John 5:1-15

Evangelical Heritage Version

Healing at the Pool

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

² Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda^[a] in Aramaic,^[b] which has five colonnades. ³ Within these lay a large number of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—who were waiting for the movement of the water. ⁴ For an angel would go down at certain times into the pool and stir up the water. Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had.^{[c] 5} One man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had already been sick a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

⁷ “Sir,” the sick man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I’m going, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

⁸ Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ Instantly the man was healed. He picked up his mat and walked.

That day was the Sabbath. ¹⁰ So the Jews told the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath! You are not permitted to carry your mat.”

¹¹ He answered them, “The one who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

¹² Then they asked him, “Who is the man who told you, ‘Pick it up and walk’?” ¹³ But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

¹⁴ Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Look, you are well now. Do not sin anymore so that nothing worse happens to you.”

¹⁵ The man went back and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who made him well.