Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 11:39 - 11:40
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_11:39-40. While Jesus called upon those present to take away the stone (which was done, as related in Joh_11:41), Mary waited in silent resignation. On Martha, however, with her mobile practical tendency, the command of Jesus, which was equivalent to a wish to see Lazarus, produced a terrifying effect. Her sisterly heart (hence ἡ ἀδελφὴ τοῦ τετελ .) shudders at the thought, and rises up against it, and she will not see the corpse of her beloved brother, already passing over into a state of putrefaction, exposed to the gaze of those who were present;—from the fact of his having already lain four days, she concludes, with good reason, that he must already have begun to stink. For her earlier idea of a possible resurrection (Joh_11:22), which, moreover, had been entertained only for a time, had passed over, owing to the expressions of the Lord in Joh_11:23-26, into the faith in Christ, as the Resurrection and the Life in general, through whom the dear departed one also liveth (Joh_11:26). Accordingly, it is incorrect to suppose that her wish was to call the attention of Jesus to the magnitude of the work to be performed by Him, with a view to calling forth a new confirmation of His promise (Hengstenberg); on the contrary, far removed from such reflections, she now no longer at all expects the reawakening of the corpse, and that, too, not from unbelief, but because the higher direction which her faith had received through Christ’s words had taught her resignation.
The embalming of the body (its fumigation, embrocation, and envelopment in spices, as also its anointing, Joh_12:7) can not have taken place; otherwise Martha could not have come to the conclusion which she expresses. This omission may have been due to some cause unknown to us; but the supposition that the sisters still intended carrying out the embalming is inadmissible owing to the ἤδη ὄζει .
τεταρταῖος ] of the fourth day (comp. on Joh_11:17), that is, one buried for that time. See Wetstein. Comp. Xen. Anab. vi. 4. 9 : ἤδε γὰρ ἦσαν πεμπταῖοι (dead); Diog. Laert. 7. 184.
The gentle reproof contained in Joh_11:40 refers to Joh_11:23 ff., and is justified; for that which He had said regarding the glory of God in Joh_11:4 was to be realized by means of the ἀναστ . promised in Joh_11:23—promised in the sense present to Christ’s mind. At the same time, the performance of the miracle was itself dependent on the fulfilment of the condition ἐὰν πιστευσ . (which had been required also in Joh_11:25 f.); to unbelieving sisters He could no more have restored the dead brother than to an unbelieving Jairus his child (Luk_8:50), or to the widow of Nain her son, if her attitude towards His compassion and His injunction μὴ κλαῖε (Luk_7:13) had been one of unbelief.