We have all of us, I suppose, had experience of desires for the removal of bitterness or sorrows, or for the fulfilment of expectations and wishes, which we believed, on the best evidence that we could find, to be in accordance with His will, and which we have been able to make prayers out of, in true faith and submission, which prayers have had to be offered over and over and over again, and no answer has come, It is part of the method of Providence that the lifting away of the burden and the coming of the desires should be a hope deferred.
The Evangelist will have us learn a lesson, which reaches far beyond the instance in hand, and casts light on many dark places. Perhaps John’s scrupulous carefulness in pointing out that His love was Christ’s reason for His quiescence may reflect a remembrance of the doubts that had crept over the minds of himself and his brethren during these two days of strange inaction. How strange it must have appeared to the disciples themselves that He made no sign of movement, notwithstanding the message. How these two sisters must have looked down the rocky road that led up from Jericho during those four weary days, to see if there were any signs of His coming.
MARTHA MEANING IN BIBLE FULL
I do not know that any of them are more significant and more full of illumination with regard to the ways of divine providence than the instance before us. John is always very particular in his use of that word ‘therefore,’ and he points out many a subtle and beautiful connection of cause and effect by his employment of it. Christ did not remain still, therefore, in order to work a greater miracle by raising Lazarus from the dead than He would have done by healing, but He stayed-strange as it would appear-for reasons closely connected with the highest well-being of all the beloved three, and because He loved them. Consequently the probability is that, when our Lord had the message, the man was dead. If, therefore, to the two days on which He abode still after the receipt of the news, we add the day which the messengers took to reach Him and the day which He occupied in travelling, we get the four days since which Lazarus had been laid in his grave. The distance from that village to the probable place of Christ’s abode, when He received the message, was about a day’s journey. We learn from a later verse of this chapter that Lazarus had been dead four days when Christ reached Bethany. It will be observed that in this verse, as in John 11:19 et seq., Martha takes the first place as the elder sister. In the language of the Evangelist the other word is no less so. In the language of the sisters, whose hearts are moved by the brother’s illness, the word of fullest emotion is natural. John 20:2 John 21:15 et seq.) The difference here is not to be explained, as it frequently has been, by the difference in the persons who were the objects of the love but by the difference of the persons whose words we read. There the word signifies the love of tender affection here the word, means the love of chosen friendship. The word rendered “loved” here is different from that in John 11:3. The most probable explanation is that which connects John 11:5-7 together, and makes the love the motive for going into Judæa again. The fact of His abiding two days where He was, seems indeed opposed to the thought of His special love for the family. Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(5) Now Jesus loved Martha.-It is not easy to see the connection of this verse with that which precedes, or with that which immediately follows.
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