John 11
The full text of John 11 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Greek. Free to read.
1 Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
2 This was the Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was the one who was sick.
3 So the sisters sent word to him: "Lord, the one you love is sick."
4 When Jesus heard this, he said, "This illness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, 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 stayed where he was two more days.
7 Then after this he said to his disciples, "Let's go back to Judea."
8 His disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews there just tried to stone you — and you're going back?"
9 Jesus answered, "Aren't there twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the day doesn't stumble, because he sees the light of this world.
10 But if you walk at night, you stumble, because the light is not in you.
11 He said these things, and then he tells them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him."
12 So the disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get better."
13 Jesus had been speaking about his death, but they thought he meant natural sleep.
14 So then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus has died.
15 And I rejoice for your sake — so that you may believe — that I was not there. But let's go to him.
16 So Thomas (called Didymus) said to his fellow disciples, "Let's go too, so we can die with him."
17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away,
19 Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them over their brother.
20 So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed sitting in the house.
21 So Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
22 Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.
23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."
25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even in death,
26 And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.ᵃ Do you believe this?"
27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is to come into the world."
28 After saying this, she went and called her sister Mary aside, telling her, "The Teacher is here and is asking for you."
29 When she heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.
30 Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.
31 When the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to weep there.
32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping too, he was angry in his spirit and shook himself,
34 and he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."
35 Jesus wept.
36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"
37 But some of them said, "Couldn't this man who opened the blind man's eyes have kept this one from dying too?"
38 So Jesus, once more groaning inwardly, came to the tomb. It was a cave, with a stone lying over the entrance.
39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the man who had died, said to him, "Lord, by now there is a stench — he has been dead four days."
40 Jesus says to her, "Didn't I tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?"
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you heard me.
42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said it because of the crowd standing around, so that they may believe that you sent me."
43 When he had said this, he shouted with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"
44 The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a burial cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."
45 So many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he did believed in him.
46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees called the Sanhedrin together and said, "What are we doing? This man is performing many signs.
48 If we leave him alone, everyone will put their faith in him, and the Romans will come and take from us both our place and our nation.
49 Then one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all!
50 You aren't thinking it through: it is to your advantage that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not be destroyed.
51 He did not say this from himself, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to dieᵃ for the nation,ᵇ
52 and not for the nation only, but also to gather the scattered children of God and make them one.
53 So from that day on, they plotted to kill him.
54 So Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the Jews, but withdrew from there to a region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with his disciples.
55 The Jewish Passover was near, and many people went up from the countryside to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves.
56 So they were looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple they said to one another, "What do you think? Surely he won't come to the festival, will he?"
57 The chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew where he was should report it, so they could arrest him.
Translation notes (38)
- John 11:2a The Greek word myrō refers to an aromatic anointing oil, which was often very costly. This was a liquid poured or smeared, not a modern sprayed perfume.
- John 11:2b This is a forward reference to John 12:3, where this anointing is described in detail. The narrator assumes that the reader is already familiar with the story.
- John 11:3a The Greek word phileis describes an affectionate love, often used for friendship. Here, it is distinguished from agapaō, which is used in verse 5 to describe Jesus' love for the family.
- John 11:4a The Greek phrase 'ouk estin pros thanaton' literally means 'is not toward death.' This phrase is intentionally ambiguous: it could mean the illness will not be fatal, or that death is not its ultimate purpose or outcome. Compare 1 John 5:16–17, which speaks of 'a sin unto death.' Since Lazarus does die in John 11:14, the author John may be using irony here.
- John 11:4b The phrase 'be glorified' echoes the Greek words doxa ('glory') and doxasthē ('glorified'). This is a deliberate wordplay by the author John that cannot be fully reproduced in English.
- John 11:8a The Greek term hoi Ioudaioi can refer to 'Judeans' (people from the region of Judea) or, more specifically, to the hostile religious authorities in Jerusalem. The narrative context here, which describes an attempt to stone Jesus in Judea (compare John 8:59; 10:31), suggests the latter. The translation 'the Jews' is preserved to maintain John's intentional ambiguity.
- John 11:8b The Greek word ezētoun (an imperfect verb, indicating a past continuous or repeated action) combined with nyn ('just now') has a 'conative force,' meaning it implies an attempted action, so it can be translated as 'were trying to.' The original Greek sentence does not have a specific word to signal a question; the question mark in English reflects the disciples' disbelief, which is clear from the surrounding context.
- John 11:10a Or 'the light is not with him' — Greek ἐν αὐτῷ is ambiguous between internal illumination and accompanying light; cf. Jer 13:16.
- John 11:11a 'Fallen asleep' (Greek kekoimētai) is a common Greek euphemism for death. The disciples misunderstand this and take it literally in verse 12, which leads Jesus to clarify his meaning in verse 14.
- John 11:11b "Wake him" renders ἐξυπνίσω, a NT hapax. The compound (ἐξ- + ὑπνίζω, "rouse out of sleep") echoes resurrection-as-awakening imagery (cf. Dan 12:2).
- John 11:13a The Greek phrase literally means 'the repose of sleep,' which is a redundant idiom simply referring to ordinary slumber.
- John 11:15a The Greek word chairō means 'rejoice' or 'am glad.' Jesus rejoices because of the disciples' coming faith, not because of Lazarus's death; the hina clause (a grammatical construction indicating purpose) explains that the purpose of his absence was for this outcome.
- John 11:16a Didymus is the Greek word for 'twin,' and Thomas is the Aramaic name with the same meaning. John uses both forms in John 20:24 and 21:2.
- John 11:18a The Greek text says 'about fifteen stadia.' A stadion was roughly 600 feet, so fifteen stadia is approximately two miles (3 km).
- John 11:19a This can also be translated as 'Judeans.' In the Gospel of John, the Greek phrase hoi Ioudaioi can refer to residents of Judea; here, the group consists of sympathetic mourners, not opponents.
- John 11:25a The Greek text uses the definite article twice (hē anastasis kai hē zōē), meaning 'the resurrection and the life,' rather than 'a resurrection and a life.' This emphasizes that Jesus is the definitive resurrection and the definitive life, locating both realities in his own person.
- John 11:26a The Greek phrase 'will not die into the age' is an expression common in John's writings (compare 4:14; 8:51). It combines a strong negative statement with the idea of the 'age to come.'
- John 11:27a This can also be translated as 'the Messiah.' The Greek word Christos functions as both a title and a name in the Gospel of John.
- John 11:27b The Greek verb is in the perfect tense, indicating a settled conviction that began in the past and is still held.
- John 11:33a Greek ἐνεβριμήσατο elsewhere in the NT (Mark 1:43; 14:5; Matt 9:30) means to rebuke sternly or be indignant. Some render 'deeply moved,' but the harder, better-attested sense is anger or indignation — perhaps at death, unbelief, or the wailing.
- John 11:33b The Greek phrase etaraxen heauton is an active verb with a reflexive pronoun, meaning 'he troubled himself' or 'shook himself.' This indicates a self-initiated agitation, which contrasts with the passive phrase 'my soul is troubled' in John 12:27.
- John 11:38a The Greek word embrimōmenos denotes a strong, often indignant emotion, such as a deep inward groaning or snorting in anger. It is debated whether grief, indignation, or both are intended here.
- John 11:38b The Greek phrase epekeito ep' autō literally means 'lay upon it.' First-century tombs typically had a stone set across a low entrance, which is why this is translated as 'over the entrance.'
- John 11:39a The Greek phrase tetartaios ... estin literally means 'he is a fourth-day one.' This is an idiom meaning 'he is in his fourth day since death.'
- John 11:39b This can also be translated as 'Sir.' The Greek word kyrie can range in meaning from a respectful address to a confessional 'Lord' in the Gospel of John.
- John 11:41a "Looked up" renders ἦρεν τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἄνω, a traditional posture of prayer (cf. John 17:1; Ps 123:1).
- John 11:44a The Greek word keiriais refers to the linen strips used to bind a corpse for burial.
- John 11:44b The Greek word soudarion refers to a small cloth for the face, here covering the head of the dead.
- John 11:47a The Greek word synedrion refers to the Jewish ruling council.
- John 11:48a The phrase 'our place' (ton topon) likely refers to the temple, though it can also mean the holy city or land. The NIV translates this as 'temple,' but the Trinity Bible Version (TBV) preserves the ambiguity.
- John 11:48b The Greek word ethnos here means the Jewish people as a political nation under Roman rule, not 'Gentiles' as it does elsewhere in the New Testament.
- John 11:50a The reading 'for you' (hymin) is found in early manuscripts such as 𝔓66, ℵ, B, D, L, and W. Some other manuscripts (A, Θ, Ψ, and the later Byzantine majority) read 'for us' (hēmin), which the King James Version (KJV) follows.
- John 11:50b The Greek words laos ('people,' a term referring to Israel as God's covenant people) and ethnos ('nation,' a political term) are both translated here. John 11:51–52 plays on this distinction, showing that Caiaphas spoke better than he knew.
- John 11:51a This can also be translated 'was destined to die.' The Greek verb emellen often indicates events that are divinely planned in the Gospel of John (compare John 12:33; 18:32).
- John 11:51b The Greek word ethnous means 'the nation,' referring to Israel. This word normally means 'gentile nation,' an irony that John highlights in verse 52. The Greek word hyper ('for') suggests both that Jesus died on behalf of the people (representative) and in their place (substitutionary).
- John 11:52a Or 'into one.' Greek εἰς ἕν is terse ('into a unity'); echoes John 10:16 ('one flock') and Isa 49:6.
- John 11:54a This can also be translated 'Judeans.' In the Gospel of John, the Greek phrase hoi Ioudaioi often refers specifically to the hostile Judean leaders (compare John 11:47–53), rather than to Jewish people in general. Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.
- John 11:54b Ephraim was a town of uncertain location, likely et-Taiyibeh, about 20 kilometers northeast of Jerusalem. It is mentioned only here in the New Testament.
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