then and there.

22–23 At this point the Gospel writer breaks in with a narrative aside, explaining what motivated the parents to say what they did.* They said it, we are told, “because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already reached an agreement that anyone who confessed that he was Christ* would be put out of synagogue” (v. 22). Then, somewhat redundantly, he adds, “This was why his parents said that ‘He is of age, ask him’ ” (v. 23).* The point at issue—though never acknowledged as such—is whether or not Jesus is “Christ,” or “the Messiah” (see 1:41; 4:25). This is surprising, because that title has not come up in the present chapter. The question has been whether or not Jesus is “from God” (v. 16) or “a prophet” (v. 17), not specifically “the Christ.” Some in the crowd at the Tent festival had called him that, and others had denied it (see 7:41–43), but now it suddenly becomes clear that no one is allowed to confess him as “Christ” with impunity. The “fear of the Jews” that intimidated the crowds even then (7:13) seems to have grown, and the same fear silences the parents of the man born blind. They were afraid of being put “out of synagogue.”* The point is not that they themselves have necessarily believed in Jesus, but that, like the Jerusalem crowds earlier, they are reluctant even to “speak about him publicly” (again, see 7:13).

The term “out of synagogue” occurs here and in two other places in John’s Gospel (12:42 and 16:2), but (aside from patristic references to those three texts) nowhere else in ancient Greek literature. It may have been the Gospel writer’s own coinage,* and as such its meaning would have been readily understood. Synagogue discipline, involving temporary excommunication (for varying lengths of time and for a variety of reasons), was common enough in early Judaism.* Yet the notion of being “put out of synagogue” does raise questions. There is no independent evidence that allegiance to a false Messiah was ever explicitly made grounds for excommunication (though it may have been so obvious as to go without saying). Moreover, it is widely assumed by modern interpreters that the reference goes way beyond temporary excommunication, and has to do rather with a final break between the Jewish synagogue and the Christian movement that is supposed to have occurred near the end of the first century. This is said to have been precipitated by the so-called Birkath ha-Minim, or “Heretic Benediction,” actually a malediction or curse inserted into the synagogue prayer known as the Shemoneh Esreh, or “Eighteen Benedictions.”* This added twelfth “benediction” said, “For the renegades let there be no hope, and may the arrogant kingdom soon be rooted out in our days, and the Nazarenes* and the minim* perish as in a moment, be blotted out from the book of life, and with the righteous may they not be inscribed. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant.”* Its effect is said to have been to make it impossible for Jewish Christians to worship any longer in the synagogue with fellow Jews. Possibly something of the kind is reflected in Justin Martyr’s repeated references in his Dialogue with Trypho to the Jews’ practice of “cursing in your synagogues those who believe in the Christ” (Dialogue 16.4; also 96.2), or to “those in the synagogues who have anathematized and do anathematize those who believe in this very Christ” (Dialogue 47.4), or to “insulting the Son of God” and “scoffing at the King of Israel, as your synagogue rulers teach you, after the prayer” (Dialogue 137.2).*

If this is what is meant by “out of synagogue,” the Gospel writer’s narrative aside is an anachronism, reading back into Jesus’ ministry the situation Jewish Christians faced in his own day, presumed to be around a.d. 90 or later.* Yet the Gospel writer is quite explicit and intentional about what he wants to say: that is, that the policy of excommunication did not begin only after the Christian movement was under way (see 16:2), but was “already”* in place during Jesus’ earthly ministry. If it is an anachronism, it is a very bold and deliberate one.* Moreover, it is not limited to a brief narrative aside by the Gospel writer, but becomes part and parcel of the narrative itself, as “the Jews” continue to question the man born blind, and finally, we are told, “drove him out” (v. 34). The difficulty with the widely held theory that the Birkath ha-Minim is in play here is that the Gospel of John says nothing about any “curse” or “anathema” on those who are expelled, nor does the later policy amount to formal excommunication. It appears to have been rather a not-so-subtle strategy to persuade “heretics” (including Jewish Christians) to leave on their own.*

More likely, “put out of synagogue” refers to some form of temporary exclusion in effect already in Jesus’ day (see above, n. 75), enforced only as local synagogues saw fit. Jesus himself, after all, was allowed to speak freely in the synagogue at Capernaum (see 6:59),* and when questioned after his arrest, he will claim that “I have spoken publicly to the world; I always taught in synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews come together, and I spoke nothing in secret” (18:20). The surprised comment of the “Jerusalemites” at the Tent festival, “And look, he is speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to him,” and the question, “Do the rulers truly know that he is the Christ?” (see 7:26) could just as easily have been uttered “in synagogue” as “in the temple.” In short, the decree “that anyone who confessed that he was Christ would be put out of synagogue” seems to have been enforced only sporadically, if at all. Its only victim, so far as we know, was the former blind man himself (v. 34).* During Jesus’ ministry on earth (both here and in 12:42), the Gospel writer seems more concerned with the threat (and consequently the fear) of excommunication than with the carrying out of the threat—this in contrast to Jesus’ flat prediction later, “They will put you out of synagogue” (16:2), pointing in all likelihood to the actual experience of some in the writer’s own community, doubtless leading up to the Birkath ha-Minim, or “Heretic Benediction,” but probably not equivalent to it.

Even with the Birkath ha-Minim out of the picture, it may still be the case that John’s Gospel (like the other three) does blur to some extent the distinction between what Jesus’ followers faced during his ministry, and what the Christian community faced at the time the Gospel was written. In the other Gospels, it was not so much a matter of being “put out of synagogue” as of being interrogated and beaten “in the synagogues” (Mk 13:9; also Mt 10:17; 23:34), or “brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities” (Lk 12:11), or delivered “to synagogues and prisons” (Lk 21:12), with the time frame left somewhat ambiguous.* Perhaps the closest synoptic parallel is Jesus’ warning to his disciples in the Lukan beatitudes, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they separate you and insult you and drive out your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of man” (Lk 6:22). Yet no mention is made there of the “synagogue,” the perpetrators are not called “the Jews” or “the Pharisees” but simply “people,” and in none of the synoptic texts is the issue said to be whether or not Jesus is “Christ,” or Messiah. The issue is over “the Son of man,”* that is, over the “man” Jesus himself, his identity and his origin, regardless of what title he is given. The same is true in John’s Gospel,* where (perhaps significantly) the title “Christ” does not occur again until “the Jews” themselves bring it up (10:24). Its role in the present narrative, therefore, should not be exaggerated.

24 Even though they have interviewed the former blind man before (vv. 13–17), “the Jews” take the advice of his parents (v. 21) and question him “for a second time” (v. 24). They could have done so right on the spot (assuming he was present when they questioned his parents),* but instead they “summoned” him,* just as they had “summoned” the parents (v. 18), to yet another formal interrogation. The notice that this was the “second” such interrogation heightens the impression of a quasi-judicial proceeding. The former blind man is being given an opportunity to save himself from excommunication. Picking up where their previous conversation left off (see vv. 16–17), they press him to change his story: “Give glory to God.* We know that this man is a sinner” (v. 24; compare v. 16). “Give glory to God” was simply their way of saying “Come clean,” or “Tell the truth,”* swearing him in as a witness on his own behalf—against Jesus. Ironically, he will “give glory to God” precisely by sticking to his story and in the end falling down to worship Jesus (v. 38). In adding, “We know that this man is a sinner,” they are trying to put words in his mouth. Their interest is no longer in the factual details of the case, but solely in trying to elicit agreement with their own verdict, handed down in advance, that “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath” (v. 16). The expression “We know,” in contrast to the former blind man’s “I don’t know” (v. 12), and the “We don’t know” of his parents (v. 21), imply that what they were saying about Jesus was a certainty, something with which all right-thinking persons must agree. Yet this was obviously not the case, for some even in their own number had questioned it (see v. 16b, “How can a sinful man do such signs?”).

25 The man born blind changes the subject from the character of Jesus back to the basic facts of the case. Echoing the claims he has just heard about what “we know” (v. 24), he replies, “If he is a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I know, that I was blind and now I see” (v. 25). With this he retells his story a third time (as in vv. 11 and 15), more briefly than before, yet unchanged. Try as they will, his interrogators cannot make the miracle go away.

26–27 Forced to deal with the facts, they press him for more details, looking in vain for discrepancies: “What did he do for you? How [as in vv. 10 and 15] did he open your eyes?” (v. 26). He has told them all that before—at least all they needed to know (see v. 15, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed and I see”), and he now says as much: “I told you already, and you did not hear.* Why do you want to hear it again?” He might have stopped there, but he cannot resist asking one more mischievous question: “Do you want to become his disciples too?” (v. 27). “His” obviously refers to Jesus, changing the subject again from the healing to the healer—that is, back to christology. Moreover, his emphatic “you … too”* is a striking giveaway that he now thinks of himself as a “disciple”* of Jesus, whom he has already judged to be “a prophet” (v. 17). While the form of his question expects a negative answer, the very raising of the question stands as an affront to those now investigating him, and they are quick to respond.

28–29 “The Jews” see no humor in the former blind man’s remark. Stung by his audacity, “they insulted him,” saying, “You are that man’s disciple. We are Moses’ disciples. We know [as in v. 24] that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we don’t know where he is from” (vv. 28–29, italics added). The notice that they “insulted” him* is as close as the narrative comes to the “cursing” in the synagogues mentioned in later sources.* The emphatic pronouns (“you” and “we”) put distance between themselves and the man born blind, in effect putting him “out of synagogue,” rhetorically if not yet literally. Their disdain for Jesus shows through not so much in the conspicuous pronouns “that man” (v. 28) and “this man” (v. 29)* as in their implication that Jesus stands over against Moses the lawgiver, and therefore over against their law, as a “sinner” and Sabbath breaker (see vv. 16, 24).

As far as the reader is concerned, this merely displays their ignorance, for it has been clear from the outset that “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ” (1:17), and Jesus has already told “the Jews” that “if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me” (5:46). They have “not heard” Moses’ words any more than they have heard the testimony of the man born blind (v. 27). The notion of setting Jesus and his disciples over against Moses and Judaism is their idea, not the former blind man’s and certainly not Jesus’ own. Neither Jesus nor the Gospel writer has any quarrel with the claim that “God has spoken to Moses” (see 1:17; 7:19), nor in fact with the accompanying assertion that they “don’t know where [Jesus] is from” (v. 29). But the latter is a damaging admission, as the former blind man will point out (v. 30), validating Jesus’ repeated charge that they do not know God (see 7:28; 8:19, 55; also 15:21; 16:3).* Moreover, the alert reader will notice the contradiction between what was said at the Tent festival (“No, we know where this man is from, but the Christ, when he comes, no one knows where he is from,” 7:27; italics added) and what is being said here. Even though the contradiction is easily resolved (Jesus himself resolved it in 7:28), it underscores the point that Jesus’ enemies are grasping at straws, looking for any excuse not to listen to his message.

30 The man born blind responds with his longest speech in the chapter (vv. 30–33). It is important to recognize that he is a reliable witness (in the sense in which literary critics sometimes use the term “reliable narrator”), that is, he speaks for the Gospel writer in much the same way that John did in chapter 1 and in 3:27–36, or that Peter did when he said, “Lord, to whom shall we turn? You have words of eternal life, and we believe and we know that you are the Holy One of God” (6:68–69), or that Martha will do when she tells Jesus, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ who is coming into the world” (11:27; compare 20:31). In short, he represents the “Johannine” point of view. Readers of the Gospel are intended to regard his testimony as “the truth,” just as if the Gospel writer or Jesus himself had said it.

At the same time, what he says is also fully “in character” with what little we know of him from the preceding narrative. The style and vocabulary of his speech are not necessarily those of Jesus or the Gospel writer, but are distinctly his own. For example, he cannot resist calling attention to the irony of the fact that “the Jews” do not know where Jesus is from (v. 29). “For what is amazing in this,” he replies, “is that you don’t know where he is from, and he opened my eyes” (v. 30, my italics). The pronoun “you” is emphatic, echoing the emphatic “we” of his interrogators (v. 29), while the claim that “you don’t know” echoes their own disclaimer, “we don’t know,” with reference to Jesus in the same verse. At the same time, the conjunction “and” quite clearly has the adversative force of “and yet,”* introducing yet a fourth repetition of his story (after vv. 11, 15, and 25), now reduced to its bare essential (“he opened my eyes”). Also worthy of notice is the expression “what is amazing,” or “the amazing thing.”* While this noun occurs nowhere else in John’s Gospel, Jesus has used the verb “to be amazed” at least three times in the negative sense of being offended or scandalized, particularly in relation to the healing of the sick man at Bethesda (see 5:20, 28; 7:21). But to the man born blind, “what is amazing” is not so much the miracle itself as the delicious irony of the religious authorities’ reaction to it, in particular their ignorance of who Jesus is and where he is from. The man’s “amazement,” unlike theirs, is closer to amusement than offense, as when one savors a good joke and says, “Oh, that’s marvelous!” While he speaks for the Gospel writer, he also speaks in his own style and out of his own personality. Either this unnamed “man born blind” is the creation of a skilled literary artist, or else the Gospel narrative preserves here the memory of a real historical person with very definite character traits. In view of the rather uneven characterizations in the Gospel as a whole, the latter is the more likely alternative.

31 “We know that God does not hear sinners,” the man continues, “but if anyone is god-fearing* and does his will, this one he hears” (v. 31). “We know”* mimics and gently mocks the arrogant and twice-repeated “we know” of his interrogators (see vv. 24, 29), but how far does the irony extend? Is the man born blind fully serious in claiming that “God does not hear sinners,” or is he still mimicking the rhetoric of his questioners (see v. 24)? The notion that “God does not hear sinners,” while generally in keeping with Jewish and early Christian belief,* may come as a surprise to modern readers familiar with Jesus’ story in Luke of the tax collector who prayed, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner” (Lk 18:13), or even the Johannine principle that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous so as to forgive us the sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9). Obviously, under some circumstances God does “hear sinners.”*

Yet the former blind man is being quite serious here, not ironic. His comment reveals something the reader would otherwise not have known, that Jesus accomplished this miracle (and by extension all of his miracles) by prayer.* This was evident only once up to now, at the feeding of the five thousand (“and when he had given thanks,” 6:11; also v. 23), but Jesus himself will confirm it two chapters later at the raising of Lazarus (“Father, I thank you that you heard me; and I know that you always hear me,” 11:41–42). In saying, “God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is god-fearing and does his will, this one he hears,” the man born blind is not so much excluding sinners from praying and being heard as simply insisting that the prayer itself must be an act of “doing the will of God” (see Mt 6:10; 1 Jn 5:14). Jesus said earlier, “If anyone chooses to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak on my own” (7:17), and the man born blind is now applying that principle to the matter of prayer. The conditional expression, “If anyone,”* in both passages marks each as a kind of invitation. Jesus was inviting “the Jews” to do God’s will (7:17), so as to learn that his teaching was from God, while the man born blind is inviting them here to do much the same thing* (v. 31). In one breath he is attempting to vindicate Jesus and at the same time invite “the Jews” as “disciples of Moses” (v. 28) to do what Moses would have done (see 5:45–47), so that their prayers might be heard.

32–33 Playing on the verb “hears,” the man continues: “It is unheard of* that anyone ever* opened the eyes of one born blind.* If this man were not from God,* he could do nothing” (vv. 32–33). Here more than ever, his voice merges with Jesus’ own voice, claiming to be “from God” (see 6:46, 7:29), and the voice of the Gospel writer, pressing the evidence of Jesus’ “signs” not only on the Jewish community but on all who read his book (see 20:30–31). He also flatly contradicts what “the Jews” have been saying all along, that “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath” (v. 16; see also 5:18). In claiming that if he were not from God Jesus “could do nothing” (v. 33), the man obviously means not that Jesus could do nothing at all, but that he could not have done what he has in fact done—that is, “work the works of the One who sent me” (v. 4). In the larger context of the Gospel, the man’s remark anticipates Jesus’ own later reminder to his disciples that without him they too “can do nothing” (15:5). In short, the man born blind becomes the spokesman and surrogate for the Johannine Jesus, once again confronting “the Jews” with the same claims they have refused to accept all along.

34 The outcome is all too predictable. All that the man’s speech accomplishes is to turn the charge of being a “sinner” (see v. 24) against himself. In their anger, his examiners reply, “You were born altogether in sins, and you are teaching us?” (v. 34, my italics). They are half right. He is “teaching” them, just as Jesus tried to teach them in the preceding two chapters (7:14; 8:20), but they are no more receptive to him than they were to Jesus.* Where they are wrong is in singling him out (with the emphatic “you”) as one “born altogether* in sins.”* The comment revisits the question with which the chapter began, but in a very heavy-handed way. Nothing so subtle as, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (v. 2). Instead, only the blanket assertion that the man is, and was, a “sinner” from birth, and consequently a “disciple” (v. 28) of the “sinner” Jesus (see vv. 16, 24). Reasoning backward from his allegiance to Jesus, whom they consider a sinner and Sabbath breaker, they conclude that he himself must have been “born altogether in sins.” The reader knows they are wrong, first because Jesus has already laid such a notion to rest (see v. 3, “Neither this man sinned nor his parents”), and second because his physical birth is in any case irrelevant. The “man born blind” is no longer blind, for he has been reborn at the hands of Jesus and in the waters of Siloam (vv. 6–7).

Nevertheless, “the Jews” act swiftly on the conclusion to which they have come: “And they drove him out”* (v. 34b). “Drove him out”—of where? Out of the room where the interrogation took place? Out of the synagogue? Out of the temple? No specific setting has been given (see v. 24). The reader may notice a striking contrast to Jesus’ own promise that “the person who comes to me I will never drive out” (6:37),* but the only plausible reference point within the chapter is the Gospel writer’s earlier notice that “the Jews had already reached an agreement that anyone who confessed that [Jesus] was Christ would be put out of synagogue” (v. 22). It appears that the threatened excommunication has now gone into effect. Even though the title “Christ” has never come up, the Jewish authorities have interpreted the former blind man’s speech as a confession that Jesus is indeed “the Christ,” or Messiah, and are acting accordingly.

35–36 Jesus, absent ever since he told the man to “Go wash in the pool of Siloam” (v. 7), seems to have been waiting for just such a development. As soon as he “heard that they had driven him out,” we are told, Jesus “found him,” just as he “finds” in the temple the sick man he had healed at Bethsaida (5:14; see also 1:43). While he has not yet introduced himself as “the Good Shepherd” (see 10:11, 14), Jesus is already acting like the shepherd in one of his well-known synoptic parables (see Mt 18:13; Lk 15:4–6). This would have been an appropriate time for Jesus to reveal himself to the former blind man with a characteristic “I am” formula, and claim credit for the miracle. He could have said again, “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (8:12; see also 9:4), but he does not. Instead, he distances himself from the man born blind and his healing, asking about “the Son of man” who healed him as if he himself were a stranger to the whole incident.* “You,” he asks him, “do you believe in the Son of man?” (v. 35). The emphatic “you” is all too familiar to the man (see above, vv. 28, 34), but now he is hearing it not from an accuser but from someone who cares about him.*

The question, “Do you believe in the Son of man?” comes as a surprise, for we would have expected “the Son of God” (as, for example, in 1:34, 11:27, and 20:31). Nowhere else in the Gospels is “the Son of man”* ever used as a title by those confessing their faith in Jesus. No one but Jesus even uses the term, except when echoing Jesus’ own words (as in 12:34).* Even the manuscript tradition had trouble with “the Son of man” in this verse, persistently replacing it with “the Son of God.”* The reader, of course, knows what Jesus means, for it is evident by this time that Jesus himself is “the Son of man.” In asking, “Do you believe in the Son of man?” he is simply asking “Do you believe in me?” But this is by no means evident to the man born blind. Nowhere up to this point has any of Jesus’ listeners commented directly on Jesus’ use of this self-designation—neither Nathanael (1:51), nor Nicodemus (3:13, 14), nor “the Jews” in Jerusalem (5:27, 8:28), nor “the crowd” in Galilee (6:27), nor Jesus’ unfaithful “disciples” in Galilee (6:53, 62). It is unclear, therefore, just what Jesus is expecting from the man born blind. Does he expect him to understand that the real question is, “Do you believe in me?” More specifically, does he expect him to equate “the Son of man” with “the Christ,”* so as to reaffirm his purported confession of Jesus as “the Christ”—the very reason for his expulsion from the synagogue (v. 22)?

It is doubtful that the man would have been able to come to such conclusions unaided, and in fact he is quick to admit that he cannot: “And who is he, sir,* that I might believe in him?” (v. 36). Not having read the earlier chapters of the Gospel, the former blind man has no way of knowing who Jesus means by “the Son of man.” To him, the term can only refer to the man who healed him,* “The man* called Jesus” (v. 11) whom he has never seen,* but whom he considers “a prophet” (v. 17) or a man “from God” (v. 33). Ironically, he knows that “the Son of man” is “Jesus,” yet he does not know that this same Jesus is speaking to him, referring to himself as “the Son of man”!* He also has no idea of what it can mean to “believe in” such a man. He can be grateful to him, but how can he “believe” in someone he has never seen? His reaction, therefore, is a natural one. In asking “Who is he, sir?” he is not so much asking the healer’s name (which he already knows, v. 11), or whether he is “the Christ,” or “the Prophet,” or some other messianic figure (as in 1:19–22), as simply asking to see him. It is as if he had said, “Where is he, sir, that I might believe in him?” He seems to regard “belief” not as a mere inward conviction but as a face-to-face encounter with a visible, tangible person, and that is exactly what his belief will turn out to be (see v. 38, “he worshiped him”).

37 Here again (as in v. 35) an opportunity presents itself for Jesus to reveal himself in the classical Johannine way, with an “I am” pronouncement, whether understood as “I am [God],” as in 8:58, or simply “It is I” (that is, identifying himself as the man’s healer). That is exactly what he did in his encounter with the Samaritan woman when she spoke of “the Christ,” and he said, “It is I—I who am speaking to you” (4:26). But again Jesus passes up the opportunity, continuing to speak from a distance, as it were, in the third person: “You have not only seen him,* but it is that one who is speaking with you”* (v. 37). Why he continues to speak of himself in the third person is not altogether clear. Possibly it is just a corollary of speaking of himself as “Son of man” in the third person. Jesus in this Gospel (as in all the Gospels) speaks of himself as “I” and as “the Son of man” almost interchangeably (see, for example, 6:53–56), yet he never says explicitly, “I am the Son of man” (not even in 8:28, as we have seen).* He is quite consistent, therefore, in not doing so here, yet the effect is the same as if he had said “It is I—I who am speaking to you,” just as he did to the Samaritan woman.

38 At this point a textual problem presents itself because our manuscripts diverge. A few important early manuscripts omit verse 38 entirely, as well as the opening words of verse 39 (“And Jesus said”), so as to move directly from Jesus’ speech identifying himself to the former blind man (v. 37) to the more general pronouncement, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see might see, and that those who see might go blind” (v. 39). The man born blind disappears from the narrative without a trace, and is never heard from again.* On this reading, Jesus shifts abruptly from a conspicuous use of the third person to an equally conspicuous first person, and from addressing the man born blind to addressing a very indefinite audience and being heard not by him but by “some Pharisees” (v. 40).

Some have suggested that this reading might be original, the confession of the man born blind having been added from an early baptismal liturgy.* But the transition is too abrupt. Some kind of reply is needed from the man born blind, and it comes appropriately in his confession, “I believe, Lord,” followed by the notice that “he worshiped him” (v. 38). This in fact is what we find in most of our earlier and more significant textual witnesses,* and it brings closure to the former blind man’s story. “I believe, Lord”* (v. 38a) signals his awareness that his question, “And who is he, sir, that I might believe in him?” (v. 36), has now been answered. The vocabulary is the same, but because he now knows to whom he is speaking, the address kyrie no longer means “sir,” but “Lord.” In keeping with that designation, “he worshiped him”* (v. 38b). The verb “worshiped” implies a visible act of obeisance, signaling his allegiance to Jesus as “Lord” by falling prostrate at his feet.* In this sense, he could not “worship” Jesus until he had seen him face to face. Jesus’ silence* signals his acceptance of the man’s worship, in contrast to the angel in the book of Revelation in the presence of the prophet John (Rev 19:10; 22:9), or Peter in the presence of Cornelius. Even though he is “Son of man” (v. 37), Jesus does not, like Peter, tell his prostrate worshiper, “Get up. I myself am a man too!” (Acts 10:26; see also Acts 19:15). By giving no answer, he acknowledges his deity.

The blind man’s story has now been told. He and Jesus together have “worked the works of the One who sent me” (v. 4), just as Jesus said they would. Nothing is said of the forgiveness of his sins, for Jesus has long before made it clear (v. 3) that his sins (whatever they may have been) are not the issue here. Rather, he has simply “come to the Light” (see 3:21), and “the works of God” in his life have been revealed (v. 3). Blind “from birth” (v. 1), he has had his sight restored, signaling nothing less than a new birth. Like the rebirth of which Jesus told Nicodemus (3:5), it is a birth “from water,” water from the pool of Siloam “sent” (v. 7) from above. In that sense he was “baptized,” so to speak, and as a result “put out of synagogue” (vv. 22, 34). Now he has confessed Jesus as “Lord” and “worshiped him” (v. 38). His is a classic case study in Christian conversion, or so it appears.* The only difficulty is the order of events. Confession is supposed to go with Christian baptism, but the blind man made no confession of faith in Jesus when he washed in the pool of Siloam. Jews who confessed Jesus as the Christ were to be put out of the synagogue (v. 22), but the former blind man did not make his confession of faith until after he had been put out of synagogue. When he finally did so, his confession was not accompanied by water baptism, so far as we are told, even though the Gospel of John makes no secret of the fact that Jesus—or at least his disciples—did in fact perform baptisms (see 3:22, 26; 4:1). The Gospel writer knows what baptism is, and knows what it is to wash clay off one’s eyes in a pool, and there is no reason why he would confuse one with the other. The man could have said, with Philip’s Ethiopian eunuch, “What hinders me from being baptized?” (see Acts 8:37), and Jesus could have said, as he said later to his disciples, “He who has bathed does not have need to wash” (see 13:10), but nothing of the kind is reported. If a baptism took place, the Gospel writer is silent about it, just as he is about any baptismal activity after 4:1–2. Water baptism at this point in the narrative would have been anticlimactic in any case.

While in a general sense the man born blind does provide a kind of case study in the new birth, and perhaps also expulsion from the synagogue (bringing to realization something that seems not to have happened in the life of Nicodemus), the fact remains that the Gospel writer is attempting to write a historical account of something that happened in Jesus’ ministry, not in his own time and place. It is not a parable or allegory, but at most a cautionary tale. The author’s historical intent places certain constraints on him to narrate what happened “back then,” not to bend the facts to conform to whatever may have been the pattern of Christian conversion and separation from the synagogue in his own community. Despite all that has been written in the last forty years or so, we know almost nothing of the author’s community, not even whether it was predominantly Jewish Christian or Gentile Christian. Conversions there surely were, and baptisms, and confessions of faith, and perhaps in some instances expulsions from synagogues, and in others voluntary departures. Almost anything can be imagined,* but it is doubtful that any one pattern can be imposed on this theoretical “Johannine community.”* All we know is that in the narrative the man born blind “worshiped” Jesus—worshiped him, we may safely conclude, “in Spirit and truth” (see 4:23, 24).

39 In contrast to verse 37, where we learn what Jesus “said to him,” that is, to the former blind man, here we are told only what Jesus “said.” No hearers are specified until the following verse, and they are not said to be the intended audience. The man born blind has disappeared from the scene, and will not be heard from again.* Jesus’ words seem to be addressed to a more general audience, as general as the Gospel’s entire readership: “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see might see, and so that those who see might go blind.”

The pronouncement is a riddle* or paradoxical saying, the kind that “historical Jesus” research might be quite willing to accept as authentic if it were in the Synoptics instead of John. The riddle offers two contrasting reasons why Jesus “came into this world,” the first positive and the second negative:

(a) “so that those who do not see might see,”

(b) “so that those who see might go blind.”

Such “reversal” sayings are common enough in the synoptic Gospels (see, for example, Mk 8:35; 10:43–44; Mt 23:12),* and here too the pronouncement stands on its own (like those in the Synoptics), not as part of an extended discourse. This particular saying is deeply rooted in the Old Testament, particularly Isaiah,* yet is introduced in a characteristically Johannine way, with Jesus claiming that “I came into the world” (see 12:46; 16:28; 18:37).* In John’s Gospel, Jesus comes into the world as “light” (see 1:9; 3:19; 12:46), and the first part of the pronouncement (a) revisits rather straightforwardly his claim to be “the Light of the world” (8:12; 9:4), with the implication that as “the Light” he came so that (quite literally) “those who do not see might see”—that is, that the blind man might receive his sight. The difficulty comes in the second part of the pronouncement (b), for nothing has prepared us for any intention on Jesus’ part “that those who see might go blind”—least of all literally blind! This sends a signal that the first part (a) does not refer primarily to literal blindness either, but to spiritual blindness, the inability to recognize Jesus as God’s “Son of man” and worship him as “Lord” (see v. 38).*

More important, the opening words, “For judgment I came into the world,” make it clear from the start that the accent is on the negative assertion (b), not the positive one (a). That is, the emphasis is on the intent that “those who see might go blind,” rather than that “those who do not see might see.” The latter is of course also true. We have just seen it happen, at considerable length and in marvelous detail. But it is not what Jesus wants to talk about just now. Instead, he echoes what he said six chapters earlier: “This then is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and human beings loved the dark and not the Light, because their works were evil” (3:19).* At the same time, he anticipates the verdict on his entire public ministry given three chapters later in Isaiah’s words: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with the eyes and understand with the heart and turn, and I heal them” (12:40; see also Mt 13:14–15; Mk 4:12; 8:18). In short, there is both good and bad news in Jesus’ pronouncement, but for the moment at least the bad news predominates.

N. Blind Guides and the Good Shepherd (John 9:39–10:21)

And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see might see, and so that those who see might go blind.” Some of the Pharisees, those who were with him, heard these things and said to him, “Are we blind too?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now you say that ‘we see.’ Your sin remains. Amen, amen, I say to you, the one who does not enter through the door into the courtyard of the sheep, but goes up from elsewhere, that one is the thief and robber. But the one who enters through the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To this one the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he summons his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. But a stranger they will never follow, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” This parable Jesus told them, but they did not understand what things they were that he was saying to them.

So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you that I am the Door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the Door. Through me, if anyone goes in he will be saved, and will go in and go out and find pasture. The thief does not come except that he might steal and slaughter and destroy. I came that they might have life, and have [it] in abundance. I am the good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The one who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees—and the wolf seizes and scatters them—because he is a hireling and it does not matter to him about the sheep. I am the good Shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not from this courtyard. Those too I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock, one Shepherd. That is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I might receive it back again. No one took it away from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to receive it back. This command I received from my Father.”

Again a split came about among the Jews on account of these words, and many of them were saying, “He has a demon and is mad! Why do you listen to him?” Others were saying, “These are not the words of one demon-possessed. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

Jesus’ next words (v. 39) are a generalization, directed not to the man born blind but to the readers of the Gospel. Within the narrative, a new audience overhears him, “some of the Pharisees, those who were with him” (v. 40), and he speaks to them at some length (9:41–10:5), introducing a new set of metaphors involving a shepherd and his sheep. The author pauses to tell us that these Pharisees “did not understand what he was saying to them” (10:6), but Jesus goes on anyway (vv. 7–18), using the same metaphors and presumably addressing the same audience. As the discourse progresses, the metaphors subside as Jesus speaks more directly of himself and the Father (vv. 14–18). By the time he has finished, his audience, now renamed “the Jews” (v. 19), is divided in a “split” or “schism” over his words (vv. 19–21), confirming the notion that they “did not understand.”

40 No audience for these words has been identified, but an audience (whether the intended one or not) now makes its appearance: “Some of the Pharisees, those who were with him, heard these things and said to him, ‘Are we blind too?’ ” (v. 40). They are not necessarily to be identified with the religious authorities who had repeatedly questioned the former blind man, designated in the narrative either as “the Pharisees” (vv. 13, 15) or “the Jews” (vv. 18, 22). Rather, they are “some of the Pharisees,”* possibly a random group or possibly one faction in the dispute mentioned earlier over whether or not Jesus was “from God.” Back in 9:16, “some of the Pharisees”* were identified as those who said, “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath,” but it cannot be assumed here that the expression necessarily refers to the same faction, only that it refers to one faction out of two (or perhaps more). They could just as easily be identified with those who asked, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” (v. 16). This would be quite consistent with the notice given here that these Pharisees were “with” Jesus.* This could just mean that they were nearby, within earshot (see RSV, NRSV, REB), but it could also imply that they were at worst neutral or at best even sympathetic to his cause.* In any event, there is no overt hostility in their question, “Are we blind too?”

Still, the form of the question* does expect a negative answer, as if to say, “Surely we are not blind too?” It is not altogether clear whether they have in mind literal or figurative blindness. If the former, they are merely presupposing the obvious: unlike the beggar in the preceding narrative, they can see. If the latter, they are already defending themselves against any implication that they are spiritually blind in refusing to fall down and worship Jesus. The wording of their question argues for the former, as if to ask, “Are we too literally blind, like that beggar?” Obviously not.* Such a misunderstanding sounds almost too crude to be true, yet it is fairly typical of the ways in which Jesus’ words are often misunderstood or taken literally in this Gospel (see, for example, 2:20, 3:4, 4:11, 6:52, 7:35, 8:22, 11:12, and 13:9). If they are not actually blind, they argue, how can Jesus claim to give them sight?* They sound a little like “the Jews” at the Tent festival a chapter earlier who said, “We are Abraham’s seed, and have never been in slavery to anyone. How do you say that ‘You will become free’?” (8:33). That was of course the beginning of a very hostile confrontation, but only the beginning. Here too a confrontation ensues, albeit a milder one (see vv. 6, 19–21), and it is Jesus who provokes it.

41 The confrontation begins with Jesus’ explanation of his riddle. Now that he again has a specific audience, he speaks “to them” (v. 41). “If you were blind,” he says, “you would not have sin. But now you say that ‘we see.’ Your sin remains” (v. 41). The “explanation” is as much a riddle as the riddle itself. Like the riddle it purports to explain (see v. 39), it divides naturally into two parts, the first positive and the second negative:

(a) “If you were blind, you would not have sin.”

(b) “But now you say that ‘we see.’ Your sin remains.”

The first part (a) is a contrary-to-fact conditional sentence. In the second part (b), “But now”* brings us back to reality. As in the preceding riddle, the first part revisits in straightforward fashion the story of the man born blind, where he who was literally blind did not “have sin” (see v. 3, “Neither this man sinned nor his parents”). The second part drives home Jesus’ indictment of the Pharisees, even these relatively friendly Pharisees. In asking, “Are we blind too?” (v. 40), they had implied that of course they were not, and Jesus calls them on it, rephrasing their puzzled question as an explicit claim that “We see” (v. 41).* In doing so, he abruptly changes the subject from literal blindness and sight respectively to what has been his preoccupation all along: their response, or lack of it, to himself and to his word. To “see” is to recognize who Jesus is and worship him, as the blind man finally did. In saying, “We see,” therefore, they are lying, for they have not believed in Jesus. The likely point is that everyone is “born blind” in the sense of being unable to “see the kingdom of God” or enter it without a second birth (see 3:3, 5). This in itself is not sin. Nicodemus, for example, was never accused of sin. The sin comes in the lie that “We see,” and that consequently no new birth is needed or wanted (see 8:44–45, “When he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own, because he is the liar and the father of it. But I, because I speak the truth, you do not believe me”).

“Sin”* in John’s Gospel is consistently understood as unbelief (see, for example, 8:24; 16:9), and this passage is no exception. Jesus can tell these Pharisees, “Your sin remains” simply on the basis of what he views as their pretension to “see,” and their consequent unwillingness to do what the man born blind has just done.* He does not explain himself any further to them, yet six chapters later he tells his disciples about them (and others like them) in greater detail and in a grammatically similar way, with two contrary-to-fact conditional sentences about sin followed by a statement of what is “now” in fact the case (see 15:22, 24). Such is Jesus’ verdict on these “Pharisees who were with him” (v. 40), and they offer no reply (not even in 10:6, where we are told only that “they did not understand”). The expressions “to have sin” and “your sin remains” seem to refer to being guilty of sin.* Ironically, Jesus never explicitly forgives anyone’s sin in this Gospel, but in these two instances (plus 8:21–24) he explicitly withholds forgiveness (see 20:23, where the power to forgive or withhold forgiveness is passed on to his disciples). We are left wondering why Jesus is so hard on these supposedly neutral (or even friendly) questioners.

The synoptic Gospels offer a clue. There too (on the basis of Scripture), Jesus points out that in his ministry “the blind see” (Mt 11:5; Lk 7:22; compare Lk 4:18), yet he repeatedly denounces the Pharisees as “blind” (Mt 23:17, 19; also 23:26), or more specifically as “blind guides” (Mt 15:14a; 23:16, 24). “Can a blind person guide the blind?” he asks. “Won’t they both fall in a ditch?” (Lk 6:39; compare Mt 15:14b).* John’s Gospel retains some of the vehemence of such texts, though without speaking of “guides.” Instead, as we will see, Jesus drops the metaphor of blindness as he begins to speak of “shepherds,” and consequently of “sheep.”*