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Joh_11:35. Ἐδάκρ . ὁ Ἰ .] He weeps, whilst on His way to the sepulchre, with those who were weeping. Note the eloquent, deeply-moving simplicity which characterizes the narrative; and remark as to the subject-matter, how, before accomplishing His work, Jesus gives full vent to the sorrow which He felt for His friend, and for the suffering inflicted on the sisters. It is also worthy of notice, that δακρύειν is here used, and not again κλαίειν ,
His lamenting is a shedding of tears in quiet anguish, not a weeping with loud lamentation, not a κλαυθμός as over Jerusalem, Luk_19:41. It is a delicate discrimination of expressions, unforced, and true. According to Baur, indeed, tears for a dead man, whose grave was being approached in the certainty of his being raised to life again, could not be the expression of a true, genuinely human fellow-feeling. As though such feelings could be determined in a manner involving such deliberation, and as if the death of His friend, the grief of those by whom He was accompanied, as well as the wailings of the sisters, were not sufficient, of themselves alone, to arouse His loving sympathy to tears! It is precisely a genuine human emotion, which neither could nor should resist the painful impression produced by such a moment. But those obliterate the delicate character of this trait with their hard dogmatic hand, who make the tears shed by Christ refer to “the misery of the human race pictured forth in Lazarus” (Hengstenberg, comp. Gumlich).