What Does John 9:2 Mean in the King James?

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

John 9:2 · KJV

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 disciples turn blindness into evidence in a trial, treating suffering as a verdict before the sufferer is even heard.

THE MEANING

This question is the reflex to explain pain by finding fault in the person who bears it or the family behind them. A bodily condition, by itself, is not a confession of guilt. Jesus answers the proposed alternatives directly in the next verse.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

Your suffering proves that you or your parents did something wrong.

THE ROOT

ἥμαρτεν

hēmarte

GROWS FROM

ἁμαρτ-

hamart-

To miss or err; here, to miss.

“sin” in this verse is hēmarte. The disciples search for whose “missing” explains the blindness. But the root names missing; it does not make every affliction proof of someone’s guilt. Jesus rejects the causal blame they propose.

ALSO GROWS

hamartia: Missing, wrongdoing

ἁμαρτία

It carries the same root into the noun the question assumes must explain the man’s condition.

hamartēma: A wrong or misdeed

ἁμάρτημα

This branch names an act of missing, not a diagnosis that can be inferred from another person’s suffering.

hamartōlos: One characterized as a sinner

ἁμαρτωλός

It shows how an act of missing can become a label attached to a person, the very leap the disciples’ question risks making.

ἐγεννήθη

egennēthē

GROWS FROM

γεν-

gen-

To beget, bring forth, or come into being.

The Greek places “parents” beside “born”: ⁨γονεῖς⁩ and ⁨ἐγεννήθη⁩ belong to the same family of words about begetting and origin. The disciples trace the man’s condition through his lineage, but Jesus refuses to make that origin a moral diagnosis.

ALSO GROWS

goneus: Parent, begetter

γονεύς

The word translated “parents” keeps the question focused on inherited origin.

genesis: Origin, birth

γένεσις

It extends the same word family from being born to the event of coming into being.

genos: Family, kind, lineage

γένος

This branch makes the lineage logic audible in the question, even as the answer refuses to assign inherited blame.

THE PATTERN

Affliction does not certify that the person suffering is guilty.

And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.

Job 2:3 · KJVJob is called upright while enduring affliction described as without cause, so suffering cannot be read as proof of hidden guilt.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.

Psalm 34:19 · KJVThe righteous can experience many afflictions; the verse does not treat those afflictions as evidence against them.

I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Luke 13:5 · KJVJesus rejects the idea that catastrophe marks its victims as more guilty than others, while speaking of the need to turn as something shared by all.

THE THREAD

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

John 9:3 · KJV

Jesus rejects both culprits the disciples propose: neither the man’s missing nor his parents’ missing explains his blindness. He names another frame, the works of God becoming visible in him.

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