John 11:1-6
He abode two days still
The delay is stated as a consequence of love, not in spite of it. The text refuses to let the reader treat the waiting as indifference.
People of the Bible
Lazarus
Is the only man in the gospels who is loved, allowed to die on purpose, and then called out by name.
He lives in Bethany with his two sisters and his whole recorded life is one illness. The message sent is careful not to name him, he whom you love is sick, and the reply is that the sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God. Then comes the strangest sentence in the chapter: he loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, therefore when he heard that he was sick he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Lazarus
- 01
- 02
John 11:17
Four days already in the grave
The number is given deliberately. It closes off every explanation that depends on the man not being properly dead.
- 03
John 11:35-38
Jesus wept
He groans again coming to the grave. The onlookers say behold how he loved him, and they are right even though he knows what he is about to do.
- 04
John 11:43-44
Lazarus, come forth
He comes out bound hand and foot with graveclothes and his face bound about with a napkin. The last instruction is given to the bystanders: loose him, and let him go.
- 05
John 12:9-11
That they might put Lazarus also to death
Crowds come to see the man as much as the miracle worker. The council concludes that the evidence has to be removed along with the one who made it.
Why it matters
By the time anyone arrives he has been four days in the grave, which in that setting meant past any hope of revival. The miracle is done in public, at a cave with a stone, after weeping that the crowd reads correctly as love. What follows is the hinge of John: many of the Jews believed, the council meets, and from that day they took counsel to put him to death. Raising Lazarus is what gets Jesus killed, and the priests plan to kill Lazarus too, because a living man was the evidence.
5 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
