25-26. Jesus answered them, I told you--that is, in substance, what I am (for example [Joh 7:37], ; , 35, 36, 58).
27-30. My sheep hear my voice, &c.--(See on [Joh 10:8]).
31. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him--and for precisely the same thing as before ([Joh 8:58], ).
32. Many good works have I showed you--that is, works of pure benevolence (as in [Ac 10:38], "Who went about doing good," &c.; see [Mr 7:37]).
from my Father--not so much by His power, but as directly commissioned by Him to do them. This He says to meet the imputation of unwarrantable assumption of the divine prerogatives [Luthardt].
for which of those works do ye stone me?--"are ye stoning (that is, going to stone) me?"
33. for a blasphemy--whose legal punishment was stoning ([Le 24:11-16]).
thou, being a man--that is, a man only.
makest thyself God--Twice before they understood Him to advance the same claim, and both times they prepared themselves to avenge what they took to be the insulted honor of God, as here, in the way directed by their law ([Joh 5:18]; ).
34-36. Is it not written in your law--in [Psa 82:6], respecting judges or magistrates.
Ye are gods--being the official representatives and commissioned agents of God.
37-39. though ye believe not me, believe the works--There was in Christ's words, independently of any miracles, a self-evidencing truth, majesty and grace, which those who had any spiritual susceptibility were unable to resist ([Joh 7:46]; ). But, for those who wanted this, "the works" were a mighty help. When these failed, the case was desperate indeed.
that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him--thus reiterating His claim to essential oneness with the Father, which He had only seemed to soften down, that He might calm their rage and get their ear again for a moment.
40-42. went away again beyond Jordan ... the place where John at first baptized--(See on [Joh 1:28]).
Chapter 11
Joh 11:1-46. Lazarus Raised from the Dead--The Consequences of This
1. of Bethany--at the east side of Mount Olivet.
the town of Mary and her sister Martha--thus distinguishing it from the other Bethany, "beyond Jordan." (See on [Joh 1:28]; [Joh 10:40]).
2. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, &c.--This, though not recorded by our Evangelist till [Joh 12:3], was so well known in the teaching of all the churches, according to our Lord's prediction ([Mt 26:13]), that it is here alluded to by anticipation, as the most natural way of identifying her; and she is first named, though the younger, as the more distinguished of the two. She "anointed THE Lord," says the Evangelist--led doubtless to the use of this term here, as he was about to exhibit Him illustriously as the Lord of Life.
3-5. his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick--a most womanly appeal, yet how reverential, to the known affection of her Lord for the patient. (See [Joh 11:5], ). "Those whom Christ loves are no more exempt than others from their share of earthly trouble and anguish: rather are they bound over to it more surely" [Trench].
6. When he heard he was sick, he abode two days still ... where he was--at least twenty-five miles off. Beyond all doubt this was just to let things come to their worst, in order to display His glory. But how trying, meantime, to the faith of his friends, and how unlike the way in which love to a dying friend usually shows itself, on which it is plain that Mary reckoned. But the ways of divine are not as the ways of human love. Often they are the reverse. When His people are sick, in body or spirit; when their case is waxing more and more desperate every day; when all hope of recovery is about to expire--just then and therefore it is that "He abides two days still in the same place where He is." Can they still hope against hope? Often they do not; but "this is their infirmity." For it is His chosen style of acting. We have been well taught it, and should not now have the lesson to learn. From the days of Moses was it given sublimely forth as the character of His grandest interpositions, that "the Lord will judge His people and repent Himself for His servants"--when He seeth that their power is gone ([De 32:36]).
7-10. Let us go into Judea again--He was now in Perea, "beyond Jordan."
11-16. Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may wake him out of sleep--Illustrious title! "Our friend Lazarus." To Abraham only is it accorded in the Old Testament, and not till after his death, ([2Ch 20:7]; [Is 41:8]), to which our attention is called in the New Testament ([Jas 2:23]). When Jesus came in the flesh, His forerunner applied this name, in a certain sense, to himself ([Joh 3:29]); and into the same fellowship the Lord's chosen disciples are declared to have come ([Joh 15:13-15]). "The phrase here employed, "our friend Lazarus," means more than "he whom Thou lovest" in [Joh 11:3], for it implies that Christ's affection was reciprocated by Lazarus" [Lampe]. Our Lord had been told only that Lazarus was "sick." But the change which his two days' delay had produced is here tenderly alluded to. Doubtless, His spirit was all the while with His dying, and now dead "friend." The symbol of "sleep" for death is common to all languages, and familiar to us in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, however, a higher meaning is put into it, in relation to believers in Jesus (see on [1Th 4:14]), a sense hinted at, and clearly, in [Psa 17:15] [Luthardt]; and the "awaking out of sleep" acquires a corresponding sense far transcending bare resuscitation.
17-19. when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days--If he died on the day the tidings came of his illness--and was, according to the Jewish custom, buried the same day (see Jahn's Archæology, and [Joh 11:39]; [Ac 5:5], [6, 10])--and if Jesus, after two days' further stay in Perea, set out on the day following for Bethany, some ten hours' journey, that would make out the four days; the first and last being incomplete [Meyer].
20-22. Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him--true to the energy and activity of her character, as seen in [Lu 10:38-42]. (See on [Lu 10:38-42]).
but Mary sat ... in the house--equally true to her placid character. These undesigned touches not only charmingly illustrate the minute historic fidelity of both narratives, but their inner harmony.
23-27. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again--purposely expressing Himself in general terms, to draw her out.
28-32. The Master is come and calleth for thee--The narrative does not give us this interesting detail, but Martha's words do.
33-38. When Jesus ... saw her weeping, and the Jews ... weeping ... he groaned in the spirit--the tears of Mary and her friends acting sympathetically upon Jesus, and drawing forth His emotions. What a vivid and beautiful outcoming of His "real" humanity! The word here rendered "groaned" does not mean "sighed" or "grieved," but rather "powerfully checked his emotion"--made a visible effort to restrain those tears which were ready to gush from His eyes.
and was troubled--rather, "troubled himself" (Margin); referring probably to this visible difficulty of repressing His emotions.
39-44. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone--spoken to the attendants of Martha and Mary; for it was a work of no little labor [Grotius]. According to the Talmudists, it was forbidden to open a grave after the stone was placed upon it. Besides other dangers, they were apprehensive of legal impurity by contact with the dead. Hence they avoided coming nearer a grave than four cubits [Maimonides in Lampe]. But He who touched the leper, and the bier of the widow of Nain's son, rises here also above these Judaic memorials of evils, every one of which He had come to roll away. Observe here what our Lord did Himself, and what He made others do. As Elijah himself repaired the altar on Carmel, arranged the wood, cut the victim, and placed the pieces on the fuel, but made the by-standers fill the surrounding trench with water, that no suspicion might arise of fire having been secretly applied to the pile ([1Ki 18:30-35]); so our Lord would let the most skeptical see that, without laying a hand on the stone that covered His friend, He could recall him to life. But what could be done by human hand He orders to be done, reserving only to Himself what transcended the ability of all creatures.
Martha, the sister of ... the dead--and as such the proper guardian of the precious remains; the relationship being here mentioned to account for her venturing gently to remonstrate against their exposure, in a state of decomposition, to eyes that had loved him so tenderly in life.
Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days--(See on [Joh 11:17]). It is wrong to suppose from this (as Lampe and others do) that, like the by-standers, she had not thought of his restoration to life. But the glimmerings of hope which she cherished from the first ([Joh 11:22]), and which had been brightened by what Jesus said to her ([Joh 11:23-27]), had suffered a momentary eclipse on the proposal to expose the now sightless corpse. To such fluctuations all real faith is subject in dark hours. (See, for example, the case of Job).
45-46. many ... which ... had seen ... believed ... But some ... went ... to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done--the two classes which continually reappear in the Gospel history; nor is there ever any great work of God which does not produce both. "It is remarkable that on each of the three occasions on which our Lord raised the dead, a large number of persons was assembled. In two instances, the resurrection of the widow's son and of Lazarus, these were all witnesses of the miracle; in the third (of Jairus' daughter) they were necessarily cognizant of it. Yet this important circumstance is in each case only incidentally noticed by the historians, not put forward or appealed to as a proof of their veracity. In regard to this miracle, we observe a greater degree of preparation, both in the provident arrangement of events, and in our Lord's actions and words than in any other. The preceding miracle (cure of the man born blind) is distinguished from all others by the open and formal investigation of its facts. And both these miracles, the most public and best attested of all, are related by John, who wrote long after the other Evangelists" [Webster and Wilkinson].
47-54. What do we? for this man doeth many miracles--"While we trifle, 'this man,' by His 'many miracles,' will carry all before Him; the popular enthusiasm will bring on a revolution, which will precipitate the Romans upon us, and our all will go down in one common ruin." What a testimony to the reality of our Lord's miracles, and their resistless effect, from His bitterest enemies!
55-57. passover ... at hand ... many went ... up ... before the passover, to purify themselves--from any legal uncleanness which would have disqualified them from keeping the feast. This is mentioned to introduce the graphic statement which follows.
Chapter 12
Joh 12:1-11. The Anointing at Bethany
(See on [Mt 26:6-13]).
1-8. six days before the passover--that is, on the sixth day before it; probably after sunset on Friday evening, or the commencement of the Jewish sabbath preceding the passover.
9-11. Crowds of the Jerusalem Jews hastened to Bethany, not so much to see Jesus, whom they knew to be there, as to see dead Lazarus alive; and this, issuing in their accession to Christ, led to a plot against the life of Lazarus also, as the only means of arresting the triumphs of Jesus (see [Joh 12:19])--to such a pitch had these chief priests come of diabolical determination to shut out the light from themselves, and quench it from the earth!
Joh 12:12-19. Christ's Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem
(See on [Mt 21:1-9]; and [Lu 19:29-36]).
12. On the next day--the Lord's day, or Sunday (see on [Joh 12:1]); the tenth day of the Jewish month Nisan, on which the paschal lamb was set apart to be "kept up until the fourteenth day of the same month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel were to kill it in the evening" ([Ex 12:3], ). Even so, from the day of this solemn entry into Jerusalem, "Christ our Passover" was virtually set apart to be "sacrificed for us" ([1Co 5:7]).
16. when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, &c.--The Spirit, descending on them from the glorified Saviour at Pentecost, opened their eyes suddenly to the true sense of the Old Testament, brought vividly to their recollection this and other Messianic predictions, and to their unspeakable astonishment showed them that they, and all the actors in these scenes, had been unconsciously fulfilling those predictions.