What Does John 11:23 Mean in the King James?

Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.

John 11:23 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

THE KEY

The promise to “rise again” shares its root with “resurrection”: the rising is a return to standing.

THE MEANING

Jesus speaks into the reader’s grief with a promise that death is real but not final. The Greek verb pictures standing up, holding open a future beyond what the grave appears to settle.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

Death makes a person’s story irreversibly over.

THE ROOT

ἀναστήσεται

anastēsetai

GROWS FROM

ἵστημι

histēmi

To stand or set in place.

The verb behind “rise again” is built on the Greek word for standing. The related noun ⁨ἀνάστασις⁩ (anastasis, resurrection) carries that same rising-to-stand image, linking this promise to resurrection itself.

ALSO GROWS

stasis: A standing, position, or state.

στάσις

Its shared root makes standing the underlying image of the promised rising.

anastasis: A rising; resurrection.

ἀνάστασις

This is the same word family that names resurrection in the next verse, opening the promise beyond the verb “rise again.”

THE PATTERN

The promise of life beyond death appears as the raising of those who lie in the grave.

And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Daniel 12:2 · KJVThose resting in the dust awake, expressing the same movement from death toward renewed life.

Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,

John 5:28 · KJVThe graves do not silence the dead; they hear a voice that calls them forth.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

1 Corinthians 15:52 · KJVThe dead are raised into a changed condition, carrying the promise of rising through to its fuller expression.

THE THREAD

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

John 11:25 · KJV

The next verse names resurrection itself, ⁨ἀνάστασις⁩ (anastasis, rising), from the same root as “rise again.” The promise of rising is bound to the life Jesus names as his own.

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