What Does John 11:17 Mean?
So when Jesus came, he found that he had already lain in the tomb four days.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.THE KEY
Even after four days in the tomb, the Greek word for “grave” names a place of remembrance, not erasure.
THE MEANING
Jesus arrives and finds Lazarus already four days in the tomb; the condition is settled, not new. The reader stands where time has gathered around what seems finished, with Jesus present at that very point. The grave remains within the reach of remembrance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a loss becomes unreachable once it has lasted beyond repair.
THE ROOT
μνημεῖον
mnēmeion
GROWS FROM
μνη-
Remembering, keeping in mind.
The word for “grave” belongs to the Greek family of remembering: it can mean a tomb or memorial. English “grave” names the place of death; the Greek also carries the sense of a place held in remembrance.
ALSO GROWS
mnēmē: memory, remembrance
μνήμη
This branch makes explicit the remembrance carried within the word for the tomb.
mnēmoneuō: remember, call to mind
μνημονεύω
This related word shows the same consonantal family at work in the act of remembering.
THE PATTERN
A grave can hold a condition for a time, but it cannot place life beyond the reach of God’s call.
Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD, Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the ground of Israel.Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear and respond to his voice,Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.THE THREAD
Therefore the crowd that was with him, when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead, bore witness.The same Greek noun translated “grave” here returns when Lazarus is called out of his tomb. The word links the place where he is found with the place from which he is summoned.
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