John 5:5 Commentary and Bible Study

This man was an impossible case. In the fraternity of people who lay in those porches, waiting for this rare event of a healing, he was probably very well known. It was his fraternity; it was his place. They spoke to each other and shared their problems and complaints. Perhaps he was an embittered man. He was described by the Lord later as a man in sin. Perhaps he was cynical, embittered, but perhaps a retailer of foul jokes, who knows? But anyway, this was his fraternity of sad, sad grumblers, and infirm people who gathered together and held themselves together there.