John 11:11-13

“ He spoke thus, and after this he says to them, Lazarus, our friend, sleeps; but I go to awaken him. 12. Whereupon they said to him;Lord, if he sleeps, he will recover. 13. But Jesus had spoken of his death, and they thought that he was speaking of the rest of sleep. ”

The words ταῦτα εἶπε, he spoke thus, and..., are not superfluous. They signify that this general maxim which He had just stated was applied by Him on the spot to the present case. Weiss wrongly asserts that this application is not found in what follows. It is in the words: I go to awaken him. The epithet: our friend, appeals to their affection for Lazarus, just as the expression: he whom thou lovest, in John 11:3, had made an appeal to His own friendship for him. Some interpreters have thought that it was at this moment that, either through a new message (Neander); or through His prophetic consciousness (Weiss), Jesus Himself learned of the death of Lazarus. But the promise of John 11:4 has proved to us that He had known this circumstance in a supernatural way, from the moment when the message of the two sisters had drawn his attention to the condition of His friend. Jesus likes to present death under the figure of sleep, a figure which makes it a phase of life.

Strauss found the misunderstanding of the disciples in John 11:12 inconceivable. Reuss calls it “a misapprehension which has precisely the import of that of Nicodemus.” He adds: “Men do not ordinarily sleep several days in succession.” But after having heard the words of John 11:4, it was natural that the disciples should not have believed in the possibility of the sick man's death. They might therefore think that this sleep of which Jesus was speaking was the crisis of convalescence, and that He wished to bring the sick man out of it healed by awaking him. It is very evident that, in their extreme desire not to go into Judea, they seek for a pretext, good or bad, for deterring Jesus from departing thitherward. In this situation, what improbability is there in this reply? The word σωθήσεται signifies here: will be healed of himself, without participation on thy part. The general term κοίμησις (sleep, John 11:13) is derived from κεκοίμηται (John 11:11), and must be determined here by a special complement (τοῦ ὕπνου).