Bible Strands
John 5:4
For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
King James Version
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Study note
Setting — The narrator describes the pool of Bethesda immediately after noting the paralyzed crowd on its walkways and just before introducing a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
The words — The passage highlights ἄγγελος (angelos), literally angel, who descends at a specific season, and κολυμβήθρα (kolumbēthra), the pool itself.
The thread — The narrative of the troubled pool appears only in John 5:3-4 and stands adjacent to the thirty-eight-year invalid account in John 5:5, with no parallel in the other Gospels.
Why it lands — The text records a specific healing mechanism at the pool before Jesus intervenes, requiring the reader to note the sequence of events without assuming the verse is original to the Gospel.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.