“Get up!  Pick up your mat and walk!”  John 5:8

 “There is in Jerusalem…a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda…surrounded by five covered colonnades.  Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed….one had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.  When Jesus saw him…..he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’  Sir, the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.  While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’

 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up!  Pick up your mat and walk.”  At once, the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.”

 I have puzzled over this account as to why Jesus didn’t put the man into the pool to be healed.  In John 9 in the healing of the blind man, Jesus put mud and saliva on the man’s eyes and was told, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam.”  Why did Jesus tell one man to wash in the pool and not the other?

On a recent trip to Israel, I learned the rest of the story!

More recent excavations revealed the name Bethesda, meaning House of Mercy, became a healing center during the Greek/Roman occupation.  The twin pools known as “upper and lower” pools were dedicated to the Greek/Roman god of health and well-being, Asclepius and his two daughters.   Devotion to Asclepius was widespread throughout the Roman Empire with over 400 functioning ‘healing centers.’  Snakes were characteristic of the “wellness” process.  In spite of the beautiful pool with its five roofed colonnades, it had no real power.

The King James version of the Bible says, “an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water; whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.” John 5:4.  In later versions, there is no mention of an ‘angel.’  The stirring of the water likely happened when the priests of Asclepius opened the connecting pipes between the higher and lower portions of the pool.  The water in the upper reservoir would then flow into the lower portion causing movement.  Jesus knew all things!  He knew if the lame man were put in the pool, the people would say the god of the pool healed him.  The God of the Universe was standing before the lame man with all authority to heal!!  The man took up his bed and walked!

The Pool of Siloam was a large mikvoth at the southern approach to the Temple mount.  It was fed by the Gihon spring, providing living water, and could have serviced thousands of pilgrims who came to Jerusalem to worship during feast days.  It was a Jewish cleansing pool used in temple worship.  The blind man in John 9 was healed when he washed in the pool of Siloam, he was ritually cleansed, then went up to the Temple to worship!

Now you know the difference between the two pools in the Jerusalem of Jesus day!

Your friend, Jean