The healing of the man born blind took place during the Feast of Tabernacles. At this feast there were some particularly interesting ceremonies.
The Ceremony of the Pouring Out of the Waters
The Jewish nation considered that God had placed
high honour
“Open to me the gates of righteousness; I will go
through them, and I will praise
the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord, through which the righteous shall
enter. I will praise You, for You have answered me, And have become my
salvation. The stone which the
builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing; It is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day the Lord
has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Save now, I pray, O Lord; O Lord,
I pray, send now prosperity. Blessed is
he who comes in the name of the Lord!
We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.
God is the Lord, And He has given us light; Bind
the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will praise You; You are my God, I will exalt You. Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures
forever.”[4]
Jesus, attending the ceremony at the festival,
would have been intensely aware of the significance of these verses. After the ceremony of the pouring out of those
waters, He proclaimed in a loud clear voice, “If anyone thirsts, let him come
to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his
heart will flow rivers of living water”. John
added the explanation, “This He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those
believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not
yet glorified.”[5] Here Jesus claimed to be the promised
‘Nabhi’, the prophet, the ‘weller-forth’, the expected One. Those that exercised
faith in Him would be like the pool of Siloam, reservoirs of living water out
of which are drawn water libations for YHWH.
God would quench their thirst and make them a blessing to others. The
apostles were the best illustration of the fulfilment of this promise, since
their post-Pentecost ministry was attended by conversions and miracles.
This then, is the context of the
action of the Messiah in the healing of the man with congenital blindness. The stigma that had been heaped upon the man
by the Pharisaic system, (where sin is marked, identified and catalogued), was
washed away by the Spirit of God. Jesus drew a straight line from the symbolism
of the ceremony of the pouring out of the waters to the healing of the man and
His office as Messiah.
The
Ceremony of the Kindling of the Lamps
Furthermore,
He used the other ceremony of the feast, the lighting of the menorahs, [6] to
illustrate again His office and ministry.
This light symbolised the Shekinah that once
filled the Temple,
and was a major motif of the festival because:
(i) the descent of the Shekinah at the dedication of the Solomon’s
Temple took
place at this feast,[7]
(ii) the burning lamps represented the Shekinah that was
seen as a pillar of fire on their wilderness journey. The wilderness journey
when the Shekinah guided them from Egypt
to Canaan, was the principal motif of the
Festival. According to Jewish tradition,
the pillar first appeared to lead Israel
from Egypt to Canaan on the 15th Tishri, which was the first
day of the feast of Tabernacles.
So when Jesus stood in the shadow of a menorah
and proclaimed, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk
in the darkness, but will have the Light of life”,[8] He
not only affirmed He was the Messiah, but also the Shekinah of God now returned
to Israel.
The Shekinah that dwelt in the Tabernacle
when it pitched.
The Shekinah that led them and
protected them when they journeyed.
The Shekinah that fed them with bread
from heaven.
The Shekinah that gave them living
water to drink.
The Shekinah that healed all their
diseases.
The Shekinah that dispelled the
darkness, and guided them to the promised land.
The Shekinah that resided over the
mercy seat in the Temple.
The truth that Jesus was the Shekinah, the
visible representation of God, was re-enforced by another of His declarations
at that time: “Before Abraham was I am”. At this statement, “they picked up stones to
throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.”[9] John is repeating and reinforcing the truth, “…
the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as
of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”.[10] John restated in different ways at different
points in his gospel, God walked on earth in the person of Jesus.
The brilliant light from the
court of women was also intended to represent Messiah, for Isaiah had
prophesied of the Coming One: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a
great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath
the light shined”.[11] As Simeon said when Joseph and Mary brought the
Messiah to the Temple for the first time, He was
to be “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of … Israel”.[12]
The law required the light of the Sanctuary to be always
lit, not that God required light but that it was prophetic of the time when God
would kindle for them ‘the Great Light’.
The Rabbis would speak of the light with which God wrapped Himself as
with a garment, which was reserved under the throne of God for the Messiah,[13]
in whose days it would shine forth once more.
In a Midrash on Lamentations 1.16, the Messiah is designated as the
‘Enlightener’, the words of Daniel 2.22 “and light dwells with Him” being
applied to Him.
Jesus made a point of finding the newly sighted
man later, so that He could give him even more light, that is spiritual sight.
When Jesus met him again, He asked: “Do you believe in the Son of God?”[14] This outcast of Jewish society who was
unfamiliar with the Messianic ministry of Jesus responded: “Who is he, Lord,
that I might believe on Him?” When Jesus replied, “You have both seen Him and it
is He who is talking with you,” he reacted: “Lord, I believe. And he worshipped
Him”.[15] This
momentous miracle not only supported His Messianic credentials, and illuminated
His latest self-revelatory ‘I AM’
statement, that is: “I AM the light of the world”,[16]
but also demonstrated the truth of His claim to be the Son of God.[17] It
was a work of God on several levels.[18]
The timing of the miracle is significant. It took place after the Sanhedrin had
declared that they had rejected the Messianic claim of Jesus. So He did not offer it as an attesting sign,
nor could the Sanhedrists accept it as such.
Nevertheless, Jesus, by performing this and other similar miracles was
establishing His claim more and more, compelling His opponents to respond. In the time period between the two encounters
with the Messiah, the beggar was interviewed by the Pharisees. They consistently sought to undermine the
value of any Messianic miracle and the reputation of the One who performed it. They
said, “we know that this man is a sinner”,[19]
now placing on the Messiah the same stigma that had been placed on the blind
beggar; a stigma that had been removed by the miraculous intervention of Jesus.
The beggar, newly sighted, could see the inconsistency in their argument. “Since the world began was it not heard that
any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God, He could do
nothing”.[20] The
Pharisees countered by re-stigmatizing the healed man, “You were completely
born in sins, and are you teaching us?”[21]
These events finished with a summary
by Jesus, “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not
might see; and that they which see might be made blind”.[22] He again branded the Pharisees as “blind
leaders of the blind”.
[1] Isaiah
12.3,6
[3] Psalms
120-134
[4] Psalm
118.20-29
[5] John
7.37-39
[6] Sukkah
5.2 and 5.3 (Mishnah)
[7] 1 Kings
8.2 ff; 2 Chron.7
[8] John
8.12 cf. 3.19; 9.5; 12.46
[9] John
8.59
[10] John
1.14
[11] Isaiah
9.2
[12] Luke
2.32
[13] Yalk.
on Isa.60
[14]
John 9.35 ff
[15] John
9.36-38
[16] John
9.5
[17] John
9.1
[18] John
9.3
[19] John
9.24
[20] John
9.32,33
[21] John
9:34
[22] John 9.39
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