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John MacArthur points out two pieces of information that help set the context for today’s narrative.

i. Before modern medicine, many babies would become blind from eye infection. Venereal diseases also cause infants to go blind, which is why perhaps the disciples asked whose fault it is if a person is blind from infancy — his or the parents?

ii. Jericho (where today’s text takes place) was a hub for the blind. A certain balm bush grew there, said to sometimes cure blindness. He suggests there may have been literally hundreds of blind people in that vicinity.

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