What Does John 11:2 Mean?
It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was weak.
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
(It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)THE KEY
John introduces Lazarus through a Greek word for being without strength, while Mary is remembered through the touch she gave.
THE MEANING
This line holds Lazarus’s illness beside Mary’s embodied act of care: she anoints the Lord and wipes his feet with her hair. It speaks now to the reader by letting vulnerability remain bodily and care remain visible in the same moment.
THE ROOT
ἠσθένει
ēsthenei
GROWS FROM
σθεν-
sthen-
Strength, vigor. The privative prefix ἀ- (a-, “without”) combines with σθεν- (sthen-, “strength”) in this word family.
The Greek word for Lazarus’s sickness belongs to a family built around strength, giving the verse’s plain illness language an added layer: his body is weakened. The English word “sick” does not carry that shared root into view.
ALSO GROWS
sthenos: Strength, vigor
σθένος
This supplies the strength at the center of the word family used to describe Lazarus’s weakened condition.
astheneia: Weakness, illness, infirmity
ἀσθένεια
This noun names weakness and illness through the same σθεν- (sthen-, strength) family.
asthenēs: Weak, feeble, ill
ἀσθενής
This adjective shows that the verb used of Lazarus belongs to a wider family describing weakness.
THE PATTERN
Scripture repeatedly lets a person’s actions become part of how that person is recognized and remembered.
And Boaz answered and said to her, It has been fully told to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband, and how you left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and walked to a people you did not know yesterday or the day before.Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas, the gazelle. This woman was full of good works and gifts of compassion, which she kept on doing.Truly, I say to you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be spoken of for a remembrance of her.THE THREAD
And he said to me, "My favor is enough for you, for strength is carried to its end in weakness." Most gladly, then, I will boast all the more in my weaknesses, so that the strength of the Anointed One may pitch its tent over me.John uses ἠσθένει (ēsthenei, “was weak or ill”) for Lazarus, while Paul uses ἀσθένεια (astheneia, “weakness or infirmity”) from the same σθεν- (sthen-, “strength”) family. The shared word family lets Lazarus’s illness and Paul’s naming of weakness echo through the underlying language of strength.
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