Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.
Jesus therefore, again groaning in himself - in the sense explained at John 11:33. But whereas there the rising emotion which He laboured to check was that of sorrow for suffering and its cause, here it is of sorrow, or something stronger, at the suspicious spirit which breathed through this speech. Yet here, too, the former emotion was the deeper of the two, now that His eye was about to rest on the spot where lay, in the still horrors of death, His friend.
Cometh to the grave. It ('Now it') was a cave - the cavity, natural or artificial, of a rock. This, with the number of condoling visitors from Jerusalem, and the costly ointment with which Mary afterward anointed Jesus at Bethany, all go to show that the family were in good circumstances.
And a stone lay upon it - or 'against it;' for as the Oriental sepulchres of the better classes were hewn out of the rock, the slab which shut them in might be laid either horizontally or perpendicularly.