5 ¹ LATER ON JESUS WENT UP to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Some witnesses read: for the Jewish festival.

5 ² Now at the Sheep-Pool in Jerusalem there is a place with five colonnades. Its name in the language of the Jews is Bethesda. 5 ³ In these colonnades there lay a crowd of sick people, blind, lame, and paralysed. Some manuscripts add: waiting for the disturbance of the water; 5 ⁴ some witnesses further insert: (4) for from time to time an angel came down into the pool and stirred up the water. The first to plunge in after this disturbance recovered from whatever disease had afflicted him. 5 ⁵ Among them was a man who had been crippled for thirty-eight years. 5 ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and was aware that he had been ill a long time, he asked him, 'Do you want to recover?' 5 ⁷ 'Sir,' he replied, 'I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is disturbed, but while I am moving, someone else is in the pool before me.' 5 ⁸ Jesus answered, 'Rise to your feet, take up your bed and walk.' 5 ⁹ The man recovered instantly, took up his stretcher, and began to walk.

5 ¹⁰ That day was a Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, 'It is the Sabbath. You are not allowed to carry your bed on the Sabbath.' 5 ¹¹ He answered, 'The man who cured me said, "Take up your bed and walk." ' 5 ¹² They asked him, 'Who is the man who told you to take up your bed and walk?' 5 ¹³ But the cripple who had been cured did not know; for the place was crowded and Jesus had slipped away. 5 ¹⁴ A little later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, 'Now that you are well again, leave your sinful ways, or you may suffer something worse.' 5 ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had cured him.

5 ¹⁶ It was works of this kind done on the Sabbath that stirred the Jews to persecute Jesus. 5 ¹⁷ He defended himself by saying, 'My Father has never yet ceased his is work, and I am working too.' 5 ¹⁸ This made the Jews still more determined to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but, by calling God his own Father, he claimed equality with God.