What Does John 5:3 Mean in the King James?
In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
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 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.
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.
“moving” 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 wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.THE THREAD
The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth 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.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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