John 5:3

lay a great multitude Better, were lying a multitude.

blind, halt, withered These are the special kinds of -impotent folk."

waiting for the moving of the water These words and the whole of John 5:4 are almost certainly an interpolation, though a very ancient one. They are omitted by the best MSS. Other important MSS. omit John 5:4 or mark it as suspicious. Moreover, those MSS. which contain the passage vary very much. The passage is one more likely to be inserted without authority than to be omitted if genuine; and very probably it represents the popular belief with regard to the intermittent bubbling of the healing water, first added as a gloss, and then inserted into the text. The water was probably mineral in its elements, and the people may or may not have been right in supposing that it was most efficacious when the spring was most violent.