¹ There was a man named Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister, Martha, and he was ill.

² It was the same Mary, the sister of the sick man Lazarus, who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair.

³ The sisters sent this message to Jesus, 'Lord, the man you love is ill.'

⁴ On receiving the message, Jesus said, 'This sickness will not end in death, but it is for God's glory so that through it the Son of God may be glorified.'

⁵ Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,

⁶ yet when he heard that he was ill he stayed where he was for two more days

⁷ before saying to the disciples, 'Let us go back to Judaea.'

⁸ The disciples said, 'Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews were trying to stone you; are you going back there again?'

⁹ Jesus replied: Are there not twelve hours in the day? No one who walks in the daytime stumbles, having the light of this world to see by;

¹⁰ anyone who walks around at night stumbles, having no light as a guide.

¹¹ He said that and then added, 'Our friend Lazarus is at rest; I am going to wake him.'

¹² The disciples said to him, 'Lord, if he is at rest he will be saved.'

¹³ Jesus was speaking of the death of Lazarus, but they thought that by 'rest' he meant 'sleep';

¹⁴ so Jesus put it plainly, 'Lazarus is dead;

¹⁵ and for your sake I am glad I was not there because now you will believe. But let us go to him.'

¹⁶ Then Thomas -- known as the Twin -- said to the other disciples, 'Let us also go to die with him.'

¹⁷ On arriving, Jesus found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days already.

¹⁸ Bethany is only about two miles from Jerusalem,

¹⁹ and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.

²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus was coming she went to meet him. Mary remained sitting in the house.

²¹ Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,

²² but even now I know that God will grant whatever you ask of him.'

²³ Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise again.'

²⁴ Martha said, 'I know he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day.'

²⁵ Jesus said: I am the resurrection. Anyone who believes in me, even though that person dies, will live,

²⁶ and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?

²⁷ 'Yes, Lord,' she said, 'I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into this world.'

²⁸ When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in a low voice, 'The Master is here and wants to see you.'

²⁹ Hearing this, Mary got up quickly and went to him.

³⁰ Jesus had not yet come into the village; he was still at the place where Martha had met him.

³¹ When the Jews who were in the house comforting Mary saw her get up so quickly and go out, they followed her, thinking that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

³² Mary went to Jesus, and as soon as she saw him she threw herself at his feet, saying, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.'

³³ At the sight of her tears, and those of the Jews who had come with her, Jesus was greatly distressed, and with a profound sigh he said,

³⁴ 'Where have you put him?' They said, 'Lord, come and see.'

³⁵ Jesus wept;

³⁶ and the Jews said, 'See how much he loved him!'

³⁷ But there were some who remarked, 'He opened the eyes of the blind man. Could he not have prevented this man's death?'

³⁸ Sighing again, Jesus reached the tomb: it was a cave with a stone to close the opening.

³⁹ Jesus said, 'Take the stone away.' Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him, 'Lord, by now he will smell; this is the fourth day since he died.'

⁴⁰ Jesus replied, 'Have I not told you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?'

⁴¹ So they took the stone away. Then Jesus lifted up his eyes and said: Father, I thank you for hearing my prayer.

⁴² I myself knew that you hear me always, but I speak for the sake of all these who are standing around me, so that they may believe it was you who sent me.

⁴³ When he had said this, he cried in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!'

⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with strips of material, and a cloth over his face. Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him, let him go free.'

⁴⁵ Many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what he did, believed in him,

⁴⁶ but some of them went to the Pharisees to tell them what Jesus had done.

⁴⁷ Then the chief priests and Pharisees called a meeting. 'Here is this man working all these signs,' they said, 'and what action are we taking?

⁴⁸ If we let him go on in this way everybody will believe in him, and the Romans will come and suppress the Holy Place and our nation.'

⁴⁹ One of them, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, said, 'You do not seem to have grasped the situation at all;

⁵⁰ you fail to see that it is to your advantage that one man should die for the people, rather than that the whole nation should perish.'

⁵¹ He did not speak in his own person, but as high priest of that year he was prophesying that Jesus was to die for the nation-

⁵² and not for the nation only, but also to gather together into one the scattered children of God.

⁵³ From that day onwards they were determined to kill him.

⁵⁴ So Jesus no longer went about openly among the Jews, but left the district for a town called Ephraim, in the country bordering on the desert, and stayed there with his disciples.

⁵⁵ The Jewish Passover was drawing near, and many of the country people who had gone up to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves

⁵⁶ were looking out for Jesus, saying to one another as they stood about in the Temple, 'What do you think? Will he come to the festival or not?'

⁵⁷ The chief priests and Pharisees had by now given their orders: anyone who knew where he was must inform them so that they could arrest him.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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