John 9:7

7. Go, wash An act of faith is the condition to his salvation. Had he refused, he might have been doomed to perpetual darkness.

Pool of Siloam This is a pool or a small pond, in an oblong form, at the lower end of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, overlooked by the wall of Mount Zion. Its sides are built up with stones, and a column stands in its middle, indicating that a chapel was once built over it. It is in length fifty-four feet, by eighteen in breadth. It is fed, probably, by water from the temple mount.

By interpretation, Sent By this explanation of the meaning of the word, we understand the Evangelist to indicate that Jesus selected this pool because its name was significant. As Christ himself is the fountain, sent from God, by which our nature is purified, so Siloam is the fountain, sent from the mount of God’s temple, by which the man is washed from both his blindness and his clay. The man was sent by the Sent to the Sent.

The word Siloam here is in the Hebrew Shiloah, שׁלוה ; the h being changed to m for Greek euphony. But Kuinoel, like many other critics, affirms that Shiloah is not truly the Hebrew for Sent, but Shaluah; and so claims that this parenthesis is not John’s, but an interpolation. Tholuck, however, maintains “that the yod in Shiloah is to be regarded as daghesh forte resolved, and that the word is, consequently, to be regarded either as abstract, or equivalent to שׁלה effusion, that is, aqueduct; or may even be like the form איוב וליד passively equivalent to ‘the one sent.’“