John 5 - NIV LifeConnect Study Bible

5:2 Bethesda is generally identified with the twin pools near the present-day Saint Anne’s Church. There would have been a colonnade on each of the four sides and another between the two pools.

5:10 It was not the Law of Moses itself but its traditional interpretation that prohibited carrying loads of any kind on the Sabbath (see the note on Mt 15:2).

5:17 The Jews did not refer to God as “my Father”; they regarded the term too intimate—although they might have used “our Father” or, in prayer, “my Father in heaven.”

5:18 The Jews did not object to the idea that God is the Father of all, but they strongly protested Jesus’ claim that he stood in a special relationship to the Father—a relationship so close as to make himself equal with God.

5:21 The Jews (with the exception of the Sadducees) firmly believed that God raises the dead. They also held that God did not give this privilege to anyone else. Jesus claimed a prerogative that, according to his opponents, belonged only to God.

5:22 The Jews believed that the Father is Judge of the world, so this teaching seemed heretical to them.

5:46 The authors of the New Testament books at times stressed and everywhere assumed that the Old Testament, rightly read, pervasively points to Christ (see Lk 24:25–27,44).