The Life of Jesus

One more time they tried to arrest him, but he slipped out of their hands.

He went off again beyond the Yarden, where Yochanan had been immersing at first, and stayed there.

Many people came to him and said, “Yochanan performed no miracles, but everything Yochanan said about this man was true.”

And many people there put their trust in him.

There was a man who had fallen sick. His name was El‘azar, and he came from Beit-Anyah, the village where Miryam and her sister Marta lived.

(This Miryam, whose brother El‘azar had become sick, is the one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.)

So the sisters sent a message to Yeshua, “Lord, the man you love is sick.”

On hearing it, he said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may receive glory through it.”

Yeshua loved Marta and her sister and El‘azar;

so when he heard he was sick, first he stayed where he was two more days;

then, after this, he said to the talmidim, “Let’s go back to Y’hudah.”

The talmidim replied, “Rabbi! Just a short while ago the Judeans were out to stone you — and you want to go back there?”

Yeshua answered, “Aren’t there twelve hours of daylight? If a person walks during daylight, he doesn’t stumble; because he sees the light of this world.

But if a person walks at night, he does stumble; because he has no light with him.”

Yeshua said these things, and afterwards he said to the talmidim, “Our friend El‘azar has gone to sleep; but I am going in order to wake him up.”

The talmidim said to him, “Lord, if he has gone to sleep, he will get better.”

Now Yeshua had used the phrase to speak about El‘azar’s death, but they thought he had been talking literally about sleep.

So Yeshua told them in plain language, “El‘azar has died.

And for your sakes, I am glad that I wasn’t there, so that you may come to trust. But let’s go to him.”

Then T’oma (the name means “twin”) said to his fellow talmidim, “Yes, we should go, so that we can die with him!”

On arrival, Yeshua found that El‘azar had already been in the tomb for four days.

Now Beit-Anyah was about two miles from Yerushalayim,

and many of the Judeans had come to Marta and Miryam in order to comfort them at the loss of their brother.

So when Marta heard that Yeshua was coming, she went out to meet him; but Miryam continued sitting shiv‘ah in the house.

Marta said to Yeshua, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.