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Joh_11:33-34.
Τοὺς συνελθ . αὐτῇ Ἰουδ .] The Jews who had come with her (see on Mar_14:53). Note the emphatic κλαίουσαν … κλαίοντας .
ἐνεβριμήσατο τῷ πνεύματι ] Alone correct are the renderings of the Vulgate: infremuit spiritu; of the Gothic: inrauhtida ahmin; and of Luther: er ergimmete im Geiste, He was angered in the spirit. On τῷ πνεύματι , comp. Joh_13:21; Mar_8:12; Act_17:16. The words βριμάομαι and ἐμβριμάομαι are never used otherwise than of hot anger in the Classics, the Septuagint, and the New Testament (Mat_9:30; Mar_1:43; Mar_14:5), save where they denote snorting or growling proper (Aeschyl. Sept. 461; Lucean, Necyom. 20). See Gumlich, p. 265 f. For this reason the explanation of sharp pain (so also Grotius, Lucke, Tholuck, who thinks the word denotes a painful, sympathetic, and shuddering movement, not expressed in sounds, B. Crusius, Maier, and several; compare already Nonnus) must be rejected at the very outset, as opposed to the usage of the word. The same applies also to Ewald’s notion[84] that it is simply a somewhat stronger term for στενάζειν or ἈΝΑΣΤΕΝΆΖΕΙΝ (Mar_7:34; comp. Joh_8:12). But at what was He angered? This is not expressed by τῷ πνεύματι (against this supposition ἘΝ ἙΑΥΤῷ in Joh_11:38 is sufficiently decisive), as though He were angry at being affected as He was ( Τῷ ΠΆΘΕΙ ). This view, which quite misconceives the humanity of Jesus, is taken by Origen, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, and several others.[85] Nor was His anger enkindled at death as the wages of sin (Augustine, Corn. a Lapide, Olshausen, Gumlich); nor at the power of death (Melanchthon, Ebrard),[86] the dread foe of the human race (Hengstenberg); nor at the unbelief of the Jews (Erasmus, Scholten) as well as of the sisters (Lampe, Kuinoel, Wichelhaus, Komm. üb. d. Leidensgesch. p. 66 f.); nor, finally, at the circumstance that He had not been able to avert this melancholy occurrence (De Wette). The last-mentioned notion is appropriate neither to the idea, nor to the degree of anger, nor to Joh_11:4; and the whole of these references are imported into the text. Brückner’s opinion: the anger is that of the Redeemer, misunderstood by His enemies, and not understood by His friends, is also an importation; so also Godet’s forced expedient: Jesus was indignant that, in performing this His greatest miracle, to which He found Himself pressed by the sobbings of those who were present, He should be pronouncing His own death-sentence; Satan purposed making it the signal of His condemnation, and some even of those who were weeping were destined to become His accusers. As though anything of all that were either to be found in the passage, or were even hinted at in it! The reference lying in the context was overlooked in consequence of the word Ἰουδαῖοι not being taken in the sense in which it is constantly used by John, namely, as the designation of the hostile party. It must be remembered that, in Joh_11:38 also, this inward wrath of the Lord was aroused by the behaviour of the Jews noticed in Joh_11:37. He was angered, then, at the Jews, when He saw them lamenting with the deeply-feeling Mary, and professing by their cries (of condolence) to share her feelings, whilst at the same time aware that they were full of bitter hostility to Him who was the beloved friend both of those who mourned and of him whom they mourned, nor is Joh_11:45 inconsistent therewith. Accordingly, the moving cause of His wrath lay solely in that which the text states ( ὡς εἶδεν … κλαίοντας ); the separative expression: ΑὐΤῊΝ ΚΛΑἾΟΥΣΑΝ … ἸΟΥΔΑΊΟΥς ΚΛΑΊΟΝΤΑς , sets forth the contrast presented by the procedure of the two, whilst going on together before Him. Alongside of the lamentation of Mary, He could not but see that the ΚΛΑΊΕΙΝ of the Jews was hypocritical, and this excited His strong moral indignation and wrath. John has simply expressed this indignation by the right term, without, as Lange thinks, combining in ἐνεβριμής the most varied emotions of the mind, as in a “divine thunderstorm of the spirit.” By the addition of τῷ πνεύματι the indignation experienced by Jesus is defined as having been felt in the depths of His moral self-consciousness. During this experience, also, the πνεῦμα of Jesus was a ΠΝΕῦΜΑ ἉΓΙΩΣΎΝΗς ; see on Rom_1:4. John might also have written Τῇ ΨΥΧῇ (see on Joh_12:27); but Τῷ ΠΝΕΎΜΑΤΙ is more characteristic.
ΚΑῚ ἘΤΆΡΑΞΕΝ ἙΑΥΤΌΝ ] not equivalent to ἘΤΑΡΆΧΘΗ Τῷ ΠΝΕΎΜΑΤΙ , Joh_13:21; nor even denoting, “He allowed Himself to be troubled (agitated), surrendered Himself to the agitation” (De Wette); but, as the active with the reflective pronoun necessarily requires, He agitated Himself, so that the outward manifestation, the bodily shuddering, during the internal movement of indignation, is designated by the words, and not the emotion itself.[87] Euth. Zigabenus remarks, in the main correctly: ΔΙΈΣΕΙΣΕ · ΣΥΜΒΑΊΝΕΙ ΓᾺΡ ΤΙΝΆΣΣΕΣΘΑΙ ΤᾺ ἈΝΏΤΕΡΑ ΜΈΡΗ ΤῶΝ ΟὝΤΩς ἘΜΒΡΙΜΩΜΈΝΩΝ . The use of the reflective expression has no dogmatic basis (Augustine, Bengel, and several; also Brückner and Ebrard suppose that it was designed to exclude the notion of the passivity of the emotion), but is simply due to its being more descriptive and picturesque. The reader is made to see how Jesus, in His inner indignation, shakes Himself and shudders.
ποῦ τεθείκ . αὐτόν ;] This question He puts to Mary and Martha, and it is they also who answer it. Having experienced the stirrings of indignation, without any further delay, gathering Himself up for action, He now asks that which it was in the first instance necessary for Him to know. The assumption made by Hengstenberg,[88] that He already knew that which He asked, is due solely to exegetical presuppositions, and reduces the question to a mere formality.
[84] “As though compelled to gather up all the deepest powers of love and compassion, first, in deepest emotion, repeatedly sighing and weeping,” Gesch. Christi, p. 486. Somewhat differently in the Johann. SChr. I. p. 322: “Like an old hero of the primeval age, like a Jacob, who, gathering together the deepest forces of his spirit, prepares for the combat, and in the midst of the struggle weeps aloud.” Melanchthon has a similar idea.
[85] To much the same effect is Cyril’s view, who takes τῷ πνεύματι to mean the Holy Spirit, and to be used instrumentally: τῇ δυνάμει τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος , Jesus was angered at the human compassion which He had felt. Hilgenfeld, in his Lehrbegr. p. 260, Evang. p. 296 (comp. Köstlin, p. 139), has recently modified this view as follows: a genuinely human feeling threatened to tear away the human person joined with the Logos from His fellowship with the Logos, and the displeasure of the Logos was therefore only able to express itself inwardly, to vent itself on the humanity. See, on the contrary, Weiss, Lehrbegr. p. 257. Interpretations like these spring from a soil which lies altogether outside the domain of exegesis. More simply, but also doing violence to the moral nature of the human compassion felt by Jesus, is the view taken by Merz (in die Würtemb. Stud. 1844, 2): He became angry with Himself because He had felt as if His heart would break.
[86] So also Luthardt (who is followed by Weber in his Zorne Gottes, p. 24): “He was angered at death and him who has the power of death, His antagonist, that he had done such a thing to Him, that he had thus penetrated into His innermost circle, and had thus, as it were, thrown out threatenings against Himself.” Comp. Kahnis, Dogmatik, I. p. 504: “at the unnaturalness of death.”
[87] As Hengstenberg maintains (“Jesus stirs Himself up to energetic struggle,” etc.); compare also Godet.
[88] So also Gumlich, after Augustine, Erasmus, Jansen, and others.