And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.
And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked. "He spake, and it was done." The slinging of his portable couch ever his shoulders was designed to show the perfection of the cure.
Such is this glorious miracle. Now let us look at it, as it stands here in the received text; and next let us examine the shortened text presented by most modern Editors of the Greek Testament-which leaves out the last clause of John 5:3, "waiting for the moving of the waters," and the whole of John 5:4. The miracle, as it here stands, differs in two points from all other miracles recorded in Scripture: First, It was not one, but a succession of miracles periodically performed: Next, as it was only done "when the waters were troubled," so only upon one patient at a time, and that the patient "who first stepped in after the troubling of the waters." But this only the more undeniably fixed its miraculous character. We have heard of many waters having a medicinal virtue; but what water was ever known to cure instantaneously a single disease? And who ever heard of any water curing all, even the most diverse diseases - "blind, halt, withered" - alike? Above all, who ever heard of such a thing being done only "at a certain season," and most singularly of all, doing it only to the first person who stepped in after the moving of the waters? Any of these peculiarities-much more all taken together-must have proclaimed the supernatural character of the cures performed.
If the text, then, be genuine, there can be no doubt of the miracle, as there were multitudes living when this Gospel was published who, from their own knowledge of Jerusalem, could have exposed the falsehood of the Evangelist, if no such cure had been known there. It only remains, then, that we inquire on what authority the omission of the last clause of John 5:3, and the whole of John 5:4, from the text (by Tischendorf and Tregelles, and approved by Tholuck, Meyer, Olshausen, Alford, etc.) is supported. The external evidence against it is certainly very strong. [It is missing in the newly-discovered Codex Sinaiticus, and the Codex Vaticanus-'Aleph (') and B-the two earliest known manuscripts of the New Testament; in C, not much later; in D-which, however, has the disputed clause of John 5:3; and in three of the cursive or later manuscripts; in the ancient version called the Curetonian Syriac, and in the two ancient Egyptian versions, according to some copies. Besides this, it is fair to add, that there is considerable variety in the words used by the manuscripts that have the disputed passage, and that in some manuscripts and versions the passage is so marked as to imply that it was not universally received.]
But when all the evidence in favour of the disputed passage-external and internal-is combined and well weighed, we think it will appear quite decisive. The external evidence for it is much stronger in fact than in appearance. [It is found-though not in the first, but the second hand-in the Alexandrian manuscript of date scarcely second to the two oldest, and, in the opinion of some of the best critics, of almost equal authority; in ten other uncial manuscripts; in the oldest or Peshito, and indeed all but the Curetonian Syriac, and in both the Old Latin and Vulgate Latin versions-which very rarely agree with the Alexandrian manuscript when it differs from the Vatican-showing how very early the disputed words were diffused and recognized: in confirmation of which we have an undoubted reference to the passage by Tertullian, in the end of the second and beginning of the third century.
Moved by this consideration, no doubt, Lachmann inserts the passage.] But the internal evidence is, in our judgment, quite sufficient to outweigh even stronger external evidence against it than there is. First, While the very strangeness and, as some venture to say, the legendary air of the miracle may easily account for its omission, we cannot see how such a passage could have crept in if it did not belong to the original text. But secondly, The text seems to us to yield no sense, or but an inept sense, without the disputed words. Just try to explain without them this statement of John 5:7: "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me." Who would ever understand how the mere inability of this impotent man to step first into the pool should deprive him of its virtue-from whence soever that proceeded-when the water was troubled? Clearly the explanation given in John 5:4 - along with the last clause of John 5:3 - is necessary to the understanding of John 5:7. The two, therefore, must stand or fall together; and as the seventh verse is admitted to be genuine, so, in oar judgment, must the rest.
And on the same day was the sabbath. Beyond all doubt this was intentional, as in so many other hearings, in order that, when opposition arose on this account, men might be compelled to listen to the claims and teaching of the Lord Jesus.