Verse one. What is the unnamed feast in chapter five? The so-called experts are divided, some thinking it is Purim, some thinking it is the Passover. Trying to find clarity by turning to the internet is, to say the least, frustrating. I must put things together for myself.
Jesus had begun his ministry in Jerusalem, as I have noted earlier, on a Passover. I made the connection between his Passover beginning and his Passover ending. After this, after having his disciples baptize for a while near John's camp, then moving North until he reaches Cana in chapter four, no other feast is mentioned until the unnamed feast.
The author named the feast “a feast of the Jews.” We know by now what the author meant when he referenced “the Jews.” He meant the religious elite, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, and such. If therefore, the unnamed feast was a feast of the Jews, it was one the religious order was keen to observe.
Three Jewish holidays required a man to be in Jerusalem. They were Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles. Was it Weeks? What was Weeks? It was the interim holiday between Passover, in the spring, and Tabernacles, in the fall. Weeks was a celebration of the wheat harvest, and it took place exactly fifty weeks after the feast of the first fruits of the barley harvest at Passover. Another name for the feast of weeks is Pentecost, and it required Jewish males to travel to Jerusalem and present an offering of new grain to the Lord. It usually takes place in the last part of May or the first part of June. This information comes from https://www.gotquestions.org/Feast-of-Weeks.html.
As I have followed John in its initial chapters, I have seen that the author has taken a fairly linear approach to the beginning of Jesus' ministry. I have tried to show in these writings that one event leads almost directly into the next. I have addressed the days and hours in a numerical fashion, and I have addressed walking distances in miles and ETAs. The storyline is solid and the gaps are minimal.
Chapter five contains the incident of the impotent waiting for the stirring of the water in the sheep market pool called Bethesda. Jesus healed an impotent man on one of the five porches of the pool. That miracle occurred on a Sabbath. The “Jews” took issue with the man carrying his bed on the Sabbath. The miracle had taken place in a crowd in such a manner that no other man took note and the healed man never got the name of his benefactor. However, the man later met Jesus in the temple. What Jesus said to the man should raise eyebrows.
In verse fourteen, Jesus said to the healed man, “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” This surprising statement suggests two things. First is that Jesus was just putting 'the fear of the Lord' into the man in a manner that speaks of the psychology Jesus used with certain people. Second is that the man had been impotent as a direct result of sin which warns all of us not to take our choices so lightly. There are real consequences.
Did that man sin further? In a sense, he betrayed Jesus when he went and told the “Jews” that it was, in fact, Jesus who healed him on a Sabbath. Because of that act, whatever the personal reasons might have been, the Jews sought to kill Jesus. Their labors toward that end were also on a Sabbath. There follows to the end of the chapter the exchange between Jesus and the Jews in which Jesus basically talks them down. No stones are thrown.
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