<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Look up God bless you in Wiktionary, the free dictionary . </Td> </Tr> <P> God bless you (variants include God bless or bless you) is a common English expression, used to wish a person blessings in various situations, especially as a response to a sneeze, and also, when parting or writing a valediction . </P> <P> The phrase has been used in the Hebrew Bible by Jews (cf . Numbers 6: 24), and by Christians, since the time of the early Church as a benediction, as well as a means of bidding a person Godspeed . Many clergy, when blessing their congregants individually or as a group, use the phrase "God bless you". </P> <P> National Geographic reports that during the plague of AD 590, "Pope Gregory I ordered unceasing prayer for divine intercession . Part of his command was that anyone sneezing be blessed immediately (" God bless you "), since sneezing was often the first sign that someone was falling ill with the plague ." By AD 750, it became customary to say "God bless you" as a response to one sneezing . </P>

Where did god bless you after sneezing originate