These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.
These things said he: and after that he saith, Our friend Lazarus - illustrious title from such Lips! To Abraham only did the Lord under the Old Testament accord this, and not until hundreds of years after his death (2 Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8); to which, as something very unusual, our attention is called in the New Testament (James 2:23). When Jesus came in the flesh, His forerunner applied this name, in a certain official sense, to himself (John 3:29); and into the same fellowship the Lord's chosen disciples are declared to have come (John 15:13-15). Lampe well remarks that the phrase here employed - "our friend Lazarus" - means more than "he whom Thou lovest" (John 11:3); because it implies that Christ's affection was reciprocated by Lazarus. Sleepeth, х kekoimeetai (G2837)] - or 'has fallen asleep;' but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Our Lord had been told only that Lazarus was "sick." But the change which his two days' delay had produced is here tenderly alluded to. Doubtless, His heart was all the while with His dying, and now dead "friend." The symbol of "sleep" for death is common to all languages, and familiar to us in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, however, a higher meaning is put into it, in relation to believers in Jesus (see the note at 1 Thessalonians 4:14) - a sense hinted at, and pretty clearly too, in Psalms 17:15, as Luthardt remarks; and the "awaking out of sleep" acquires a corresponding sense far transcending bare resuscitation.