Raising of Lazarus

The event

Lazarus of Bethany, a village near Jerusalem, falls ill, and his sisters Martha and Mary send word to Jesus, whom the family loved and who loved them in return. Jesus deliberately delays two days before setting out, arriving to find Lazarus already dead and buried four days — long enough, by contemporary Jewish belief, to rule out any lingering doubt that the spirit might still be near the body, and long enough that decomposition would have set in.

Martha meets Jesus with a mixture of grief and faith — "if you had been here, my brother would not have died" — and Jesus responds with one of his great "I am" declarations: "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live." At the tomb itself, famously, "Jesus wept," moved by the grief around him even knowing what he was about to do. He commands the stone rolled away and calls in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out" — and the dead man walks out, still wrapped in his grave clothes.

John presents this as the last and greatest of Jesus's public signs, so undeniable that many who witnessed it believed in him — while it also hardens the resolve of the religious leaders, who from that day plot to kill Jesus, seeing in this miracle a threat too large to ignore.

Dating

Placed by John shortly before the final Passover, c. AD 29-30, and cited as a direct catalyst for the plot against Jesus's life.

Scripture references

• John 11:1-44