Aladin beth Chesda

In New York City's Central Park, the Bethesda Fountain, also known as Angel of Waters, features an eight-foot bronze angel who carries a lily in one hand while the other remains outstretched, poised in the action of delivering a blessing on the water around her feet and in the basin at the bottom of the fountain.

Beneath her stand four small cherubim representing health, purity, temperance, and peace to commemorate the 1842 opening of the Croton Aqueduct, which supplied New York City with fresh water.

Angel of Waters was designed by Emma Stebbins in 1868 and dedicated in 1873 Stebbins became the first woman to receive a commission to create a major piece of art in the city of New York. At the ceremony for dedication of the statue, Stebbins linked the new, pure city water from the fountain to the healing powers of the biblical pool, and quoted from the Gospel of John.
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BETHES'DA (Hebrew, "beth Chesda" or House of Mercy) A spring-fed pool with five porches where invalids waited their turn to step into the mysteriously troubled waters that were supposed to possess healing virtue. In 1956, digging at the ancient Biblical site of Bethesda, archaeologists unearthed a rectangular pool with a portico on each side and a fifth one dividing the pool into 2 separate compartments.

The imposing remains of the pool with two baths and five porches stands next to, what once was a gate, called the Sheep Gate. Nearby stood a sheep market; the animals to be sacrificed in the Temple were first washed in the pool.
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Gospel of John ~~~ Chapter 5 ::

2 Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market, a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue, Bethesda, having five porches.

3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.


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5 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.

6 When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time [in that way], He saith unto him, "Wilt thou be made whole?"

7 The impotent man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me."

8 Jesus saith unto him, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk."

9 And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked ...



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The Bethesda Pool as it looked ~ and as it looks today. The pool was 350 feet long and 200 feet wide and was a part of Herod’s plan to augment Jerusalem’s limited water supply. The pool was decorated with porches and porticos and was 25 feet deep. The colonnades were visible at the time of Christ, but the pools would not have been enclosed as they are now. At that time, the floor level was much lower ~ and those walls had not yet been built.

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~ special thanks to PJ ~ for the additional photography !