What Does John 5:13 Mean in the King James?
And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Greek word translated “wist” belongs to a family rooted in seeing, so the man receives restoration before he recognizes its source.
THE MEANING
You can experience a real change before you can name who has met you there. The healed man receives restoration while Jesus has already slipped from sight amid the crowd, leaving the event clear even as its source remains unknown to him. The verse holds bodily restoration and incomplete recognition together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that an unnamed source makes a real change uncertain: the man is healed before he knows who healed him.
THE ROOT
ᾔδει
ēdei
GROWS FROM
εἰδ-
To see or perceive; οἶδα, “know,” is historically the perfect form of εἴδω, “see.”
“wist” in this verse is ēdei. The Greek verb ᾔδει (ēdei, “knew”) belongs to a family that holds knowing close to seeing and perceiving. The man has received healing, but Jesus has slipped out of sight before he recognizes who acted; restoration and recognition do not arrive at the same moment.
ALSO GROWS
eídō: To see, behold.
εἴδω
This verb is the source of the seeing family behind οἶδα, revealing the perception carried in the word for knowing.
eîdos: Form, appearance.
εἶδος
This related word names what is seen, extending the family’s link between perception and knowledge.
יֵשׁוּעַ
Yēšūaʿ
GROWS FROM
ישע
To deliver or rescue, bringing someone out of constriction into spaciousness.
“Jesus” in this verse is Yēšūaʿ. The name Yeshua carries deliverance: movement out of what confines and into room to live. Here that nature is already at work in the man’s body before he can identify the one who bears the name.
ALSO GROWS
yāshaʿ: To deliver, rescue.
יָשַׁע
This verb shares the name’s root and names the action compressed into Yeshua.
yeshuʿah: Deliverance, rescue.
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun shares the name’s root and makes explicit the deliverance present in the man’s healing before he recognizes Jesus.
THE PATTERN
Restoration and recognition do not always arrive at the same moment.
And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight.But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.THE THREAD
Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.John 5:13’s ᾔδει and John 8:19’s οἴδατε and ᾔδειτε belong to the same Greek knowing family, historically rooted in seeing. In this verse, knowing Jesus is joined to knowing the Father, so the healed man’s missed recognition points toward a deeper question of perception and identity.
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