The Third Sign: Healing the Sick

5 After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.^{(A) 2} By the Sheep Gate^(B) in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda^[a] in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. ³ Within these lay a large number of the disabled – blind, lame, and paralysed.^[b]

⁵ One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and realised he had already been there a long time,^(C) he said to him, ‘Do you want to get well? ’

⁷ ‘Sir,’^(D) the disabled man answered, ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.’

⁸ ‘Get up,’ Jesus told him, ‘pick up your mat and walk.’ ⁹ Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk.

Now that day was the Sabbath,^{(E) 10} and so the Jews^(F) said to the man who had been healed, ‘This is the Sabbath.^(G) The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.’

¹¹ He replied, ‘The man who made me well^(H) told me, “Pick up your mat and walk.” ’

¹² ‘Who is this man who told you, “Pick up your mat and walk”? ’ they asked. ¹³ But the man who was healed did not know who it was,^(I) because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.^[c]

¹⁴ After this, Jesus found him in the temple^(J) and said to him, ‘See, you are well. Do not sin any more, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.’ ¹⁵ The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.^(K)