John 5:3
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
In these lay a great multitude of weak folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
American King James Version (AKJV)
In these lay a great multitude of weak folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
American Standard Version (ASV)
In these lay a multitude of them that were sick, blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
Basic English Translation (BBE)
In these doorways there were a great number of people with different diseases: some unable to see, some without the power of walking, some with wasted bodies.
Webster's Revision
In these lay a great multitude of impotent persons, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
World English Bible
In these lay a great multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, or paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water;
English Revised Version (ERV)
In these lay a multitude of them that were sick, blind, halt, withered.
Definitions for John 5:3
Clarke's John 5:3 Bible Commentary
Blind, halt, withered - To these the Codex Bezae, three copies of the Itala, and both the Persic, add παραλυτικων, paralytic; but they are probably included among the withered.
Waiting for the moving of the water - This clause, with the whole of the fourth verse, is wanting in some MSS. and versions; but I think there is no sufficient evidence against their authenticity. Griesbach seems to be of the same opinion; for though he has marked the whole passage with the notes of doubtfulness, yet he has left it in the text. Some have imagined that the sanative virtue was communicated to the waters by washing in them the entrails of the beasts which were offered in sacrifice; and that the angel meant no more than merely a man sent to stir up from the bottom this corrupt sediment, which, being distributed through the water, the pores of the person who bathed in it were penetrated by this matter, and his disorder repelled! But this is a miserable shift to get rid of the power and goodness of God, built on the merest conjectures, self-contradictory, and every way as unlikely as it is insupportable. It has never yet been satisfactorily proved that the sacrifices were ever washed; and, could even this be proved, who can show that they were washed in the pool of Bethesda? These waters healed a man in a moment of whatsoever disease he had. Now, there is no one cause under heaven that can do this. Had only one kind of disorders been cured here, there might have been some countenance for this deistical conjecture - but this is not the case; and we are obliged to believe the relation just as it stands, and thus acknowledge the sovereign power and mercy of God, or take the desperate flight of an infidel, and thus get rid of the passage altogether.
Barnes's John 5:3 Bible Commentary
Impotent folk - Sick people; or people who were weak and feeble by long disease. The word means those who were "feeble" rather than those who were afflicted with "acute" disease.
Halt - Lame.
Withered - Those who were afflicted with one form of the palsy that withered or dried up the part affected. See the notes at Matthew 4:24.
Moving of the water - It appears that this pool had medicinal properties only when it was "agitated" or "stirred." It is probable that at regular times or intervals the fountain put forth an unusual quantity of water, or water of special properties, and that "about" these times the people assembled in multitudes who were to be healed.