At the Tomb, Life Provokes a Death Sentence

Lazarus is the Greek form of Eleazar, “God has helped”. The only other Lazarus in the New Testament is the beggar of Luke 16, of whom Abraham says that the living will not be persuaded “though one rose from the dead”. Naming Bethany by its women distinguishes it from the Bethany beyond Jordan where Jesus is staying (1:28).

The anointing is told only in the next chapter (12:3), yet the Book of John identifies Mary by it here, as if readers already knew her by that act. Mark 14:9 says the deed would be told wherever the gospel was preached, and this aside assumes it had been.

The sisters do not ask him to come; they tell him the need, as his mother did at Cana: “They have no wine” (2:3). “He whom thou lovest” uses phileo. Some scholars have argued from this that Lazarus is the disciple whom Jesus loved, but the book never makes the identification.

“Not unto death” means not ending in death, the phrase of 1 John 5:16, “a sin unto death”. There is a second edge to “glorified thereby”: the raising will set in motion the council’s plot (verse 53), and the Book of John calls the cross itself his glorifying.

The verb changes to agapao, and the sisters are named in an unexpected order: Martha first, with Mary as “her sister”. Martha is the one who received Jesus into her house in Luke 10:38, and she is likely the elder.

A messenger needed about a day to reach him, he waited two, and the return took about a day; Lazarus had lain in the grave four days when Jesus arrived (verse 17). On that reckoning Lazarus was already dead by the time the message came, though the book does not do the arithmetic.

He does not say “Let us go to Bethany” but “into Judaea again”, naming the region where he was nearly stoned. The disciples hear the danger in the word at once.

“Of late” is literally “just now”, the stones of 10:31 still fresh. “Master” is rabbi. Their question carries fear for themselves as well as for him, which Thomas will voice in verse 16.

Daylight was divided into twelve hours whatever the season, so an hour was longer in summer than in winter. The saying is a proverb about working while the light lasts, the image of 9:4, “the night cometh, when no man can work.”

The Greek says the light is not “in him”, not around him. The ancient idea was that the eye is a lamp and sight comes from a light within, as in Matthew 6:22–23, “The light of the body is the eye.”

“Our friend” includes the disciples: Lazarus is friend to them all. “Sleepeth” is a perfect tense, “has fallen asleep”, a familiar way of speaking of death (Daniel 12:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:13). From the same verb comes koimeterion, sleeping place, the origin of the word cemetery.

“He shall do well” is sothesetai, he will be saved, the ordinary word for recovering from illness and the book’s word for salvation. The disciples mean the fever will break; the verb says more than they know.

“Taking of rest in sleep” is a doubled phrase, literally “the sleep of slumber”. This is one of the book’s explanatory asides, like 2:21 and 12:33, pointing out that the hearers took a figure literally.

“Plainly” is parresia, the openness the crowd demanded at the feast of dedication: “tell us plainly” (10:24). He gives it to his disciples in two words.

“That I was not there” implies what both sisters will say: had he been present, Lazarus would not have died (verses 21 and 32). His gladness is for the disciples’ faith, and it is spoken about a friend already four days dead.

Thomas is Aramaic for twin, and Didymus is the Greek for the same word. His twin is never named; later Syrian tradition called him Judas Thomas. “With him” most naturally means with Jesus, heading back towards the stones, rather than with Lazarus.

Later rabbinic tradition held that the soul hovered near the body for three days and left when the face began to change (Leviticus Rabbah 18:1). If that belief was already current, the fourth day meant death beyond any hope of revival.

Fifteen furlongs is a little under two miles. Bethany lay on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, and the Arabic village there today is al-Eizariya, a name taken from Lazarus. The distance explains how mourners from the city could come and go.

Comforting the bereaved was a religious duty, and mourning was kept for seven days, as Joseph mourned his father seven days (Genesis 50:10). The number of mourners from Jerusalem suggests the family was known in the city.

Mourners sat during the days of mourning, as Job’s friends sat with him seven days on the ground (Job 2:13). The contrast matches Luke 10:38–42, where Martha serves and Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, though the Book of John makes no reference to that scene.

The sentence is a condition contrary to fact: had you been here, he would not have died. The sisters will say it in almost the same words (verse 32), which suggests it had been said between them many times in four days, though that is an inference.

“Ask” is aiteo, the ordinary verb for a petitioner asking a superior. When Jesus speaks of his own requests to the Father he uses a different verb, erotao, the asking of an equal (14:16; 17:9). Martha uses a word he never uses of himself.

The words are ambiguous, and could be heard as the standard comfort that mourners offered, that the dead will rise at the end. Martha hears them exactly that way in the next verse.

Resurrection at the last day was the belief of the Pharisees and denied by the Sadducees (Acts 23:8), with roots in Daniel 12:2 and 2 Maccabees 7:9. “The last day” is Jesus’ own phrase from 6:39–54, repeated back to him.

This is the fifth of the book’s “I am” sayings with an image: after bread, light, door and shepherd comes resurrection. A few early witnesses, including the papyrus P45 and the Old Syriac, lack “and the life”. “Though he were dead” means even if he dies.

“Shall never die” is the emphatic double negative, “shall not die, not ever”. “Believest thou this?” is asked of one person; to the man born blind Jesus asked, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” (9:35).

“I believe” is a perfect tense, pepisteuka, I have come to believe and do believe. “Which should come into the world” is ho erchomenos, the Coming One, the title of Psalm 118:26 that the crowd will shout at the entry into Jerusalem (12:13).

“Secretly” is lathra, quietly, perhaps to keep the news from the Jerusalem mourners. “The Master” is ho didaskalos, the Teacher. The book has not recorded Jesus asking for Mary, so Martha’s message tells us something done offstage.

“She arose” is egeiro, the same verb used for being raised from the dead. The Greek makes her rising quick and the coming continuous: she got up at once and was on her way.

He has stayed where Martha met him, outside the village. Tombs lay outside towns, as at Nain, where the widow’s son was carried out of the gate (Luke 7:12), so he may be waiting near the grave, though the verse does not say so.

The mourners follow her, thinking she is going to wail at the grave. Without meaning to, she brings the crowd that Jesus will speak of in verse 42 as “the people which stand by”, the witnesses of what follows.

Martha met him standing; Mary falls at his feet, where she is found in Luke 10:39 and in the anointing of 12:3. Her words match Martha’s, but in Greek the word “my” comes forward: it was my brother who died.

“Groaned” is embrimaomai, a word first used of horses snorting, and in Mark 1:43 and 14:5 it means stern indignation. “Was troubled” is literally “troubled himself”. The weeping of Mary and the mourners is klaio, loud lament, the way mourners wept.

“Come and see” is the invitation Jesus gave the first disciples when they asked where he lived (1:39). The same words are now spoken to him, and they lead to a grave.

The shortest verse in the English Bible is two words in Greek too. “Wept” is dakruo, to shed tears, a word used only here in the New Testament. It is quieter than the klaio of Mary and the mourners, and quieter than his weeping over Jerusalem in Luke 19:41.

The verb is imperfect, “how he used to love him”, as if speaking of a friendship now ended. The mourners read the tears as grief for a friend lost, not knowing what he is about to do.

The blind man of chapter 9 is still the talk of Jerusalem months later. The objection is correct in its premise: Jesus himself said in verse 15 that he was glad not to have been there, implying his presence would have prevented the death.

Tombs near Jerusalem were caves cut in the rock. “Lay upon it” suggests either a stone over a shaft going down or a stone set against a door; the tomb shown as Lazarus’s today is reached by steps down into the rock. “Groaning” is the snorting verb of verse 33 again.

“Stinketh” is ozei, a word found only here in the New Testament. The Jews did not embalm; spices were laid with the body to mask the smell, which after four days in the heat would be strong. Martha is named again as “the sister of him that was dead” at the moment she objects.

No earlier words to Martha match this exactly. He may mean the message of verse 4, “for the glory of God”, or the promise of verses 25 and 26 in substance. Seeing is promised on condition of believing, the reverse of the order the crowd has asked for all along.

The words “from the place where the dead was laid” are absent from the oldest manuscripts. “Lifted up his eyes” is the posture of prayer he takes again in 17:1. The thanks are in the past tense, spoken before anything has happened at the tomb.

The prayer is said aloud for the bystanders, as the voice from heaven in 12:30 comes “not because of me, but for your sakes”. He thanks the Father where the crowd can hear, so that the coming sign will be credited to the one who sent him.

“Cried” is kraugazo, a shout, the verb the crowd will use for “Hosanna” (12:13) and for “Crucify him” (19:6, 15). “Come forth” is two words in Greek, deuro exo, “Here! Out!”, with no verb at all.

“Graveclothes” are keiriai, linen strips wound round the body. “Napkin” is soudarion, a sweat cloth, the same word used for the cloth found folded apart in Jesus’ empty tomb (20:7). “Loose” is luo, to untie, the same verb the book uses for breaking the Sabbath.

They are described as those who “came to Mary”, which makes her the centre of the mourning household. “Had seen” is theaomai, to behold with attention, the verb of 1:14, “we beheld his glory”.

The Book of John records their report without a motive, as it recorded the healed man’s report to the authorities in 5:15. Within one verse the report reaches the council, and the consequence is sealed.

“Council” is sunedrion, the Sanhedrin, which the Mishnah numbers at seventy-one members (Sanhedrin 1:6). “What do we?” is present tense, “What are we doing?”, a complaint at their own inaction.

“Place” most likely means the temple, the holy place (compare Acts 6:13–14). Second Maccabees 5:19 says God “did not choose the people for the place’s sake, but the place for the people’s sake.” In AD 70 the Romans did come and take away both.

Caiaphas held the office from about AD 18 to 36 and was son-in-law of Annas (18:13); an ossuary inscribed “Joseph son of Caiaphas” was found in Jerusalem in 1990. “That same year” means that fateful year. Josephus remarked that Sadducees were rough even with one another, and “Ye know nothing at all” fits.

“Expedient” is sumpherei, it is to your advantage, the word Jesus uses in 16:7, “It is expedient for you that I go away.” Caiaphas speaks of “the people”, laos, and then “the whole nation”, ethnos. The book will quote the saying again when Jesus is brought to him (18:14).

The high priest had once carried the Urim and Thummim by which Israel sought God’s decision (Exodus 28:30; Numbers 27:21), and Josephus credited the high priest John Hyrcanus with the gift of prophecy. The Book of John treats the office as speaking beyond the man.

“Scattered abroad” uses the verb of the wolf that “scattereth the sheep” in 10:12, and the prophets speak of God gathering a scattered flock (Jeremiah 23:3; Ezekiel 34:12). “Children of God” recalls 1:12, “to them gave he power to become the sons of God”.

The intention of 5:18 has become a formal decision, with a date: “from that day forth”. No hearing has been held, which is exactly the question Nicodemus asked in 7:51: “Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him?”

Ephraim is usually identified with et-Taiyibeh, about fifteen miles north-east of Jerusalem on the edge of the wilderness, perhaps the Ephrain of 2 Chronicles 13:19. “Openly” is parresia again: the public speaking of the last three chapters now stops.

Anyone made unclean by contact with the dead could not keep the Passover (Numbers 9:6), and purification from corpse uncleanness took seven days (Numbers 19:11–12), so pilgrims came up a week early. The priests will guard their own purity in 18:28 while handing Jesus over.

“Sought” is imperfect, they kept looking, and “stood” describes people standing about in the temple courts. The question expects no: “Surely he will not come to the feast?” It is the same speculation as at Tabernacles (7:11).

“Shew” is menuo, to lay information, a legal word for reporting to the authorities. The order turns every pilgrim into a potential informer. The one who in the end knows the place and leads them to it is Judas (18:2).