John 11:34-37

‘They say to him, “Come and see”. Jesus wept. The Judaisers therefore said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not this man who opened the eyes of the one who was blind have caused that this man also should not die?” '

At their offer to show Him the tomb He wept. The word for ‘weep' is a rare one differentiating Him from those who officially weep at a funeral. The weight of the world's need was heavy on Him, and His tears were real. He wept because others wept, and He felt for them. This moved some to say, ‘see how he loved him', and others to say ‘could not he who opened the eyes of the blind have prevented this man from dying?' Even at a funeral there was controversy among these men, for they were controversialists. And it is made clear to us that they include those who have previously been listening to Him and disputing with Him. Yet both were right, and both were wrong.

Was there also some grief in His heart that He was bringing Lazarus back into this grief-torn world? We do not know. But no one recognised the real root of His distress, whatever it was, for they could not even begin to conceive what Jesus was about to do. They could only relate His tears to Lazarus' death.

The mention of the opening of the eyes of the blind demonstrates how great an impression that miracle had made. It was the outstanding miracle that those in Jerusalem would think of (not those in far off Galilee, a sign that we have a record of the genuine conversation). And we discover here that it had made some think that He did indeed have extraordinary powers which had to be accounted for.

But Jesus' weeping may have had even deeper significance, especially when linked with the groaning in Himself. In Hebrews 5:7 we read that ‘in the days of His flesh, having offered up strong prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears (this noun derived from the same stem as the verb here in John 11:35), to Him who was able to save him from death, was saved for His godly fear'. Hebrews primarily, of course, refers to Gethsemane. But this was a Gethsemane before Gethsemane and it may thus be that His weeping was linked to the cry going up to His Father from His heart as He prayed for the defeat of death in the raising of Lazarus, and thought ahead to His own coming death and the battle that had to be fought.