[Moving of the luater.] This " moving " must have been some- thing that could be seen and observed by persons standing by or looking on. There was no virtue or healing element in the water, until the movement took place.
4. — [For an angel went down, &c.] The thing we are here told is very curious. There is nothing like it in the Bible, Josephu^, the Jewish writer, does not mention it. The simplest view is that it was a standing miracle wrought once every year, as Cyril says, or at any rate at sonie special season only, by God's ap- pointment, to keep the Jews in mind of the wonderful works that had been done for them in time past, and to remind them that the God of miracles was unchanged. — But when this singu- lar miracle first began, — on what occasion it began, — why we never hear anything else about it, — in what way the angel came down, — are questions which cannot be answered. — That angels did interpose in a miraculous manner in the days of the New Testament, is perfectly clear fi-om many instances in the Gospels and Acts. That the Jews themselves had strong faith in the interposition of angels on certain occasions, is clear from the account of the vision of Zacharias, when we are simply told that the people "perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple."' (Luke i. 22.) That from the days of Malachi, when inspiration ceased, God may have seen it good to keep up in the Jewish mind a faith in unseen things, by the grant of a standing miracle, is a very probable opinion. The wisest course is to take the passage as we find it, and to befieve though we cannot explain.
All other attempts to get over the difficulties of the passage are thoroughly unsatisfactory. To condemn the passage as not genuine, is a lazy way of cutting the knot, and not at all clearly warranted by the authority of manuscripts. — To say that St. John only used the popular language of tlie Jews in describing the miracle, and did not really believe it himself, is, to say the least, irreverent and profane. — To suppose, as Hammond and others have done, that the "angel" only means a common human "messenger" sent by the priests, and that the healing efl&cacy of the water arose from the blood of the many sacrifices which drained into the pool of Bethe.^da at the pa'^sover feast; — • or to suppose, as others, that Bethesda was a p.iol where sacri- fices were washed before they were offered, are all entirely gra- tuitous assumptions, and do not get over the main difficulty. There is no proof that the blood of the sacrifices did drain into the pool. There is no proof that the blood would give the water any healing virtue. There is no proof, as Liuht^oot shows, that sacrilices were waahed at all. (See Light foot's Exeroitations on John, on this passage.) Moreover, this hypothesis would not account for only one person being healed every time the waters