There was a man who was sick — Lazarus, from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 This Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair. Her brother Lazarus was the one who was sick. 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus: “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
4 When Jesus heard it, he said, “This sickness will not end in death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.
7 Then after that he said to his disciples, “Let’s go back to Judea.”
8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, just now the Jews were trying to stone you — and you’re going back there?”
9 Jesus answered, “Aren’t there twelve hours of daylight? If someone walks in the daytime, he doesn’t stumble, because he sees by the light of this world. 10 But if someone walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”
11 He said this, and then he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I’m going there to wake him up.”
12 So the disciples said to him, “Lord, if he’s asleep, he’ll get better.”
13 Jesus had been speaking about his death, but they thought he meant actual sleep. 14 So then Jesus told them plainly: “Lazarus is dead. 15 And I’m glad for your sake that I wasn’t there — so that you may believe. But let’s go to him.”
16 Then Thomas (called the Twin) said to his fellow disciples, “Let’s go too — so we can die with him.”
17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away,[1] 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.
20 So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him. But Mary stayed sitting in the house.
21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.”
24 Martha said to him, “I know he will rise — in the resurrection on the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. 26 And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have believed that you are the Anointed One, the Son of God — the one coming into the world.”
28 When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying quietly, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 As soon as Mary heard that, she got up quickly and went to him.
30 Now Jesus had not yet entered the village. He was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were in the house with Mary, comforting her, saw her get up quickly and go out. They followed her, thinking she was going to the tomb to cry there.
32 When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”
33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying too, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
35 Jesus broke into tears.[2]
36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
37 But some of them said, “Couldn’t this man — who opened the eyes of the blind man — have kept this man from dying?”
38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench — it’s been four days.”[3]
40 Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus lifted his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I know that you always hear me. But I said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said this, he shouted in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
44 The dead man came out — his feet and hands wrapped with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped with a cloth.
Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”[4]
45 So many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what Jesus did believed in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we doing? This man is performing many signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. Then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”
49 But one of them — Caiaphas, who was high priest that year — said to them, “You know nothing at all.[5] 50 You don’t realize that it’s better for you that one man die for the people, rather than the whole nation be destroyed.”
51 He didn’t say this on his own. But being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation — 52 and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the scattered children of God.
53 So from that day on they plotted to kill him.
54 Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews. Instead, he left there and went to the region near the desert, to a town called Ephraim. He stayed there with his disciples.[6]
55 Now the Jewish Passover was near, and many people went up from the countryside to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. 56 They were looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple they said to one another, “What do you think? That he won’t come to the festival at all?” 57 The chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where Jesus was, he should report it — so they could arrest him.
Notes
Note 1. The Greek gives the distance as “about fifteen stadia.” A stadion ran roughly 185 meters (about 600 feet), so fifteen of them come to around 2.8 kilometers — closer to 1.75 miles than a round two. The detail places Bethany within easy walking distance of Jerusalem. ↩
Note 2. The Greek changes verbs here. Mary and the mourners are klaiontes — crying aloud, the loud public grief of a funeral. Jesus edakrusen: he sheds tears. It is a quieter word than the wailing all around him. ↩
Note 3. Jews of this period buried the dead quickly, usually the same day, since bodies decay fast in that climate. Later rabbinic tradition held that the soul lingered near the body for three days and departed on the fourth, when decomposition set in. ↩
Note 4. Jewish burial meant wrapping the body in linen — here strips of cloth (keiriai) around the limbs and a separate face cloth (soudarion) — without the embalming or tight bandaging of Egyptian mummies. The same face cloth reappears in John 20, folded up in the empty tomb. ↩
Note 5. John’s phrase “that year” can sound as if the office rotated annually. Caiaphas held the high priesthood for a long stretch, roughly AD 18 to 36 — an unusually stable tenure under Roman rule. ↩
Note 6. Ephraim lay in the rough, thinly settled hill country northeast of Jerusalem, on the edge of the desert dropping toward the Jordan valley — often identified with the modern village of Taybeh. ↩