John 5:7

The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool, but while I am coming another steps down before me”.'

Someone may have brought the man there each day, or he may have been there permanently, but no one was concerned enough to stay with him to help him down into the water. Possibly they had little confidence in the powers of the pool, or perhaps they had previously tried and had found it hopeless. There was always going to be someone else there who was more agile. What a sickening position he was in. Constant hope, and yet hopelessness.

‘When the water is troubled'. If the explanation in John 5:2 is a gloss this stands on its own as unexplained, but it may be that John assumed that any reader would read into his words the significance of them and did not want to publicise a superstition. The ‘moving of the water', possibly caused by an intermittent spring, was probably seen by many as a divine phenomenon. Psychological healings no doubt took place.