John Chapter 11 verse 11 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 11. - These things spake he, and probably many more words expository of the vast principle of service which he here propounded; and after this (for μετὰ τοῦτο implies a break, during which the disciples pondered his words) he saith, Our friend Lazarus; implying that Lazarus was well known to the disciples, and that the Lord classes himself here, in wondrous condescension, with them. He elsewhere speaks of the twelve as his "friends" (John 15:14, 15, where he made it a higher designation than δοῦλοι; see also Luke 12:4). John the Baptist also calls himself "the Bridegroom's friend" (John 3:29). Though Lazarus had passed into the region of the unknown and unseen, he was still" our friend." Hath fallen asleep. Meyer says that Jesus knew this by "spiritual far-seeing;" and Godet thinks that he knew it by supernatural process, and had known it all along. It does not require much beyond what we know to have occurred in thousands of instances, for our Lord to have perceived that his friend had died - had, as he said, "fallen asleep," in that new sense in which Jesus was teaching men to look on death. But I go, that I may awake him out of sleep (ἐξυπνίσω is a late Greek word; cf. Acts 16:27). Wunsche says the Talmud often speaks of a rabbi's death under the form of" sleep" ('Moed. K.,' fol. 28, a; cf. Matthew 9:24; 1 Thessalonians 4:14). Homer spoke of death and sleep as "twin sisters," Christ's power and consciousness of power to awake Lazarus from sleep gives, however, to his use of the image a new meaning. It is not the eternal sleep of the Greek and Roman poets.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(11) Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.--Better, Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep. They had probably understood the words of John 11:4 to express that the illness was not mortal, and that Lazarus would recover. They have seen, therefore, no reason for facing the danger of Judaea (John 11:7-8). He now supplies that reason, and for the first time speaks of going to the family at Bethany.His words "our friend" gently remind them that Lazarus was their friend as well as His, for they as well as He had probably been welcome guests in the well-known house.The fact of our Lord's knowledge of the death of Lazarus is stated by St. John without any explanation. Prom his point of view it could need none. He who needed not that any should testify of man, because of His own self-knowledge of what was in man (John 2:25), needed not that any should testify of what had passed in the chamber of His friend.For the idea of sleep as the image of death, comp. Notes on John 8:51, Matthew 9:24, and 1Thessalonians 4:14. It is not unfrequent in other passages of both the Old and New Testaments, and, from the time of Homer downwards, poets have spoken of sleep and death as twin-sisters. . . .