What Does John 11:43 Mean?
And when he had said these things, he cried out with a great voice, Lazarus, come out!
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
And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.THE KEY
In Greek, “come forth” directs Lazarus outward: a voice names him and calls him across the tomb’s boundary.
THE MEANING
The verse stands before the reader as a scene where death is not abstracted or renamed: Jesus speaks Lazarus’s name and commands him out. Its words hold together a particular voice, a particular person, and a passage outward from the tomb.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that death is beyond the reach of address and holds the final word.
THE ROOT
ἔξω
exō
GROWS FROM
ἐξ-
The Greek preposition ἐξ (also ἐκ) means “out of,” marking movement from within to without.
The command’s direction is explicit: Lazarus is called out from the tomb. The same Greek out-word appears in words for departure, so “come forth” carries the shape of an exit as well as a summons.
ALSO GROWS
exodos: departure, a way out
ἔξοδος
Its ἐξ- prefix gives the same outward movement heard in ἔξω.
exerchomai: go out, come out
ἐξέρχομαι
It begins with the same ἐξ- and makes the movement outward a verb.
אֶלְעָזָר
ʾElʿāzār
GROWS FROM
עזר
The Hebrew root עזר means “help” or “aid”; the name Eleazar combines “God” with “has helped.”
Lazarus is the Greek form of a name rooted in the language of help: “God has helped.” The name is not just a label in this scene; the one bearing it is called from the tomb, where help takes the form of a command that life can answer.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāzar: helped, aided
עָזַר
This verb carries the same עזר consonants and names the action contained in Lazarus’s Hebrew name.
ʿēzer: help, aid
עֵזֶר
This noun shares the root and makes the name’s meaning, help, plain.
φωνῇ
phōnē
GROWS FROM
φων
The Greek stem φων- carries the sense of voice or sound.
The phrase translated “with a loud voice” centers φωνή: this is audible address, not an unspoken impulse. With ἔξω, the verse joins calling to outward movement, Lazarus is named, then directed across the tomb’s threshold.
ALSO GROWS
phōneō: sound, call
φωνέω
This verb shares φων and makes voice an act of calling.
prosphōneō: address, call to
προσφωνέω
It keeps the same φων stem within a word for addressing someone.
THE PATTERN
A voice speaks into the enclosure of death, and life is summoned across its boundary.
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.Truly, truly, I say to you, The hour is coming, and now it is, when the dead will hear and respond to the voice of the Son of God, and those who respond will live.THE THREAD
By trust Joseph, when he was ending, remembered the going out of the sons of Israel, and gave charge concerning his bones.The Greek behind “departing” is ἔξοδος (exodos), built with the same ἐξ- (“out”) as ἔξω in Jesus’s command. A person leaving a tomb echoes a people’s departure: life appears as movement out from confinement.
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