Bethesda

Bethesda (meaning: house of mercy or house of grace) was a pool with five covered colonnades near the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem, described in John 5:2 as the location where a great crowd of sick people—blind, lame, and paralyzed—lay waiting for the moving of the waters. The popular belief was that when an angel periodically stirred the pool, the first person to enter the water afterward would be healed of whatever disease they had.

Bethesda is the setting of Jesus's healing of the man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Jesus approached the man, learned how long he had been ill, and commanded him simply: Rise, take up your bed, and walk. The man was instantly healed, without entering the water. The healing occurred on the Sabbath, and the controversy over carrying the bed on the Sabbath triggered one of the key confrontations over Sabbath observance in John's Gospel. Archaeological excavations in Jerusalem near the Church of St. Anne have uncovered a twin-pool complex with connecting channels that matches John's description well and is widely identified as the Bethesda site.