The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions enraged Jesus because it brought poignantly home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness, its “violent tyranny” as Calvin (on verse 38) phrases it. In Mary’s grief, he “contemplates” — still to adopt Calvin’s words (on verse 33), — “the general misery of the whole human race” and burns with rage against the oppressor of men.

One of B. B. Warfield’s most profound and widely read essays is “On the Emotional Life of Our Lord” first published in 1912. In the essay (originally written for a Princeton Theological Seminary faculty publication and republished many times since), Warfield considers all of those instances in the gospel accounts in which Jesus demonstrates deep and abiding emotions. It is at once a beautiful and moving essay, while at the same time a powerful statement that Christ’s true human nature brings forth true human emotions—ranging from compassion to anger. You can download the essay for free here, but there are new published versions (in booklet form with updated text and with introductions) here and here.

Since we are now in Easter week, I thought it would be a good time to consider Warfield’s discussion of Jesus’s anger upon learning of the death of his dear friend, Lazarus.

Warfield writes,

The same term [for anger] occurs again in John’s narrative of our Lord’s demeanor at the grave of his beloved friend Lazarus (John 11:33, 38). When Jesus saw Mary weeping — or rather “wailing,” for the term is a strong one and implies the vocal expression of the grief — and the Jews which accompanied her also “wailing,” we are told, as our English version puts it, that “he groaned in the spirit and was troubled”; and again, when some of the Jews, remarking on his own manifestation of grief in tears, expressed their wonder that he who had opened the eyes of the blind man could not have preserved Lazarus from death, we are told that Jesus “again groaned in himself.”

But is “groaning,” as in the Authorized Version translation too tame?

The natural suggestion of the word “groan” is, however, that of pain or sorrow, not disapprobation; and this rendering of the term in question is therefore misleading. It is better rendered in the only remaining passage in which it occurs in the New Testament, Mark 14:5, by “murmured,” though this is much too weak a word to reproduce its implications. In that passage it is brought into close connection with a kindred term which determines its meaning. We read: “But there were some that had indignation among themselves . . . and they murmured against her.” Their feeling of irritated displeasure expressed itself in an outburst of temper. The margin of our Revised Version at John 11:33, 38, therefore, very properly proposes that we should for “groaned” in these passages, substitute “moved with indignation,” although that phrase too is scarcely strong enough.

We all know that “Jesus wept” is the shortest verse in the New Testament. But Warfield says “wept” will not do!

What John tells us, in point of fact, is that Jesus approached the grave of Lazarus, in a state, not of uncontrollable grief, but of irrepressible anger.

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