ዮሐንስ 11

The death of Lazarus

¹A certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village where Mary lived with her sister Martha. ²Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and wiped his feet with her hair, and Lazarus, who was ill, was her brother. ³The sisters therefore sent him a message: “Lord, look, the one you love is ill.” ⁴When Jesus heard this, he said, “This illness is not going to end in death; it is for the sake of God’s glory, so that through it the Son of God may be glorified.” ⁵Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was for two more days.^{a 7}Then, after that, he said to the disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” ⁸The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, only just now the Jews at the temple were seeking to stone you, and you are going there again?” ⁹Jesus answered, “Does the day not have twelve hours? Whoever walks in daylight does not stumble, because they see the light of this world. ¹⁰But whoever walks at night stumbles, because the light is not in them.” ¹¹After he had said this, he told them, “Lazarus, our friend, has fallen asleep, but I am setting out to wake him.” ¹²The disciples replied, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get well.” ¹³Jesus, however, had been speaking about the death of Lazarus. They thought he was talking about ordinary sleep. ¹⁴Then Jesus told them in plain words, “Lazarus has died. ¹⁵I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶Then Thomas, also called Didymus (which means Twin), said to the other disciples, “Let us go too, so that we may die with him.”^b

The resurrection and the life

¹⁷When Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had been in the tomb four days already. ¹⁸Bethany was near Jerusalem, about 2 miles away. ¹⁹Many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them over the loss of their brother. ²⁰When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, while Mary stayed sitting in the house. ²¹Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, had you been here, my brother would not have died. ²²Even now I know that God will give you anything you ask him for.”^{c 23}Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha answered, “I know he will rise when the dead are raised, on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even if they die, will live, ²⁶and all who live and believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?”^{de 27}She answered, “Yes, Lord. I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

Jesus raises Lazarus

²⁸When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside privately. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and he is calling for you.” ²⁹As soon as Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰Jesus had not yet come into the village; he was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹The Jews who were with Mary in the house, comforting her, saw her get up quickly and go out. They followed her, thinking that she was going to the tomb to weep there.^{f 32}When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, had you been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her weeping too, he was deeply indignant in spirit and greatly troubled. ³⁴“Where have you laid him?” he asked.^g They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”^{h 35}Jesus wept. ³⁶So the Jews who were there said, “See how much he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “He opened the eyes of the blind man. Was he not able to keep this man from dying as well?” ³⁸Jesus, once more deeply indignant within himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay over the entrance. ³⁹Jesus said, “Take the stone away.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, he already stinks; this is the fourth day.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that you would see the glory of God if you believed?” ⁴¹So they took the stone away.ⁱ Then Jesus raised his eyes upward and said, “Father, I give you thanks that you have heard me. ⁴²I myself knew that you hear me at all times. But I have spoken for the sake of the crowd standing around, so that they may believe that it was you who sent me.” ⁴³After these words he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴Out came the man who had been dead, with his feet and hands bound in strips of cloth and a cloth tied around his face. Jesus told them, “Untie him and let him go.”

The plot to kill Jesus

⁴⁵Many of the Jews who had come to Mary, and had seen what he did, believed in him. ⁴⁶Some of them, however, went off to the Pharisees and reported what Jesus had done. ⁴⁷So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council. “What are we doing?” they said. “This man is doing many signs. ⁴⁸If we leave him alone, everyone will end up believing in him. Then the Romans will come and take from us both our holy place and our nation.”^{j 49}One of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You do not know anything! ⁵⁰You have not worked out that it is to your advantage to have one man die for the people, instead of the whole nation perishing.”^{k 51}Caiaphas did not say this on his own. Because he was high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, ⁵²and not for the nation alone, but also to bring God’s scattered children together into one.^{l 53}So from that day on they plotted together to kill him.

⁵⁴So Jesus stopped moving about in public among the Jews of Judea. He left and went to the countryside near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and stayed there with his disciples.

The Passover draws near

⁵⁵It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover. Many people from the countryside went up to Jerusalem before the festival to make themselves ritually clean. ⁵⁶They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple courts they asked one another, “What do you think? Will he not come to the festival at all?” ⁵⁷Meanwhile the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew where Jesus was must report it, so that they could arrest him.