John 5:1-12

New Testament for Everyone

The healing of the disabled man

5 After this there was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

² In Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, there is a pool which is called, in Hebrew, Bethesda. It has five porticoes, ³ where several sick people were lying. They were blind, lame and paralyzed.

⁵ There was a man who had been there, in the same sick state, for thirty-eight years. ⁶ Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been there a long time already.

“Do you want to get well?” he asked him.

⁷ “Well, sir,” the sick man replied, “I don’t have anyone to put me into the pool when the water gets stirred up. While I’m on my way there, someone else gets down before me.”

⁸ “Get up,” said Jesus, “pick up your mattress and walk!”

⁹ At once the man was healed. He picked up his mattress and walked.

God’s son breaks the sabbath!

The day all this happened was a sabbath. ¹⁰ So the Judaeans confronted the man who had been healed.

“It’s the sabbath!” they said. “You shouldn’t be carrying your mattress!”

¹¹ “Well,” he replied, “the man who cured me told me to pick up my mattress and walk!”

¹² “Oh, really?” they said. “And who is this man, who told you to pick it up and walk?”