Discovery BoxJohn 9:14 
Context9:14 (Now the day on which Jesus made the mud 1 and caused him to see 2 was a Sabbath.) 3
John 9:2
Context9:2 His disciples asked him, 4 “Rabbi, who committed the sin that caused him to be born blind, this man 5 or his parents?” 6
John 9:30
Context9:30 The man replied, 7 “This is a remarkable thing, 8 that you don’t know where he comes from, and yet he caused me to see! 9
John 11:37
Context11:37 But some of them said, “This is the man who caused the blind man to see! 10 Couldn’t he have done something to keep Lazarus 11 from dying?”
1 tn Or “clay” (moistened earth of a clay-like consistency).
2 tn Grk “and opened his eyes” (an idiom referring to restoration of sight).
3 sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.
4 tn Grk “asked him, saying.”
5 tn Grk “this one.”
6 tn Grk “in order that he should be born blind.”
sn The disciples assumed that sin (regardless of who committed it) was the cause of the man’s blindness. This was a common belief in Judaism; the rabbis used Ezek 18:20 to prove there was no death without sin, and Ps 89:33 to prove there was no punishment without guilt (the Babylonian Talmud, b. Shabbat 55a, although later than the NT, illustrates this). Thus in this case the sin must have been on the part of the man’s parents, or during his own prenatal existence. Song Rabbah 1:41 (another later rabbinic work) stated that when a pregnant woman worshiped in a heathen temple the unborn child also committed idolatry. This is only one example of how, in rabbinic Jewish thought, an unborn child was capable of sinning.
7 tn Grk “The man answered and said to them.” This has been simplified in the translation to “The man replied.”
8 tn Grk “For in this is a remarkable thing.”
9 tn Grk “and he opened my eyes” (an idiom referring to restoration of sight).
10 tn Grk “who opened the eyes of the blind man” (“opening the eyes” is an idiom referring to restoration of sight).
11 tn Grk “this one”; the second half of 11:37 reads Grk “Could not this one who opened the eyes of the blind have done something to keep this one from dying?” In the Greek text the repetition of “this one” in 11:37b referring to two different persons (first Jesus, second Lazarus) could confuse a modern reader. Thus the first reference, to Jesus, has been translated as “he” to refer back to the beginning of v. 37, where the reference to “the man who caused the blind man to see” is clearly a reference to Jesus. The second reference, to Lazarus, has been specified (“Lazarus”) in the translation for clarity.
