[358] chaps. 1:5,9; 8:12; 12:35, 46. =4, 5. While it is day; the night cometh.= The day is life; the night is death. Christ in his human estate was subject to the law under which all his disciples are placed. Death cut short his human work. The day for work is short, the night is at hand; therefore the greater need of earnest and urgent labor. Sleep is a parable of death (Ps. 104:23) that should perpetually remind us that our day is short.=--The light of the world.= It was prophesied that the Messiah should open the eyes of the blind (Isa. 29:18; 35:5; 42:7). The direct reference is to Christ’s fulfilment of these prophecies (Luke 4:18, 21). But it is true, in a larger sense, that just so far as Christ is in the world, and accepted by the world, he becomes its light, intellectual, moral, and spiritual (ch. 1:9, note). 6 When he had thus spoken, he spat[359] on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, [359] Mark 8:23. 7 And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam,[360] (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He[361] went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. [360] Neh. 3:15. [361] 2 Kings 5:14. =6, 7. Spat on the ground * * * * and he anointed the eyes with the clay.= Clay and spittle were both believed in ancient times to possess curative properties. Why Christ used them here is a matter only of conjecture. Certainly not as remedies, for one blind from birth could not be cured by a remedy so simple, and he who healed the blind men at Jericho by a touch (Matt. 20:34) had no need here to resort to other means. Not to conceal the miracle, as may have been the case in analogous instances (see Mark 7:33; 8:23, notes), for here his object was to manifest the works of God, and the result was a public and protracted investigation of his own character. It is noticeable, however, that Christ never cured without giving the healed something to do, as a test of his faith and obedience. Even in the three cases of raising from the dead he called on the mourners, to indicate by their obedience to his direction their faith in him (Matt. 9:24, 25; Luke 7:14; John 11:39, 40). When he was asked to heal, the simple request served as an indication of faith; when, as here, he volunteered the cure, he seems always to have required some act as an evidence of faith. Comp. ch. 5:6-8.--=Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.= One of the pools in the vicinity of Jerusalem, entitled also Siloah or Shiloah (Neh. 3:15; Isa. 8:6). It is identified with a pool or tank still found in the vicinity of Jerusalem, which stands to the south of the Temple mount, and consists of an oblong tank, partly hewn out of the rock and partly built of masonry, measuring about fifty-three feet in length, eighteen feet in width, and nineteen feet in depth, with a flight of steps leading down to the bottom. Several columns stand out