Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

John 11:33

John 11:33. When Jesus therefore saw her lamenting, and the Jews lamenting which came with her, he was moved with indignation in his spirit, and troubled himself. There is little doubt that the first word describing the emotion of Jesus denotes rather anger than sorrow. Such is its regular meaning; and, though New Testament usage partly gives a different turn to the word, yet in every passage it implies a severity of tone and feeling that is very different from grief. In Mark 14:5 it expresses indignation at what appeared reckless waste, and in Matthew 9:30 and Mark 1:43 it denotes stern dealing, a severity that marked the giving of the charge; while in the Septuagint the noun derived from the verb is used to translate the Hebrew noun signifying indignation or anger. The only other passage in the New Testament in which we find the word is John 11:38 of this chapter. That we are to understand it as implying anger seems thus to be clear, and we are strengthened in this conclusion by the fact that the early Greek fathers take it in this sense. It is more difficult to answer the question, At what was Jesus angry?

It has been replied (1) at Himself, because He was moved to a sympathy and compassion which it was needful to restrain. In this case the words ‘His spirit' are supposed to be directly governed by the verb ‘was indignant at His spirit.' But such a use of ‘spirit' is surely impossible, while the explanation as a whole does violence to those conceptions of the humanity of our Lord which this very Gospel teaches us to form; (2) at the unbelief and hypocritical weeping of ‘the Jews.' But many of them were to believe (John 11:45); and there is nothing to indicate that their weeping was not genuine. Besides this, the emotion of Jesus is traced to the lamenting of Mary not less than to that of the Jews; and the whole narrative gains immeasurably in force if we suppose the latter to have been as sincere as the former; (3) at the misery brought into the world by sin. This explanation appears upon the whole to be the most probable. As to the words ‘in His spirit,' without entering into any discussion of a difficult subject, we may say that, as ‘the spirit' denotes the highest (and so to speak) innermost part of man's nature, the language shows that our Lord's nature was stirred to its very depth. This reference to the spirit assists us in understanding the words that follow ‘and troubled Himself:' the indignation and horror of the spirit threw the whole ‘self' into disturbance. The meaning of chap. John 13:21, where a similar expression occurs, is substantially the same: there we read that, at the thought of the presence of sin, of such evil as was about to show itself in His betrayal by Judas, Jesus was ‘troubled' (that is, agitated, disturbed) ‘in His spirit.'

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

John 11:33

Old Testament

New Testament