John 11:33-34

“ When therefore Jesus saw Mary weeping and the Jews who were with her weeping, he shuddered in his spirit and was troubled, 34 and he said, Where have you laid him. They say unto him, Lord, come and see. ”

The particle therefore establishes a relation of causality between the grief of Mary and those with her and the extraordinary emotion by which Jesus is seized at this moment. This relation is likewise indicated by the words: when He said, and by the repetition of the participle weeping, which, like a refrain, ends the two clauses. It is now generally acknowledged that the term ἐμβριμᾶσθαι (from βριμάζειν, to neigh, to roar) can only designate a shudder of indignation. See the thorough demonstration in the essay of Gumlich, Stud. u. Krit., 1862, pp. 260-269. This sense is applicable even to passages such as Matthew 9:30; Mark 1:43, in which this word marks the stern tone of menace. We must set aside therefore, first of all, the meaning: to be seized with grief (Lucke), and to groan deeply (Ewald).

But what can be the object of Jesus' indignation? According to Chrysostom, Cyril, and other Greek interpreters, this is the same emotion which He experiences on hearing the sobs and which He endeavors in vain to master. According to Chrysostom, τῶ πνεύματι, His spirit, designates the object of His indignation (He is indignant against His own spirit, that is to say, against the inward weakness which He feels), while Cyril sees in the Spirit the divine nature of Jesus reacting against His human nature; the same nearly, even at the present day, Hilgenfeld. The meaning given by Chrysostom, having very little naturalness in itself, would in any case require the use of ψυχή, the soul, instead of πνεῦμα, the spirit. For the soul is the seat of the natural emotions; comp. John 12:27; πνεῦμα, the spirit, designates the domain of the higher impressions appertaining to the relation of the soul to the divine. And if Jesus really struggled against a sympathetic emotion, how was it that He surrendered Himself to it the very next moment with perfect simplicity (John 11:35)? The explanation of Cyril tends to make the divine being and the human in Jesus two distinct personalities. Meyer and Weiss think that Jesus was indignant at the hypocritical tears of the Jews, which form a shocking contrast to the sincere grief of Mary. Reuss also inclines to this idea: Jesus revolts at the ostentation of this insincere grief. But the two participles weeping are in a relation of agreement, not of contrast.

Others apply this movement of indignation to the want of faith which Jesus discerned at once in Mary and in the Jews (Keim, Strauss). But in the word weeping, twice repeated, the notion of grief is expressed, rather than that of unbelief; and a moment later, Jesus also weeps Himself! Some interpreters (Calvin, Olshausen, Luthardt, Hengstenberg, Keil) think that the indignation of Jesus is directed against the power of death and against Satan, the invisible enemy who wields this terrible weapon against men (John 8:44). It would be necessary to admit, with this explanation, that, while the indignation felt by Jesus (John 11:33), is directed towards the murderer, the tears which He sheds in John 11:35 are the expression of the pity with which the victims inspire Him. But how does it happen that nothing of a like nature manifests itself in Jesus in the other resurrections which He has effected? There must be in this case a peculiar circumstance which produces this altogether exceptional emotion.

An analogous emotion is mentioned only in John 13:21, at the moment when Jesus sees the treason of Judas in preparation: “ He was troubled in his spirit. ” The spirit is the seat of the religious emotions, as the soul is that of the natural affections. Thus in John 12:27, Jesus says: My soul is troubled, because the foreseeing of His sufferings makes His nature shudder, while here and in chap. 13 it is in His spirit that He is agitated, because in both cases He sees Himself in immediate contact with evil in its blackest form, and because with a holy horror he feels the nearness of the invisible being who has taken possession of the heart of Judas, and (in our passage) of that of His declared enemies. This parallel throws light on the groaning of Jesus in John 11:33. On one side, the sobs which He hears around Him urge Him to accomplish the raising of His friend to life; but, on the other hand, He knows that to yield to this solicitation, and to cause the glory of the Father to break forth conspicuously at this moment, is to sign the sentence of His own death. For it is to drive to extremes His enemies and him who leads them to act.

From the most glorious of His miracles they will draw a ground of condemnation against Him. A portion of these very persons whose sighs were pressing Him to act, will be among those who will cause Him to pay with His life for the crime of having vanquished death. Horror seizes Him at this thought; there is a diabolical perversity here which agitates His pure soul even to its lowest depths. We may recall the words of Jesus: “I have done many good works; for which do you stone me?” This is what is most directly referred to in these words. This agitation extended so far as to produce in Jesus an outward commotion, a physical trembling, expressed by the words: He was troubled. But the expression is chosen by the evangelist in such a way as to remove any idea of an unreasonable or merely passive agitation: the question therefore is not of a simple reaction of the moral on the physical with the purpose of restraining within Himself the impression produced upon Him (Weiss), or with that of preparing Himself by an energetic resolution for the conflict which He was about to engage in with the devil and with death (Augustine, Calvin, Hengstenberg, Keil). The Greek term can scarcely express such ideas. It seems to me that the physical agitation indicated by these words: He was troubled, is the mark of an energetic reaction by which Jesus, in some sort, threw off the emotion which had for a moment overpowered Him and recovered the full control of His being. This internal revolution terminated in this sudden and brief question: Where have you laid him? The two καί, and, bring out the intimate connection between these different emotions which succeed each other so rapidly within Him.