26-18. The Opening of the Eyes of One Born Blind

18. The Opening of the Eyes of One Born Blind

John 9

It is on the whole most probable that this work of grace and power crowned the day of that long debate with Jewish adversaries, which, beginning at John 7:34, reaches to the end of the following chapter,—the history of the woman taken in adultery being, only an interruption, and an intercalation easily betraying itself as such. Our Lord then, as He was passing from the temple, to escape the last arguments of his foes, will have paused—probably in the immediate neighbourhood of the temple, where beggars, cripples, and other afflicted persons took their station (Acts 3:1-2), to accomplish this miracle. Nothing in the narrative indicates a break. That long “contradiction of sinners” which the Lord endured found place, we know, on a Sabbath, for the last day of the feast of tabernacles (vii. 37) was always such; and on a Sabbath, to all appearance the same Sabbath, He opened this blind man’s eyes (ix. 14). Moved by these reasons, the ancient interpreters see here a continuous unbroken narration, and with them most of the modern consent.^[1].

It has been by some objected, that, first concealing Himself, and then escaping for his life, He must on that day have left the temple alone; here, on the contrary, his disciples are around Him. But what more natural than that they also should have extricated themselves, though not in the same wonderful manner as He did, from the angry multitude, and have rejoined their Master without? Then again, if it be urged that this work was wrought in a more leisurely manner, with more apparent freedom from all fear of interruption than could well have been, when now He had only just withdrawn Himself from the extreme malice of his foes, may not all this be accepted as a beautiful evidence of his calmness in the midst of his enemies, who found no time inopportune for a work of mercy and love; who, having hardly left behind Him the Jewish stones, tarried to accomplish this work of grace? And may not something of this lie in ver. 4, 5? “I must work this work now, however out of season it may seem: for ’the night’ which my enemies are bringing on, is near, and then the time for working will be over” (compare the exactly parallel passage, John 11:7-10).

It is singular that some should ask, How could the disciples have known that this man “was blind from his birth”?^[2] He was evidently a well-known beggar in Jerusalem, with whose tale many were acquainted (ver. 8); he may have himself proclaimed his lifelong calamity, with the object of stirring pity in the passers by. One way or other the fact had come to the knowledge of the disciples, and out of it their question grew. Their Master must solve for them the difficulty which this more than ordinary calamity presented, and explain to them its cause. “Who did sin,” they ask, “this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” But what they could have had in their minds when they suggest the former alternative, how they could have supposed it possible that for his own sins the man had been born blind, has naturally been the source of much perplexity.

Three or four explanations have been offered: the first, that the Jews believed in a transmigration of souls; and thus that the sins which the disciples assumed as possible causes of his blindness, were those of some anterior life,—antenatal sins, which were being punished and expiated now. This, as is well known, is the doctrine of the Buddhists; and not an accident, but belonging to the centre, of their religious convictions: but it cannot be proved that there was any such faith among the Jews. It may have been the dream of a few philosophic Jews, who had obtained some acquaintance with the speculations of the East, but was never the faith of plain and simple men: so that this explanation may be regarded as altogether antiquated, and not worthy even to be considered.^[3]

Lightfoot adduces passages to show that the Jews believed a child might sin in its mother’s womb, in proof of which their Rabbis referred to the struggle between Jacob and Esau (Gen 25:22); and he, and others after him, think that out of this popular belief the question of the disciples grew.

Tholuck, following an earlier interpreter, supposes their notion to have been that God had foreknown some great sin which this man would commit, and so by anticipation had punished him. But as such a dealing on God’s part is altogether without analogy in Scripture,, so is there not the slightest hint that men had ever fallen on it as an explanation of the suffering in the world; nor, indeed,. could they: for while the idea of retribution is one of the deepest in the human heart, this of punishment running before the crime which it punishes, is one from which it as wholly revolts.

Chrysostom imagines that it was upon their part a reductio ad absurdum of the argument which connected sin and suffering together. The man could not have brought this penalty on himself; for he was born with it. His parents could not by their sin have brought it on him; for we know that each man shall bear his own burden, that the children’s teeth are not set on edge because the parents ate sour grapes. But this is very artificial, and with little of likelihood in it. Honest and simple-hearted men, like those who asked the question here, would have been the last to try and escape a truth, to which the deepest things in their own hearts bore witness, by an ingenious dilemma.

Rather, I believe they did not see, at the moment when they put the question, the self-contradiction, as far at least as words go, which was involved in the first alternative which they put before their Lord; so that, while they rightly, and by a most true moral instinct, discerned the links which unite the sin and suffering of the world together, yet in this case they did not realize how it must have been the sin and suffering, not of this man as “an individual, but of him as making part of a great whole, which were thus connected together. They did not at the moment perceive that the mere fact of this calamity reaching back to his birth at once excluded and condemned the uncharitable suspicion, that wherever there was a more than ordinary sufferer, there was also a more than ordinary sinner,—leaving only the most true thought, that a great sin must be cleaving to a race, of which any member could so greatly suffer.

This, as it is continually affirmed in Scripture, so we cannot suppose that it was intended to be denied in the answer of the Lord: “neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents” —words which of course need for their completion—” that he should have been born blind. “The Lord neither denies the sin of his parents, nor his own; all that He does is to check in his disciples that most harmful practice of diving down with cruel surmises into the secrets of other men’s lives, and, like the friends of Job, guessing for them hidden sins in explanation of their unusual sufferings. This blindness, He would say, is the chastening of no peculiar sin on his own part, nor on his parents’. Seek, therefore, its cause neither here nor there; but see what nobler explanation the evil in the world, and this evil in particular, is capable of receiving. The purpose of the lifelong blindness of this man is “that the works of God should be made manifest in him;” and that through it and its removal the grace and glory of God might be magnified. Not, indeed, as though this man had been used merely as a means, visited with this blindness to the end that the power of God in Christ might be manifested to others in its removal. The manifestation of the works of God has here a wider reach, and embraces in it the lasting weal of the man himself; it includes, indeed, the manifestation of those works to the world and on the man; but it does not exclude, rather of necessity includes, their manifestation also to him and in him. It entered into the plan of God for the bringing of this man to the light of everlasting life, that he should thus for a while be dark outwardly; that so at once upon this night, and on the night of his heart, a higher light might break, and the Sun of righteousness arise on him, with healing in his wings for all his bodily and all his spiritual infirmities: while again this was part of a larger whole, and fitted in, according to his eternal counsels, to the great scheme for the revelation of the glory and power of the Only-begotten to the world (cf. John 11:4; Rom 5:20; Rom 9:17; Rom 11:25; Rom 11:32-33).

Yet, while it was thus, we are not to accept this as the entire and exhaustive solution of this man’s blindness. For it is the pantheistic explanation of evil, that it is not really evil, but only the condition of, and the transition to, a higher good; only appearing, indeed, as evil at all from a low standing point, and one which does not as yet behold the end. But this explanation of the world’s evil, tempting as it has ever shown itself, so tempting that multitudes have been unable to resist its attraction, is not that which the Scriptures offer. They ever recognize the reality of evil; and this, even while that evil, through the boundless resources of the Divine love, magnifies more the glory of the Creator, and ultimately exalts higher the blessedness of the creature. This cannot, then, be the whole explanation of the blindness which this man had brought with him into the world; but God, who though not the author, is yet the disposer, of evil,—who distributes that which He did not Himself bring in, and distributes it according to the counsels of his wisdom and righteousness and grace, had willed that on this man should be concentrated more than the ordinary penalties of the world’s universal sin, that a more than ordinary grace and glory might be revealed in their removing. And now the Lord girds up Himself to the work which is before Him, and justifies Himself in undertaking it: “I must work the works of Him that sent Me,^[4] while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. “Whatever perils attended that work, yet it must be accomplished; for his time, “the day” of his open activity, of his walking up and down among the people, and doing them good, was drawing to an end. “The night,” when He should no longer lighten the world with his presence, nor have the opportunity of doing, with his own hands at least, works like these, was approaching. He worked in the day, and was Himself the light of the day. The image is borrowed from our common day and our common night, of which the first is the time appointed for labour, “man goeth forth to his work until the evening” (Psa 104:23); while the latter, by its darkness, opposes to many kinds of labour obstacles insurmountable. The difficulty which Olshausen finds in the words, “when no man can work,” inasmuch as, however Christ was Himself withdrawn from the earth, yet his disciples did effectually work, rises solely from his missing the point of the proverbial phrase. Our Lord does not affirm “The night cometh, in which no other man can work; in which no work. can be done;” but only, in the language of a familiar proverb which is as true for the heavenly kingdom as for this present world, “No man who has not done his work in the day, can do it in the night; for him the time cometh in which he cannot work;” and He does not exclude even Himself from this law.^[5] And then, with prophetic allusion to the work before Him, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world; what work then will become Me better than this of opening the blind eyes? where should I find so fit a symbol of my greater spiritual work, the restoring of the darkened spiritual vision of mankind?”^[5]

Having thus justified the work which is before Him, He proceeds to the cure. “When He had thus spoken, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay.” A medicinal value was attributed in old time to saliva,^[6] it is similarly used in the case of another blind man (Mark 8:23), and of one suffering from a defect in the organs of speech and hearing (Mark 7:33); neither are we altogether without examples of the medicinal use of clay.^[7] Still we must not suppose that, besides his divine power, the Lord also used natural remedies, or that these were more than conductors, not in themselves needful, but which He freely assumed as channels for the conveying of his grace (cf. 2Ki 4:41; Isa 38:21); for other blind eyes He opened without employing any such means (Mat 20:30-34). Probably the reasons which induced their use were ethical. It may have been a help to the weak faith of this man to find that something external was done.

What was the exact purport of the command, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam”? It was certainly something more than a mere test of obedience. Was the cure itself to result, altogether, or in part, from that washing? Or was the tempered clay the sole agent of healing, and the washing merely designed to remove the hindrances which this itself, if suffered to remain, would have opposed even to the restored organs of vision? Our answer to this question must in good part depend on the answer we give to another—this namely, Did St. John see anything significant and mystical in the etymology of Siloam, that he should add it here, “which is by interpretation, Sent”? Was it his intention to give here an etymology merely, or did he trace any symbolic meaning in the fact that the Lord should have sent the man to a pool bearing such a name? If the latter, I must needs believe that it was also his intention to connect the actual cure with the washing in that pool. But how is it possible to suppose that he did not see a prophetic significance in the name “Siloam,” or that, except for this, he would have paused to insert in his narrative the derivation of the word? (cf. 1:38, 42). This, appropriate enough in a lexicon, would have been quite inappropriate in a gospel. At the same time, it is not very easy to determine exactly what his allusion is. Olshausen dissents from those who find in “Sent” a reference to Christ Himself, and this on the ground that He was not now the “Sent,” but the Sender. Yet might the Evangelist Very well have alluded, not to this particular healing, in which it is true He is more Sender than Sent, but rather to the whole work of his ministry, which was a mission,^[8] which He ever characterizes as a work whereto He was the Sent of God (John 7:29; John 8:42); so that He bears this very title, “the Apostle^[2] of our profession” (Heb 3:1). These waters of Siloam, in which the blind man washed and was illuminated, may well have been to St. John the type of the waters of baptism, or indeed of all the operations of grace by which the spiritually blind eyes are opened; the very name of the pool having in his eyes a presaging fitness, which by this notice he would indicate as more than accidental. The man is no Naaman, resenting the simplicity of the means by which his cure should be effected, and only after a while persuaded to adopt them. He was at once obedient to the word of the Lord: “He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing;” returned, that is, according to all appearance, to his own house; it does not seem that he came back to the Lord. His friends and neighbours are the first who take note of the cure which has been wrought;—well-disposed persons, as would appear, but altogether under the influence of the Pharisees. They wonder, debate whether it is indeed he whom they had known so long; for the opening of the eyes, those windows of the soul, would have altered the whole character of the countenance.^[9] “Some said, This is he; others said, He is like him;” and so the debate proceeded, until the man himself cut it short, and “said, I am he.” They would fain learn how the cure was effected; and hearing from his lips of the wonderworker who had wrought it, desire to see Him. Finally, as the safest course, they bring the man, with no evil dispositions either towards him or towards Christ, to their spiritual rulers,—not, that is, before the great Sanhedrim, for that was not always sitting, but the lesser,—”to the Pharisees.” The Sanhedrim did not indeed exclusively consist of these (for Caiaphas was a Sadducee, and see Acts 23:6), but these were the most numerous and influential party there, and the bitterest enemies of the Lord. The neighbours may have misdoubted of the work, as having been done on the Sabbath; and on this account deemed it advisable to bring the matter before their ecclesiastical rulers.

More formally examined by them, the man can only repeat his simple tale: “He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see.” Very characteristically he speaks of the clay only, for, being blind, that only came within the scope of his knowledge, who judged by the feeling alone; how the clay had been tempered he was ignorant. The Pharisees first discuss the matter among themselves. Some seek to rob the deed of its significance by a charge against the doer: “This man is not of God, because He keepeth not the Sabbath day.” Granting then its reality, it proved nothing in favour of Him that wrought it; rather was it to be inferred, since He was thus an evident transgressor of God’s commandment, that He was in connexion with the powers of evil. No lighter charge than that which they made at another time, when they said, “He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils” (Mat 9:34), was involved in this word of theirs. But there was throughout all these events, which were so disastrously fixing the fortunes of the Jewish people, an honester and better party in the Sanhedrim, of which Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were the noblest representatives; men like the Poles and Contarinis at another great epoch of the Church; not in number, perhaps still less in courage, equal to the stemming of the fierce tide of hostility which was rising against the truth,—a tide which probably in the end drew most even of them into its current (cf. John 12:42-43); only here and there one and another, such as those above named, extricating themselves from it. These from time to time made their voices to be heard in the cause of righteousness and truth. Thus, on the present occasion, did they at the first claim that He should not at once be prejudged a sinner and a breaker of God’s law, who had done such miracles as these. Even their own Doctors were not altogether at one concerning what was permitted on the Sabbath, and what not; some allowing quite as much as this and more, for only the alleviation of disorders in the eyes. They might therefore plead that the Spirit of God might well have directed Him in this that He did, and they ask, “How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?” Yet the shape which their interference takes, the form of a question in which it clothes itself, is, as Chrysostom remarks, that of timid and irresolute men, who dare only to hint their convictions. No wonder that they should be in the end overborne and silenced by their more unscrupulous adversaries, even as now they, prove unequal to the obtaining of a fair and impartial hearing of the matter. The interrogation in the verse following, “What sayest thou of Him, that He hath opened thine eyes?” has been frequently, but wrongly, understood, not as one question, but as two. The mistake is a very old one, for Theodore of Mopsuestia finds fault with them who divide the question here into two clauses, as thus—”What sayest thou of Him? That He hath opened thine eyes?” making the second clause to have its rise in the doubts which the Pharisees felt, or pretended to feel, concerning the reality of the miracle. In truth there is but one question, “What sayest thou of Him because^[10] He hath opened thine eyes? what conclusion drawest thou from thence?” The answer is then to the point, “He said, He is a prophet;”^[11]—not yet the Messiah, not yet the Son of God; of these higher dignities of his benefactor the man as yet has no guess; but what he believes Him he boldly declares Him, “a prophet,”—one furnished with a message from above, and attesting that message by deeds which no man could do, except God were with him (John 3:2; John 4:19; John 6:14). They who asked this, cared not in the least for the judgment of the man, but they hoped to mould him into an instrument for their own wicked purposes. Chrysostom indeed, whom Theophylact and Euthymius follow, understands this “What sayest thou of Him P” as the speech of the better-disposed in the Sanhedrim, who hope that the testimony of the man himself may go for something; but this is little probable. Rather the drift of the question is that he, perceiving what would be welcome to them, and following the suggestions which they had thrown out, should turn against his benefactor, and ascribe the opening of his eyes to the power of an evil magic. But a rare courage from above is given to him, and he dares, in the face of these formidable men whom he is making his foes, to avouch his belief that the work and the doer of the work were of God. The inquisitors now summon his parents, hoping to tamper more successfully with them, to win a lie from them, a declaration that their son had not been born blind. But they prosper no better in this quarter.. His parents reply as those who will not be made accomplices in a fraud, though with no very high desire to witness or to suffer for the truth. Nay, there is something selfish, and almost cowardly, in their manner of extricating themselves from a danger in which they are content to leave their son. The questions put to them are three: “Is this your son?”—” Whom ye say was born blind?” —”How then doth he now see?” The first two they answer in the affirmative: “This is our son”—” He was born blind” —the third they altogether decline—” By what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself.” They could not have told the truth without saying something to the honour of Jesus; and they will not do this, fearing to come under the penalties which the Sanhedrim had lately pronounced against any that should “confess that He was Christ.”. We are not to understand by this that the Sanhedrim had formally declared Jesus to be an impostor, a false Christ, but only that, so long as the question of the truth or falsehood of his claims to be the Messiah was not yet clear,—and they, the great religious tribunal of the nation, had not given their decision,—none were to anticipate that decision; and any who should thus run before, or, as it might prove, run counter to, their decision, “should be put out of the synagogue,”—that is, should be excommunicated. There appear to have been two, or some say three, kinds of excommunication among the Jews, greatly differing in degrees and intensity; and Christ often speaks of them, as among the sharpest trials which his servants would have to endure for his name’s sake (John 16:2). The mildest form was exclusion for thirty days from the synagogue; to this period, in case the excommunicated showed no sign of repentance, a similar or a longer period, according to the will of those that imposed the sentence, was added: in other ways too it was made sharper; it was accompanied with a curse; none might hold communion with him now, not even his family, except in cases of absolute necessity. Did the offender show himself obstinate still, he was in the end absolutely separated from the fellowship of the people of God, cut off from the congregation,—a sentence answering, as many suppose, to the delivering to Satan in the apostolic Church^[12] (1Co 5:5; 1Ti 1:20). The man had been removed, while his parents were being examined. The Pharisees now summon him again, and evidently by their address would have him to believe that they had gotten to the bottom of all, had discovered the whole fraud, so that any longer persistence in it would be idle: “Give God the praise; we know that this man is a sinner.” They are as men seeking to obtain confession from one they suspect, by assuring him that others have confessed, and thus that for him to stand out in denying, will only make matters worse for him in the end. “Now we know,” they would say, “that it is all a collusion; we have indubitable proofs of it; do thou also give glory to God, and acknowledge that it is so.” Our “Give God the praise” sets the English reader of this passage on a wrong track. They do not mean, “Give the glory of thy cure to God, and not to this sinful man, who in truth could have contributed nothing to it, “—attempting, in Hammond’s words, “to draw him from that opinion of Christ which he seemed to have, by bidding him to ascribe the praise of his cure wholly to God, and not to look on Christ with any veneration.” So indeed Jeremy Taylor: “The spiteful Pharisees bid him give glory to God, and defy the minister; for God indeed was good, but He wrought that cure by a wicked hand.” But they cannot mean this; for they did not allow that any cure had taken place at all; on the contrary, they professed to believe that it was a deception and conspiracy throughout, gotten up between Christ and the man who was before them. The words are rather an adjuration to him that he should speak the truth^[13] (cf. Jos 7:19). Hitherto he has been acting as though he could deceive not merely men but God, but now let him honour or “give glory” to God, uttering that which is truth before Him, and avouching so his belief in Him as a God of knowledge, of righteousness, and of truth; whom no lie will escape, and who will show Himself a swift witness against all ungodliness of men. “We know that this man is a sinner, a more than ordinary transgressor, one, therefore, to whom last and least of all would God have given this higher power; your story then cannot be true; we who have the best opportunities of knowing, know this. “They will overbear him with the authority of their place and station, and with their confident assertion. The man, whom we must recognize throughout as ready-witted, genial, and brave, declines altogether to enter on a question which was plainly beyond his knowledge; “Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not;” yet, as Chrysostom observes, he does not in the least by his answer allow the alter- -native that He was so. This is a matter which he knows not; he will speak, however, the thing which he does know, and they may draw their own conclusions; “One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”They perceive that they can gain nothing in this way, and they require him to tell over again the manner of his cure;”Then said they to him again, What did He to thee? how opened He thine eyes? “hoping either to detect on a second repetition some contradictions in his story, or to find something which they can better lay hold of, and wrest into a charge against the Lord; or perhaps, utterly perplexed how to escape from their present entanglement, they ask for this repetition to gain time, and in the hope that some light may break upon them presently. But the man has grown weary of the examinations to which they are submitting him anew, and there is something of defiance in his answer: “I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again?”—and then, with an evident irony, “Will ye also^[14] be his disciples?” It is clear that these words cut them to the quick, though it is not so clear what exactly is the taunt conveyed by them. Is it this? “How idle to tell you over again, when there is that deep-rooted enmity in your hearts against this man, that, though convinced a hundred times, you would yet never acknowledge it, or sit as learners at his feet.^[15] Will ye also become his disciples? I trow not.” This is the commonest explanation of the words; but does not, however, agree perfectly with their reply. In that they earnestly repel the indignity of being, or intending to be, disciples of his. Such a disclaimer would have been beside the mark, if he, so far from accusing them of any such intention, had on the contrary laid to their charge, that no evidence, no force of truth, could win them to this. More probably then the man, in this last clause of his answer, affects to misunderstand their purpose in asking a repetition of his story: “Is it then, indeed, that the truth is at length winning you also to its side, so that you too would fain find my story true, and yourselves sit as disciples at this man’s feet?” With this the angry rejoinder of the Pharisees will exactly correspond. Nothing could have stung them more than the bare suggestion of such a discipleship on their parts: “They reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple,” or “Thou art that man’s disciple,”^[16] “but we are Moses’ disciples” —setting, as. was their wont, Moses against the Lord, and contrasting their claims: “we know that God spake unto Moses;” he had a commission and an authority; but “as for this fellow, we know not from whence He is;” all is obscure, uncertain about Him; there is no proof that God has given Him a commission, no one can certainly affirm whether He be from above or from beneath. This confession of their inability to explain this new and wonderful appearance, this acknowledgment that they were at fault, emboldens the man yet further. They had left a blot, and this plain yet quick-witted man fails not to take instant advantage of it. There is an irony keener yet in his present retort than in his last: “Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes. This is wonderful; here is one evidently clothed with powers mightier than man’s, able to accomplish a work like this; and you, the spiritual rulers of our nation, you that should try the spirits, should be able to pronounce of each new appearance whether it be of God or not, here acknowledge your ignorance, and cannot decide whence He is, whether of earth or of heaven,^[17] But I know, for you have yourselves declared the same (see ver. 24), that God heareth not sinners; now this man He hath heard, and enabled Him to do a work without parallel; therefore I know whence He is; He is of God; for were He otherwise He could have never done the things which He has done.”

It is interesting to observe how rapidly the man’s faith and insight and courage have grown during this very examination. He who had said a little while before, “Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not” avoiding the answer, now declares boldly, “We know that God heareth not sinners.” Nor need we take exception, as many have taken, at his maxim, nor urge, as they have thought it needful to do, that this saying has no scriptural authority,^[18] being the utterance neither of Christ nor of one of his inspired servants, but only of a man not wholly enlightened yet, in whose mind truth and error were yet struggling. That the words have in themselves no authority is most true; still they may well be allowed to stand, and that in the intention of the speaker. For the term “sinner” has a twofold meaning in Scripture. Sometimes it is applied to all men, as they are fallen children of Adam, each with the burden of his own sin upon him. If, taking the word in this sense, it were affirmed, “God heareth not sinners,” this were indeed to say, God heareth not any man; or if by “sinners” were understood those who have been in time past more than ordinary transgressors, and it were implied that such therefore would not be heard, though they truly turned, this too would be an impeaching of God’s grace. But the Scripture more commonly knows another and emphatic use of the term “sinners,”—men in their sins, and not desiring to be delivered out of them^[19] (Isa 33:14; Gal 2:15); and in this sense, which is the sense of the speaker here, as of the better among the Pharisees, who a little earlier in the day had said, “How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?” (ver. 16;, cf. 10:21), it is most true “that God heareth not sinners;” their prayer is an abomination; and even if they ask, they obtain not their petitions^[2] (Isa 1:11-15; Isa 59:1-2; Pro 1:28; Pro 15:8; Pro 15:29; Pro 28:9; Ps. 1. 16; 66:18; 59:7; Job 27:9; Job 35:13; Jer 14:12; Amo 5:21-23; Mic 3:4; Jas 4:3). This was what least of all the Pharisees could endure, that the whole relations between themselves and this man should thus be reversed,—that he should thus be their teacher; and while it was now plain that he could neither be cajoled nor terrified from his simple yet bold avowal of the truth, their hatred and scorn break forth without any restraint: “Thou wast altogether born in sins, not imperfect in body only, but, as we now perceive, maimed and deformed in soul also, and dost thou teach us?^[20] Thou that earnest forth from thy. mother’s womb with the note of thy wickedness upon thee, dost thou school us, presuming to meddle and be a judge in such matters as these?” They take the same view of his calamity, namely, that it was the note of a more than ordinary sinfulness, which the disciples had suggested; but make hateful application of it. It is characteristic enough that they forget that the two charges, one that he had never been blind, and so was an impostor,—the other that he bore the mark of God’s anger in a blindness which reached back to his birth,—will not agree together. “And they cast him out,” —which does not merely mean, as some explain it (Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Grotius, Tholuck), rudely flung him forth from the hall of judgment, wherever that may have been; but, according to the decree which had gone before, they declared him to have come under those sharp spiritual censures denounced against any that should recognize the prophetic office of the Lord. Only so would the act have the importance which (ver. 35) is attached to it. No doubt the sign and initial act of this excommunication was the thrusting him forth and separating him from their own company;^[21] and so that other explanation of the passage has its relative truth.^[22] Yet this was not all, or nearly all, involved in the words. This violent putting of him forth from the hall of audience was only the beginning of the things which he should suffer for Christ’s sake. Still there was, to use the words of Fuller on this very occasion, this comfort for him, that “the power of the keys, when abused, doth not shut the door of heaven, but in such cases only shoot the bolt beside the lock, not debarring the innocent person entrance thereat.” And in him were to be fulfilled in a very eminent sense those words, “Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake” (Luk 6:22). He is cast out from the meaner fellowship, to be received into the higher,—from that which was about to vanish away, to be admitted into a kingdom not to be moved. The synagogue, so soon’ to be “the synagogue of Satan,” rejects him; the Church of the living God, and Christ the great bearer of the keys in that kingdom, receives him; for in him the words of the Psalmist shall be fulfilled, “When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord taketh me up” (Psa 27:12). He has not been ashamed of Christ, and now Christ reveals his true name and his glory unto him; so that he beholds Him no longer as a prophet from God, which was the highest height to which hitherto his faith had reached, but as the Son of God Himself. Thus to him that hath is given, and he ascends from: faith to faith. ’“Jesus heard that they had cast him out” and, Himself the Good Shepherd, went in search of his sheep in this, favourable hour for making it his own for ever, bringing, it safely home to the true; fold;—” and when He had found him” encountered him, it may be, in the temple (cf. John 5:14), “He; said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?”’ The man knows what the title means, that it is equivalent to Messiah, but he knows not any who has a right to claim it for his own: such trust, however, has he in his Healer, that whomsoever He will point out to him as such, he will recognize. “He answered and said unto Him, Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee.” These words “Thou hast seen Him” do not refer to some anterior seeing; for it does not appear that the man, after his eyes were opened at the pool, had returned to the Lord, or that he had enjoyed any opportunity of seeing Him since; but contain a reply to the question, “Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him?”“ He is one whom thou hast seen already; thou askest to see Him, but this seeing is not still to do; ever since thou hast been speaking with Me thine eyes have beheld Him, for it is no other than Himself that talketh with thee.”^[23] And now the end to which all that went before was but an introduction, has arrived: “He said, Lord, I believe; and he worshipped Him:” not that even now we need suppose him to have known all that was contained in that title, “Son of God,”—or that, worshipping Him, he intended to render Him that supreme adoration, which is indeed due to Christ, but only due to Him because He is one with the Father. For “God manifest in the flesh,” is a fact far too transcendant for any man to receive at once: the minds even of Apostles themselves could only dilate little by little to receive it. There were, however, in him the preparations for that crowning faith. The seed which should unfold into that perfect flower was safely laid in his heart; and he fell down at the feet of Jesus as of one more than man, with a deep religious reverence and fear and awe. And thus the faith of this poor man was accomplished; step by step he had advanced, following faithfully the light which was given him; undeterred by opposition which would have been fatal to a weaker faith, and must have been so to his, unless the good seed had cast its roots in a soil of more than ordinary depth. But because it was such a soil, therefore when persecution arose, as it soon did, for the word’s sake, he was not offended (Mat 13:21); but enduring still, to him at length that highest grace was vouchsafed, to know the only-begotten Son of God, however as yet he may not have seen all the glorious treasures that were contained in that knowledge. So wonderful was the whole event, so had it brought out the spiritual blindness of those who ought to have been the seers of the nation, so had it ended in the illumination, spiritual as well as bodily, of one who seemed among the blind, that it called forth from the Saviour’s lips those remarkable words in which He moralized the whole: “For judgment 1 am come into this world, that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind: I am come to reveal every man’s innermost state; I, as the highest revelation of God, must bring out men’s love and their hatred of what is divine as none other could (John 3:19-21); I am the touchstone; much that seemed true shall at my touch be proved false, to be merely dross; much that for its little sightliness was nothing accounted of, shall prove true metal: many, whom men esteemed to be seeing, such as the spiritual chiefs of this nation, shall be shown to be blind; many, whom men counted altogether unenlightened, shall, when my light touches them, be shown to have powers of spiritual vision undreamt of before. “Christ was the King of truth,—and therefore his open setting up of his banner in the world was at once and of necessity a ranging of men in their true ranks, as lovers of truth or lovers of a lie;^[24] and He. is here saying of Himself the same thing which Simeon had said of Him before: “Behold, this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel,.... that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Luk 2:34-35). He is the stone on which men build, and against which men stumble,—and set for this purpose as well as that (1Pe 2:6-8; cf. 2Co 2:16). These words call out a further contradiction on the part of the Pharisees, and out of this miracle unfolds itself that discourse which reaches down to ver. 21 of the ensuing chapter. They had shown what manner of shepherds of the sheep they were in their exclusion of this one from the fold: “with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them” (Eze 34:4 ^[25]): our Lord proceeds to set over against them Himself, as the good Shepherd and the true.

Footnotes [1] As Maldonatus, Tittmann, Tholuck, Olshausen

[2] Ἐκ γενετῆς=ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός, Acts 3:2; Acts 14:8. There, as here, a lifelong defect is removed.

[3] The passages quoted from the Wisdom of Solomon (viii. 19, 20) and from Josephus (B. J. ii. 8, 14) are misunderstood, when applied in this sense.

[4] This was a favourite passage “with the Arians; see Augustine, Serm. cxxxv. 1-4, and his answer there to their abusive interpretation.

[5] The power of triviality can reach no further than it has reached in the exposition of Paulus. Christ is for him no more than a skilful oculist, who says, “I must take this cure in hand while there is yet daylight to see; for when it is dark I could not attempt so fine and delicate an operation.” See back, pp. 78 81.

[6] So Cyril: Ἐπείπερ ἀϕῖγμαι ϕωτίσων τὰ ἐν ἐνδείᾳ ϕωτὸς‚ δεῖ με καὶ τοῖς τοῦ σώματος τὸ ϕῶς μεταδοῦναι.

[7] The virtue especially of the saliva jejuna, in cases of disorders of the eyes, was well known to antiquity. Pliny (H. N. xxviii. 7) says, Lippitudines matutinâ quotidie velut inunctione arceri. In both accounts (Suetonius, Vespas. 7; Tacitus, Hist. iv. 8) of that restoring of a blind man to sight, attributed to Vespasian, the use of this remedy occurs. In the latter the man appears begging of the emperor, ut genas et oculorum orbes dignaretur respergere oris excremento; and abundant quotations to the same effect are to be found in Wetstein (in loc).

[8] Augustine (Serm. cxxxv. 1): Quis est ipse Missus, nisi qui dixit in ipsâ lectione, Ego, inquit, veni ut faciam opera ejus qui misit me; and In Ev. Joh. tract, xliv.: Misit ilium ad piscinam qua; vocatur Siloë. Pertinuit autem ad Evangelistam commendare nobis nomen hujus piscinae, et ait, Quod interpretatur Missus. Jam quis sit Missus agnoscitis: nisi enim ille fuisset missus, nemo nostrum esset ab iniquitate dimissus. So Chrysostom, Horn. lvii. in Joh. On St. John’s derivation of Siloam, see Tholuck’s Beiträge zur Spracherklärung des N. T. p. 123, where he also enters into the hard question of its position, whether at the east or west side of the city.

[9] Augustine: Aperti oculi vultum mutaverant.

[10] Ὅτι=ὑπὲρ ὧν.

[11] Our Version no doubt in general conveys to the English reader the wrong impression; it had done so at least for many years to me. Yet the manner of pointing, with the absence of the second note of interrogation, shows that the Translators had rightly apprehended the passage.

[12] Our Lord is thought to refer to all these three degrees of separation, Luk 6:22, expressing the lightest by the ἀϕορίζειν, the severer by the ὀνειδίζειν, and the severest of all by the ἐκβάλλειν. But it may well be doubtful whether these different grades of excommunication were so accurately distinguished in his time (see Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. Bann, and Vitringa, De Synagogá, p. 738).

[13] The phrase is often used more generally as an adjuration to repentance of every kind, which is indeed in the highest. sense a taking shame to ourselves, and in that a giving glory only to God (1Sa 6:5; Jer 13:16; 1 Esdr. ix. 8; Rev 16:9). Seneca (Ep. 95) speaks very nobly of this giving glory to God, as the great work of every man: Primus, est Deorum cultus, Deos credere: deinde reddere illis majestatem suam, reddere bonitatem, sine quâ nulla majestas est.

[14] Σὺ εἶ μαθητὴς ἐκείνου. Bengel well: Hoc verbo removent Jesum a sese.

[15] In the καὶ ὑμεῖς of the man there may lie, as Chrysostom has observed, a confession that lie was, or intended to be, a follower of this prophet. Bengel: Jucunde observari potest fides apud hunc hominerm, dum Pharisaei

[16]Calvin: Significat quamvis centies convicti fuerint, maligno hostilique affectu sic esse occupatos ut nunquam cessuri sint.

[17] Compare our Lord’s question to his adversaries, Mat 21:25 : "The baptism of John, whence was it (πόθεν ἦν)? from heaven or of men?" which best explains the πόθεν (=ἐν ποίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ‚, ver. 24) here. In the same way Pilate’s question to our Lord, "Whence art Thou?" John 19:9) is to. be explained, "To what world dost Thou belong’?"

[18] Thus Origen (In Esai. Horn, v.): Peccatores exaudit Deus. Quod si timetis illud quod in Evangelio dicitur, Scimus quia peccatores non exaudiat Deus, nolite pertimescere, nolite credere. Coecus erat qui hoc dixit. Magis. autem credite ei qui dicit, et non mentitur, Etsi fuerint peccata vestra ut coccinum, ut lanam dealbabo. But elsewhere rightly (Comm. in Rom 5:18): Aliud est peccare, aliud peccatorem esse. Peccator dicitur is, qui multa delinquendo in consuetudinem, et, ut ita dicam, in studium peccandi jam venit. Augustine (Serm. cxxxvi.): Si peccatores Deus non exaudit, quam spem habemus? Si peccatores Deus non exaudit, ut quid oramus et testimonium peccati nostri tunsione pectoris dicimus [Luk 18:10]. Certe peccatores Deus exaudit. Sed ille qui ista dixit, nondum laverat faciem cordis de Siloâ. In oculis ejus praecesserat sacramentum: sed in corde nondum erat effectum gratiae beneficium. Quando lavit faciem cordis sui coecus iste? Quando eum Dominus foras missum a Judaeis, intromisit ad se. Cf. Serm. cxxxv. 5. Elsewhere (Con. Lit. Parmen. ii. 8) he shows that his main desire is thus to rescue the passage from Donatist abuses. These last, true to their plan of making the sacraments and other blessings of the Church to rest on the subjective sanctity of those through whose hands they passed, and not on the sure promise of Him from whose hands they came, misapplied these words. “God heareth not sinners;” how then, they. asked, can these minister blessings to others? It would be enough to answer that it is not them whom God hears, but the Church which speaks through them; nor did it need, because of this abuse of the words, to make exception against the statement itself, as though it smacked of errors from which the man was not yet wholly delivered. Calvin better: Falluntur qui coecum ex vulgi opinione sic loquutum esse putant. Nam peccator hie quoque ut paulo ante impium et sceleratum significat (ver. 24). Est autem haec perpetua Scripturae doctrina, quod Deus non exaudiat nisi a quibus vere et sincero corde vocatur..... Ideo non male ratiocinatur coecus, Christum a Deo profectum esse, quern suis votis ita propitium habet.

[19] Thus Augustine. (Enarr. in Psa. 56:18): Non est hoc nomen [peccatores] in Scripturis usitatum eorum, qui licet juste ac laudabiliter vivant, non sunt sine peccato. Magis enim, sicut interest inter irridentes et irrisores, inter murmurantes et murmuratores, inter scribentes et scriptores, et cetera similia: ita Scriptura peccatores appellare consuevit valde iniquos, et grandibus peccatorum sarcinis onerosos.

[20] Bengel: Exprobrant de coecitate pristinâ. Calvin: Perinde illi insultant, acsi ab utero matris cum scelerum suorum notâ prodiisset.

[21] Corn, a Lapide: Utrumque eos fecisse est credibile, scilicet coecum ex domo, et hoc symbolo ex Ecclesia sua, ejecisse. Ἐκβάλλειν will then have the technical meaning which it afterwards retained in the Church (see Suicer, Thes. s. v.).

[22] See Vitringa, De Synagogâ, p. 743.

[23] Corn. a Lapide: Et vidisti eum, nunc cum se tibi ipse videndum offert.

[24] Augustine (In Ev. Job. tract. xliv.): Dies ille diviserat inter lucem et tenebras.

[25] This whole chapter of Ezekiel may be profitably read in the light of the connexion between these 9th and 10th chapters of St. John.