Our friend Lazarus sleepeth. — Better, Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep. They had probably understood the words of John 11:4 to express that the illness was not mortal, and that Lazarus would recover. They have seen, therefore, no reason for facing the danger of Judæa (John 11:7-8). He now supplies that reason, and for the first time speaks of going to the family at Bethany.
His words “our friend” gently remind them that Lazarus was their friend as well as His, for they as well as He had probably been welcome guests in the well-known house.
The fact of our Lord’s knowledge of the death of Lazarus is stated by St. John without any explanation. Prom his point of view it could need none. He who needed not that any should testify of man, because of His own self-knowledge of what was in man (John 2:25), needed not that any should testify of what had passed in the chamber of His friend.
For the idea of sleep as the image of death, comp. Notes on John 8:51; Matthew 9:24, and 1 Thessalonians 4:14. It is not unfrequent in other passages of both the Old and New Testaments, and, from the time of Homer downwards, poets have spoken of sleep and death as twin-sisters.