Intertextuality Pair

John 9:7 → 2 Kings 5:10-13

Allusion

Later text

John 9:7BSB

Then He told him, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing.

Earlier text

2 Kings 5:10-13BSB

Then Elisha sent him a messenger, who said, “Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored, and you will be clean.” But Naaman went away angry, saying, "I thought that he would surely come out, stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the spot to cure my leprosy. Are not the Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not have washed in them and been cleansed?" So he turned and went away in a rage. Naaman's servants, however, approached him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'?"
Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:14

Significance

The structural parallel between John 9:7 and 2 Kgs 5:10-13 is remarkably precise: a prophet sends a person with an affliction to wash in water, and obedience to the command results in miraculous healing. Just as Elisha commanded Naaman to "Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored," Jesus commands the blind man to "Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam," with the same result — the man comes back healed. The pool's name, "Sent" (Siloam = Shiloah = sent), is almost certainly Johannine wordplay pointing to Jesus as the one "sent" by the Father (John 7:28-29; 9:4), so the obedience to the "sent one's" command by washing in the pool named "Sent" layers Christological significance onto the typological act. The escalation is significant: Naaman was a foreign general healed of leprosy after initial resistance; the blind man obeys immediately and receives not skin restoration but sight — the capacity to see and ultimately to worship Jesus (9:38).

Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Typology (Providential Type, Backward-Looking) + Analogy

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