John 9:1-3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And as Jesus passed by The word Jesus is not in the Greek, which is παραγων ειδεν ανθρωπον τυφλον, and passing on; he found a man blind from his birth This chapter, therefore, seems to be a continuation of the preceding. As Jesus and his disciples (having left the temple, where the Jews were going to stone him) were passing through one of the streets of the city, they found a blind beggar, who, to move the people's compassion, told them he was born in that miserable condition. The disciples, on hearing this, asked their Master whether it was the man's own sin, or the sin of his parents, which had occasioned his blindness from the womb. It seems the Jews, having derived from the Egyptians the doctrines of the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, supposed that men were punished in this world for the sins they had committed in their pre-existent state. The purport of that doctrine was, that, if a man behaved himself amiss, his soul was afterward sent into another body, where he met with great calamities, and lived in a more miserable condition than before; whereas a more advantageous situation, and happier condition than the former, were supposed to be the rewards of distinguished virtue; a notion which they borrowed from the Pythagoreans, and which seems to be hinted at by Josephus, (Bell., lib. 2. cap. 12,) and is plainly referred to, Wis 8:19-20; compare Matthew 14:2; Matthew 16:14. “From the account which Josephus gives, however, of this matter, it appears, the Pharisees believed that the souls of good men only went into other bodies; whereas the souls of the wicked, they thought, went immediately into eternal punishment: an opinion somewhat different from that which the disciples expressed on this occasion. For, if they spake accurately, they must have thought that, in his pre-existent state, this person had been a sinner, and was now punished for his sins then committed, by having his soul thrust into a blind body. Nevertheless, from what they say, we cannot certainly determine whether they thought that, in his pre-existent state, this person had lived on earth as a man, which is the notion Josephus describes, or whether they fancied he had pre-existed in some higher order of being, which was the Platonic notion.” Now the disciples might possibly have been acquainted with these opinions, and might put the question in the text, on purpose to know their Master's decision on so curious a subject. It seems more probable, however, as Theophylact has observed, after Chrysostom, that, as they were plain, illiterate fishermen, they had not heard of any such notions. Another opinion imbibed by the Jews during their captivity was, that all their sufferings descended upon them from the crimes of their forefathers, and were wholly unmerited on their part. It was this opinion which drew from the pen of Ezekiel that severe remonstrance and animated vindication of the ways of Providence, in his eighteenth chapter. Some remains of this opinion might have possessed the minds of the apostles: and they might have supposed they saw in the man born blind a case which could not be accounted for, but by supposing him to suffer for his parents' guilt. But our Lord showed them that the case admitted of a very different solution; Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents So as to bring this suffering upon him; nor was the punishment of either the chief design of this dispensation of Providence; but that the works of God Namely, his miraculous works; should be made manifest in him Particularly his sovereignty, in bringing him into the world blind; his power, in conferring the faculty of sight upon him; and his goodness, in bearing witness to the doctrine by which men are to be saved.