What Does John 5:3 Mean?
In these lay a great crowd of those without strength, the blind, the lame, and the withered, waiting for the stirring of the waters.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.THE KEY
The Greek word for waiting belongs to the family of receiving, so the crowd’s stillness is already oriented toward what it hopes will arrive.
THE MEANING
When bodily limitation leaves you waiting on a change beyond your control, this verse places you among a multitude rather than outside human fellowship. The people lie together with their weakness visible, awaiting the water’s movement.
THE ROOT
ἐκδεχομένων
ekdechomenōn
GROWS FROM
δέχομαι (dechomai), in the compound ἐκδέχομαι (ekdechomai)
Receive or welcome; in this compound, await or expect what comes.
“waiting for” in this verse is ekdechomenōn. English can make waiting sound empty, but this word belongs to a family centered on receiving and welcoming. The crowd’s waiting is directed toward what it hopes will arrive, though the word does not promise that it will.
ALSO GROWS
dechomai: receive, welcome, accept
δέχομαι
The base verb keeps the idea of reception inside the word family of waiting.
prosdechomai: welcome, receive, await
προσδέχομαι
This related verb holds expectation and reception together, like the crowd awaiting the water’s movement.
apodechomai: accept, receive, welcome
ἀποδέχομαι
Its sense of receiving makes visible the hope directed toward what the crowd expects to come.
κίνησιν
kinēsin
GROWS FROM
κινέω
kineō
Move, set in motion, or stir.
“stirring” in this verse is kinēsin. The crowd is gathered around a change in the water, not simply its presence. The word makes movement itself the awaited threshold between remaining where they are and reaching for relief.
ALSO GROWS
kineō: move, set in motion, stir
κινέω
This verb names the action the crowd watches and waits for.
synkineō: stir up, set in commotion
συγκινέω
This related verb shows the same movement-root at work in a stirring that affects what surrounds it.
THE PATTERN
Scripture portrays waiting as directed expectancy toward movement or renewal that has not yet arrived.
I stretch myself taut for the LORD, my living soul stretches taut, and in his word I hope.But those who wait upon the LORD exchange their strength; they rise on wings like eagles; they run and do not tire; they walk and do not faint.But if we hope for what we do not see, then we wait for it by bearing up under it.THE THREAD
The one without strength answered him, Sir, I have no one to throw me into the pool when the waters are stirred; while I am coming, another steps down before me.The next verse makes the waiting concrete: the man says he cannot reach the pool in time and has no one to put him in. Hope here is bound not only to the water’s movement but also to the possibility of reaching it.
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