BETHESDA, the Hebrew name of a pool or pond in Jerusalem, near the sheep market. Jo. v. 2-7. The word xotuf.eif3acce, which in that passage is translatedpool, signifies a reservoir of water, deep enough to allow a person to swim in it. Formerly there were two pools of that description in Jerusalem, near the mount on which stood the temple ; the one called the upper pool, (2 Rings xviii. 7.) and the other the pool of Siloam by the king's garden, (Nell. iii. 15.) in which our Saviour directed the blind man to wash for the recovery of his sight. (Jo. ix. 7.) Some interpret the word Bethesda as signifying a drain, because the water used for wash ing the entrails of the beasts which were to be offered in sacrifice in the temple flowed into it ; to which circumstance they very absurdly ascribe a medicinal quality of the pool. But Bethesda has, with greater propriety, been understood to signify the house of mercy, as expressive of the mercy of God to his peo ple in the healing virtue which the water of that pool possessed. The five porches mentioned by John, are believed to be the remains of five apartments for the accommodation of the great multitude, who came to the pool to be cured of their bodily diseases. And Maundrell tells us, that when he was at Jerusalem, he saw what was supposed to have been the pool of Be thesda, contiguous on one side to St Stephen's gate, and on the other, to the area of the temple. 44 It is," says he, " one hundred and twenty paces long, forty broad, and at least eight deep ; but void of water. At its west end it discovers some old arches now ..clamm'd up." " In these porches," says the Evangelist John, " lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. 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." Whether the inkacles performed at the pool of Bethesda, were con fined to the season of the particular feast mentioned in v. 1st, as the words xptrz x.asgets in v. 4th would 13 seem to imply ; or whether these words, taken in a ‘" more enlarged sense, may be explained to signify that the water had its sanative quality at other Jewish fes tivals, cannot be ascertained. That it had not that quality at all times, but only at certain times, when an angel went down and troubled, that is, agitated, the water, is clear from the words of the Evangelist.
In order to account, in a natural way, for the sa native quality of this pool, Hammond supposes that the water became medicinal in consequence of an im pregnation from the blood and entrails of the sacri fices, conveyed thither by the water in which they were washed at the temple ; and that by the ecy5xes, who troubled the water, we are not to understand an angel, but only a messenger, probably a servant of the high priest, who might be sent at a particular season to agitate the pool. But that explanation is evidently contradicted by the narrative of the Evan gelist. The Greek word translated angel, is never used in the sense which that interpretation gives it, and is evident, that had there been no divine agency, the virtue of the water would have been confined to the cure of some particular disorder, and would have been found in the water at one time as well as at another ; the very reverse of which John tells us was the case. It cured all, but it cured only one person at one time, namely, the person who first stepped in, after the water was agitated by the descent of an angel. Of whatever use, therefore, this pool might have been in the earliest ages, certain it is that He, who is the sovereign physician of soul and body, made use of it, in the days of the Saviour, for the cure of diseases, in a way which must have convinced men that these cures were effected, not by a natural, but by a miraculous operation. For the true reason, why the virtue thus communicated to the water, by the descent of an an gel, was effectual for the cure only of one person, at one particular time, was to manifest the miraculous nature of the cure. Tertullian informs us, that the water of this pool ceased to be beneficial to the Jews upon their obstinate perseverance in their rejection of Christ's divine mission ; another proof that it de rived its healing quality directly from the agency of the Divine Being, and lost it at the precise time when that divine agency was withdrawn. We may there fore conclude with the learned Dr Macknight, that Bethesda obtained its miraculous healing quality, in honour of the personal appearance of the Son of God. upon earth. See Ant. Univ. Hist. vol. ii. 442. ; vol. x. 544. Maundrell's Journey to Aleppo, p. 107. Stackhouse's /fist. vol. v. p. 393. Calmet's (A. F.