The health-giving waters: V. 1. After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. V. 2. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep-market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. V. 3. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. V. 4. For 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.
"After this"; how long is not stated by the evangelist; he merely denotes an interval, in which a part of the Galilean ministry of Jesus took place. The feast of the Jews to which Jesus journeyed up from Galilee was probably the Feast of Purim, which was celebrated on the 14th and 15th of Adar (March). Compare Esther 9, 21.
Now there was in the city of Jerusalem a gate which was known as the Sheep Gate, probably from the fact that the sacrificial animals were driven into the city through this gate. In this neighborhood was located, even as late as the end of the first century, a pool which bore the Hebrew name Bethesda, House of Grace, or Mercy. The Jews had built five colonnades, or porticoes, around of his pool of water, to shelter the sick people from wind and rain. These constituted the hospital of the city, where a large number of sick people, of blind, of lame, of withered, was lying. All of them anxiously awaited the movement, the bubbling of the water in the pool, those that could see having their eyes anxiously fixed upon the surface of the water, and the blind waiting for the sound that told of the movement or depending upon relatives or friends to lead them to the pool quickly. The phenomenon, which is now generally ascribed, the action of a siphon-like spring, is explained by the evangelist as having been due to the fact that an angel at a certain time came down to the pool and disturbed the water. And the first sick person that entered the water after the phenomenon had taken place became well, no matter what sickness he was bothered with.
Many commentators are rather skeptical at this point, refusing to accept the words as the truth, and many critics have simply ruled out this verse. But we hold, according to Scriptures, that the beneficial effects of many so-called natural agencies are due to the work of God's angels. The decrees of God's providence are carried out by these servants of His. It is altogether probable that even today the angels of God are active in the waters of many health springs.
"Those who feel little or none of the work of God in their own hearts are not willing to allow that He works in others.... This is to make any man's experience the rule by which the whole Word of God is to be interpreted, and consequently to leave no more divinity in the Bible than is found in the heart of him who professes to explain it" (Clarke, Commentary, 5, 548).