The Death of Lazarus

1Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.

2(Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was sick.)

3So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, behold, the one yoʋ love is sick.”

4But when Jesus heard this, he said, “This sickness will not end in death but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

5Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister Mary, and Lazarus.

6But when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was for two more days.

7After that he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”

8The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just recently seeking to stone yoʋ, and yet you are going there again?”

9Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.

10But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”

11After saying this, he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up.”

12¹⁴⁴His disciples said, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.”

13(They thought Jesus was speaking about natural sleep, but he was actually speaking about Lazarus' death.)

14Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died,

15and I rejoice for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

16Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to his fellow disciples, “Let us go too, so that we may die with him.”

I Am the Resurrection and the Life

17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days already.

18Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem,

19and many of the Jews had joined ¹⁴⁵the women who were with Martha and Mary, to console them about their brother.

20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary remained seated in the house.

21Then Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if yoʋ had been here, my brother would not have died.

22¹⁴⁶But even now I know that God will give yoʋ whatever yoʋ ask of him.”

23Jesus said to her, “Yoʋr brother will rise again.”

24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, yet shall he live.

26No one who lives and believes in me will ever die. Do yoʋ believe this?”

27She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I have come to believe that yoʋ are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

Jesus Weeps

28After saying this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for yoʋ.”

29When Mary heard this, she rose quickly and went to him.

30(Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but ¹⁴⁷was in the place where Martha had met him.)

31When the Jews who were in the house with Mary, consoling her, saw her rise quickly and go out, they followed her, ¹⁴⁸saying, “She is going to the tomb to weep there.”

32When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if yoʋ had been here, my brother would not have died.”

33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled.

34He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”

35Jesus wept.

36So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

37But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have also kept this man from dying?”

Jesus Raises Lazarus

38Deeply moved once more, Jesus came to the tomb. (It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.)

39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the man who had died, said to him, “Lord, there is already a stench, for it is the fourth day.”

40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell yoʋ that if yoʋ believed yoʋ would see the glory of God?”

41So they took away the stone ¹⁴⁹from where the dead man was lying. Then Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank yoʋ that yoʋ have heard me.

42I know that yoʋ always hear me, but I say this for the benefit of the crowd that is standing here, so that they may believe that yoʋ sent me.”

43After saying this, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

44Then the man who had died came out, his feet and his hands bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

The Plot to Kill Jesus

45Therefore many of the Jews who had come to Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

46But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them ¹⁵⁰what Jesus had done.

47So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and said, “What are we going to do? For this man is doing many signs.

48If we allow him to continue like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our holy place and our nation.”

49But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You do not know anything,

50nor do you consider that it is better for ¹⁵¹us to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation perish.”

51(He said this not of his own accord, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation,

52and not only for the nation, but also to gather together and unite the children of God scattered abroad.)

53So from that day they plotted ¹⁵²together to kill him.

54Therefore Jesus no longer went around openly among the Jews. Instead, he departed from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, where he ¹⁵³spent time with ¹⁵⁴his disciples.

55Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many people went up to Jerusalem from the countryside to purify themselves before the Passover.

56They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple courts, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast at all?”

57(Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given ¹⁵⁵an order that if anyone knew where Jesus was, he should report it, so that they could arrest him.)