Some Pharisees had already ruled against Jesus: "This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day." Others could not make that verdict fit the facts. Their question presses a simple point: a sinner could not do works like these. Barnes says the miracles were such as "could not be denied, nor did even the enemies of Jesus attempt to deny them." He says the first group reasoned from their own reading of the Sabbath law, a common error: "Men often assume their own interpretations of the Scriptures to be infallible." Gill suggests those who asked this question "may be supposed to be Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea," offered only as a possibility.

No one answered the question. Instead, "there was a division among them" (John 9:16). Unable to agree, they turned to the healed man: "What sayest thou of him?" (John 9:17). Later the healed man answered their question with the same reasoning: "If this man were not of God, he could do nothing" (John 9:33). The split did not end here: "There was a division therefore again among the Jews" (John 10:19), and some asked, "Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?" (John 10:21).

The Sabbath charge had a specific background. Jesus had made clay of His spittle and anointed the man's eyes (John 9:6), and Gill cites a Jewish rule that "it is forbidden to put fasting spittle even on the eyelid on a sabbath day." The KJV word "miracles" translates the Greek semeia, "signs," which is why the ESV reads "such signs." "Division" is schisma, which Barnes explains as "a separation into two parties."

Jesus had said this man was born blind "that the works of God should be made manifest in him" (John 9:3). Now those works forced a decision. The same facts produced two verdicts: one group judged Jesus by their rule, and the other let the work in front of them question the rule. Matthew Henry notes that "his enemies could find nothing against him, but the oft-refuted charge of breaking the sabbath." In his full commentary he sees God's hand even in the split: "Thus God defeats the counsels of his enemies by dividing them."

Nicodemus had reasoned the same way earlier: "no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him" (John 3:2). The question still invites anyone to let what God does correct what we assume.