The Good News of Deliverance

Jesus Heals on the Sabbath

5 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

² Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew^[a] Beth-zatha,^[b] which has five porticoes.^{(A) 3} In these lay many ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people.^{[c] 5} One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” ⁷ The ill man answered him, “Sir,^[d] I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am making my way someone else steps down ahead of me.” ⁸ Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”^{(B) 9} At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a Sabbath.^{(C) 10} So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.”^{(D) 11} But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’ ” ¹² They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” ¹³ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in^[e] the crowd that was there. ¹⁴ Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.”^{(E) 15} The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶ Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath.