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John

About this book
Chapter 11

1 Now a certain man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village where Mary and her sister Martha lived. 2 (Now it was Mary who anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and wiped his feet dry with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.) 3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, look, the one you love is sick.” 4 When Jesus heard this, he said, “This sickness will not lead to death, but to God’s glory, 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 remained in the place where he was for two more days. 7 Then after this, he said to his disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8 The disciples replied, “Rabbi, the Jewish leaders were just now trying to stone you to death! Are you going there again?” 9 Jesus replied, “Are there not 12 hours in a day? If anyone walks around in the daytime, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10 But if anyone walks around at night, he stumbles because the light is not in him.” 11 After he said this, he added, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going there to awaken him.” 12 Then the disciples replied, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” 13 (Now Jesus had been talking about his death, but they thought he had been talking about real sleep.) 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, 15 and I am glad for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16 So Thomas (called Didymus) said to his fellow disciples, “Let us go too, so that we may die with him.” 17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had been in the tomb four days already. 18 (Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, 19 so many of the Jewish people of the region had come to Martha and Mary to console them over the loss of their brother.) 20 So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary was sitting in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will grant you.” 23 Jesus replied, “Your brother will come back to life again.” 24 Martha said, “I know that he will come back to life again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, 26 and the one who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She replied, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who comes into the world.” 28 And when she had said this, Martha went and called her sister Mary, saying privately, “The Teacher is here and is asking for you.” 29 So when Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 (Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still in the place where Martha had come out to meet him.) 31 Then the people who were with Mary in the house consoling her saw her get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 Now when Mary came to the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the people who had come with her weeping, he was intensely moved in spirit and greatly distressed. 34 He asked, “Where have you laid him?” They replied, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 Thus the people who had come to mourn said, “Look how much he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “This is the man who caused the blind man to see! Couldn’t he have done something to keep Lazarus from dying?” 38 Jesus, intensely moved again, came to the tomb. (Now it was a cave, and a stone was placed across it.) 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, replied, “Lord, by this time the body will have a bad smell because he has been buried four days.” 40 Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believe, you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you that you have listened to me.⁠ 42 I knew that you always listen to me, but I said this for the sake of the crowd standing around here, that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said this, he shouted in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The one who had died came out, his feet and hands tied up with strips of cloth, and a cloth wrapped around his face. Jesus said to them, “Unwrap him and let him go.” 45 Then many of the people, who had come with Mary and had seen the things Jesus did, believed in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and reported to them what Jesus had done. 47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees called the council together and said, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many miraculous signs. 48 If we allow him to go on in this way, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our sanctuary and our nation.” 49 Then one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said, “You know nothing at all! 50 You do not realize that it is more to your advantage to have one man die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.” 51 (Now he did not say this on his own, but because he was high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the Jewish nation, 52 and not for the Jewish nation only, but to gather together into one the children of God who are scattered.)⁠ 53 So from that day they planned together to kill him. 54 Thus Jesus no longer went around publicly among the Judeans, but went away from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and stayed there with his disciples. 55 Now the Jewish Feast of Passover was near, and many people went up to Jerusalem from the rural areas before the Passover to cleanse themselves ritually. 56 Thus they were looking for Jesus, and saying to one another as they stood in the temple courts, “What do you think? That he won’t come to the feast?” 57 (Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew where Jesus was should report it, so that they could arrest him.)

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Psalm 117:21 and John 11:41

Septuagint · New Testament

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Summary

The prayer Jesus speaks before raising Lazarus echoes Psalm 118, where thanks is given for being heard and rescued. This connection suggests the Lazarus narrative was shaped to parallel the theme of divine rescue and vindication found in the psalm.

Passages

LXX Psalm 117:21

Septuagint
19 Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and give praise to the Lord. 20 This is the gate of the Lord: the righteous shall enter by it. 21 I will give thanks to you; because you have heard me, and have become my salvation. 22 The stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner. 23 This has been done by the Lord; and it is wonderful in our eyes. 24 This is the day which the Lord has made: let us exult and rejoice in it.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Psalms

John 11:41

New Testament
39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, replied, “Lord, by this time the body will have a bad smell because he has been buried four days.” 40 Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believe, you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you that you have listened to me. 42 I knew that you always listen to me, but I said this for the sake of the crowd standing around here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
90–110 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in John

References

"... Anthony Hanson and Max Wilcox, co-founders of the Seminar on the use of the Old Testament in the New, identified the opening words of Jesus' prayer in Jn 11.41 as an allusion to Ps. 118.21 (LXX 117.21), and did so working independently of one another. Hanson was first to get into print in an article in 1973. Wilcox published four years later, by which time the coincidence had been discovered. The aim of this study is to offer support for this joint identification by approaching Jn 11.41-42 from the broader perspective of the composition of the Lazarus story as a whole ... we are now in a position to render a plausible account of the processes of creative interpretation of tradition which gave John's text its final form ... I am in agreement with the view that the Lazarus story was not originally part of the Gospel but was added to it by John at a later stage, probably in the process of a second edition. This is an important point because it affects our understanding of how John has worked: it means that the story was almost certainly interpolated into already existing material and that therefore, in composing it, John also designed it to fit its new surroundings ..."
Wendy Sproston North, “Jesus' Prayer in John 11,” in The Old Testament in the New Testament: Essays in Honour of J. L. North, ed. Steve Moyise and J. L. North (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000), 164–180.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Psalm 117:21 and John 11:41

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