Then said Jesus unto them plainly,.... Without a figure, when he perceived they did not understand him, and yet it was a very easy and usual metaphor which he had made use of; but such was the present stupidity of their minds, that they did not take in his meaning: wherefore, without reproaching them with it, he said to them in so many words,
Lazarus is dead. The Persic version reads, "Lazarus is dead indeed", as he really was.