Matthew Poole Commentary - John 11:44 - 11:44

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Matthew Poole Commentary - John 11:44 - 11:44


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The fashion of their dressing up the dead differeth, according to the fashion of several countries; among the Jews, we understand by this text, they tied a napkin about their head, and some clothes about their hands and feet. They wound the whole body in linen clothes with spices, Joh_19:40; this was (as is there said) their manner to bury. So, Act_5:6, the young men are said to have wound Ananias, and carried him out, and buried him. And this is that which certainly is meant here by these words,



bound hand and foot: and here is a second miracle, that one so wrapped and bound up should be able to move and come forth. Christ bids,



Loose him, and let him go, to evidence him truly recovered to life again, and that the miracle was perfectly wrought. About this miracle there are two curious questions started:



1. Whether the raising of Lazarus to life was done by the mere Divine power of Christ, or by the person of Christ; so as the human nature, being personally united to the Divine nature, had also a share in it; the Divine nature communicating its property of quickening the dead to the human nature? That it was the person of Christ that raised Lazarus, and he who did it was truly man and truly God, is out of doubt. But that there was any such communication of the properties of the Divine nature to the human nature, that it also had a share in this effect, is justly denied, and doubted by many great divines: but it is a question tending to no great profit for us to know.



2. Where Lazarus’s soul was these four days wherein it was separated from the body? The Scripture hath not told us this, and it speaks too great curiosity to inquire too strictly. Though we are taught from the parable of Dives and Lazarus, that the souls of departed saints do ordinarily and immediately pass into heaven, or Abraham’s bosom; yet what should hinder, but that in these cases, where it appears to have been the Divine will that the souls of persons departed should again be returned into their bodies in a short time, they might by a Divine power be kept under the custody of angels, until the time of such restoration of them.