John 9:2

The Jews regarded blind people as especially worthy of charity. [Note: Ibid., 2:178.] The disciples’ question reflected popular Jewish opinion of their day. Clearly the Old Testament taught that sin brings divine punishment (e.g., Exodus 20:5; Exodus 34:7; Ezekiel 18:4). This cause and effect relationship led many of the Jews, as well as many modern people, to conclude that every bad effect had an identifiable sinful cause. [Note: Cf. Talmud tractates Shabbath 55 a, and Nedarim 41 a, quoted in Edersheim, 1:494.] That conclusion goes farther than the Bible does (cf. Job; 2 Corinthians 12:7; Galatians 4:13). Sin does lie behind all the suffering and evil in the world, but the connection between sin and suffering is not always immediate or observable.

The disciples, like their contemporaries, assumed that either one or both of the blind man’s parents had sinned, or he had, and that this sin was the cause of his blindness.

"It is not absolutely certain they were thinking of the possibility of the man having sinned in a pre-natal condition. As R. A. Knox points out, they may not have known that the man was born blind, and the Greek might be understood to mean, ’Did this man sin? or did his parents commit some sin with the result that he was born blind?’" [Note: Tasker, p. 126. The source mentioned is Ronald A. Knox, The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ newly translated from the Vulgate Latin . . ., 1945 ed.]

"The disciples did not look at the man as an object of mercy but rather as a subject for a theological discussion. It is much easier to discuss an abstract subject like ’sin’ than it is to minister to a concrete need in the life of a person." [Note: Wiersbe, 1:324.]