24-34. Again therefore the Pharisees interrogate the man himself, and at length, wincing under his remarks and indignant with him for his favourable opinion of Jesus, they expel him from their assembly.
35-38. Jesus finds him, and now illumines the darkness of his soul.
39-41. The blindness of the Pharisees.
| 1. Et praeteriens Iesus vidit hominem caecum a nativitate: | 1. And Jesus passing by, saw a man who was blind from his birth. |
1. Some think that the events about to be narrated occurred shortly after Christ left the temple (viii. 59) and had been rejoined by His disciples, who are supposed to have left when He disappeared. This view seems to us more probable than that which places the events about to be narrated on a different day from those referred to in the close of the preceding chapter. When we are told that Jesus went out of the temple (viii. 59), and passing by, saw a man blind from his birth, the natural inference is, that the Evangelist is speaking of Christ's passing along after He left the temple. This view is confirmed too by the fact, that Jesus should not be read in this verse, being spurious according to all critics, but must be supplied from the preceding chapter.
The man was blind from his birth, so that it was no mere passing affection of the eyes, from which he suffered; and thus the miracle was the more striking.
| 2. Et interrogaverunt eum discipuli eius: Rabbi, quis peccavit, hic, aut parentes eius, ut caecus nasceretur? | 2. And his disciples asked him: Rabbi, who hath sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? |
2. How the disciples knew the man had been born blind, we are not told. To excite greater compassion, and probably to obtain alms, he may have been himself proclaiming the fact. It was reasonable enough that the disciples should think of the sins of the man's parents as the reason why he was born blind, for God Himself tells us that He is “jealous, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” (Exod. xx. 5). And we know that David was punished by the death of his child (2 Kings xii. 14). But why should the disciples imagine that the man might have been born blind on account of his own sins? Some think that the disciples may have been imbued with the false notions of the Jews regarding the transmigration of souls, and have thought that this man's soul had sinned in some previous state of existence, and been therefore imprisoned in a blind body. But it is unlikely that the disciples at this time, the third year of our Lord's public life, were still in such ignorance.[70] Others think that the question means: was he born blind for some sin which it was foreseen he would commit? Others think that the question was hastily put without advertence to its absurdity. Others that the meaning is: was it for his own, or, since that is out of the question, was it for the sin of his parents that this man was born blind?
| 3. Respondit Iesus: Neque hic peccavit, neque parentes eius: sed ut manifestentur opera Dei in illo. | 3. Jesus answered: Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. |
3. Christ replies that neither the man himself nor his parents had sinned, so as to explain his blindness—ἵνα, as a cause why he should be born blind; but his blindness was ordained, or at least permitted, for the sake of the miracle which Christ was now about to work.