Teks -- John 5:5 (NET)

5:5 Now a man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years.

Tafsiran/Catatan -- Catatan Kata/Frasa (per frasa)

Robertson: Joh 5:5 - Which had been thirty and eight years

Which had been thirty and eight years ( triakonta kai oktō etē echōn ).

Literally, "having thirty and eight years,""having spent thirty and eight years."

Vincent: Joh 5:5 - Had an infirmity thirty and eight years

Had an infirmity thirty and eight years

Literally, having thirty and eight years in his infirmity .

JFB: Joh 5:5-9 - thirty and eight years

But not all that time at the pool. This was probably the most pitiable of all the cases, and therefore selected.

Clarke: Joh 5:5 - Had an infirmity thirty and eight years

Had an infirmity thirty and eight years - St. Chrysostom conjectured that blindness was the infirmity of this person: what it was, the inspired writer does not say - probably it was a palsy: his case was deplorable - he was not able to go into the pool himself, and he had no one to help him; so that poverty and disease were here connected. The length of the time he had been afflicted makes the miracle of his cure the greater. There could have been no collusion in this case: as his affliction had lasted thirty-eight years, it must have been known to multitudes; therefore he could not be a person prepared for the occasion. All Christ’ s miracles have been wrought in such a way, and on such persons and occasions, as absolutely to preclude all possibility of the suspicion of imposture.

Calvin: Joh 5:5 - And there was a man there

5.And there was a man there The Evangelist collects various circumstances, which prove that the miracle may be relied on as certain. The long duration of the disease had taken away all hope of its being cured. This man complains that he is deprived of the remedy of the water. He had frequently attempted to throw himself into the water, but without success; there was no man to assist him, and this causes the power of Christ to be more strikingly displayed. Such, too, was the import of the command to carry his bed, that all might plainly see that he was cured in no other way than by the agency of Christ; for when he suddenly rises up healthy and strong in all the members in which he was formerly impotent, so sudden a change is the more fitted to arouse and strike the minds of all who beheld it.

TSK: Joh 5:5 - thirty

thirty : Joh 5:14, Joh 9:1, Joh 9:21; Mar 9:21; Luk 8:43, Luk 13:16; Act 3:2, Act 4:22, Act 9:33, Act 14:8

Tafsiran/Catatan -- Catatan Kata/Frasa (per Ayat)

Poole: Joh 5:5

What this man’ s name was, or what his circumstances in the world, or what his particular disease, we are not told; nor is it said that he had lain there thirty-eight years, but that he had so long laboured under his weakness: which, whether it was the palsy or no, is uncertain: probably it was a disease hardly curable by human art and ordinary means; for it cannot be thought but in that time he had used all rational means, which he finding of no value as to his case, he came and lay at this fountain, waiting for a cure in this way of miraculous operation.

Haydock: Joh 5:5 - Infirmity

Infirmity. The Greek, astheneia, signifies in its radical interpretation, a loss of strength: in this place it seems to denote a confirmed palsy.

Gill: Joh 5:5 - And a certain man was there // which had an infirmity thirty and eight years

And a certain man was there,.... At Bethesda's pool, in one of the five porches, or cloisters, that belonged to it:

which had an infirmity thirty and eight years; what his infirmity was, is not said; he was one of the weak, or impotent folk, for so he is called, Joh 5:7. Some think his distemper was the palsy, and though he had had this infirmity so many years, it is not certain that he had waited so long in this place for a cure; though it may be, for that he had attended some time, is clear from Joh 5:7. Nor indeed can it be known how long there had been such a preternatural motion in this pool, and such a miraculous virtue in the water; some have thought, that it began at the repairing of the sheep gate by Eliashib, in Nehemiah's time; so Tremellius and Junius, on Neh 3:1; and others have thought, that it had been some few years before the birth of Christ, and about the time that this man was first taken with his disorder. Tertullian says ^u, that there was in Judea a medicinal lake, before Christ's time; and that the pool of Bethsaida (it should be Bethesda) was useful in curing the diseases of the Israelites; but ceased from yielding any benefit, when the name of the Lord was blasphemed by them, through their rage and fury, and continuance in it ^w; but in what year it began, and the precise time it ceased, he says not. The Persic version here adds, "and was reduced to such a state that he could not move".