NOTES for Joh 11:1-45
"Today Bethany, rejoicing in the rising of Lazarus, foretells the Resurrection of Christ the Giver of Life..." It is often said that there is, so to speak, this "artistry" in the Gospel: spokesman-figures like John the Baptist, and paired events such as the raising of Lazarus, meant to set off the main event; in other words, everything follows the laws of literary texts. But this is deeply wrong. It can be seen fully only with the eyes of the heart, but still let us try to notice some very concrete details. Christ rose on the third day. The Lord raised Lazarus on the fourth.
Why is the fourth day mentioned? It turns out that there is a reason quite concretely conditioned by culture. Let us turn to David Stern's book, "Jewish New Testament Commentary," p. 269: "Before medicine learned to distinguish coma from death, people were sometimes mistakenly buried alive. Jewish burial customs tried to rule out every possibility of such a terrible mistake. According to a post-Talmudic tractate compiled in the eighth century (by the Jewish calendar, our note), 'we go out to the cemetery and check the dead for three days, and we do not fear being suspected of walking in the ways of the Amorites (that is, in superstitious rites). Once a buried man was checked and found to be alive; he lived another 25 years and then died. Another such man lived, and five children were born to him before he died' (Semachot 8:1)."
And the fact that four days had passed means something very simple: the time for the prescribed ritual checking had already expired. Lazarus was truly dead. Whether the Lord could have been in Bethany before that time or not, whether He deliberately waited or not, is not a question for our mind. That is how it was. There is not a trace here of artistry, symbolism of numbers, coincidences, multiples, and so on, the kind always found in "mystagogical" literature. There is only the living fabric of life.