John 11:18-19 - Exposition

Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem . This geographical observation is introduced to explain the following verse. Meyer and Alford think that the use of the past tense, ἢν , may be perfectly justified in making reference to past events; yet, since John is the only New Testament writer who uses it, the usage may have been adopted by him because, at the time when he wrote his Gospel, Bethany had been for the time destroyed with Jerusalem itself. The construction is peculiar: ὡς ἀπὸ . Many think that it is to be understood— about fifteen stadia from it— a kind of trajection of the preposition; but Winer thinks that it points to the spot where the fifteen stadia might be supposed to terminate, i . e . "lying off at the end of the fifteen stadia," and so giving an adverbial force to the preposition: and he adds a long list of similar constructions in later Greek writers. The stadium was 606.75 feet—less than the eighth of an English mile; the distance was therefore between a mile and a half and a mile and three quarters. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary. "The Jews" is a phrase generally, not uniformly, used by John to denote those permanently hostile to our Lord, and often of the upper and ruling classes. These, therefore, had one more trial of faith, one further opportunity of recognizing his glory. Many of them came £ to Martha and Mary . They came to comfort them, according to ordinary usage among the Jews after bereavement. This ceremony often lasted seven days. Concerning (their £ ) brother. We cling to earthly love. The gush of strong affection that mourners lavish on the dead deepens their love to one another, and the praises of the departed often gild and almost pierce the veil itself. The fact that many Jews should have taken the trouble to journey nearly two miles to comfort the bereaved sisters shows that the family at Bethany was one of some wealth, position, and importance (cf. Matthew 26:6-13 ). If so, it is exceedingly unlikely that the narrative stands in any relation to the parable of the rich man and the beggar.