John 11:1. Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus, of Bethany, from the village of Mary and her sister Martha. The scene of the miracle to be related in this chapter is Bethany, a village (now small and poor) about two miles south-east of Jerusalem over the southern shoulder of the Mount of Olives. Neither here nor in chap. John 1:44 is the use of the two prepositions ‘of' and ‘from' intended to point to two different places, one the present abode, the other the original home; but Bethany itself is ‘the village of Mary and her sister Martha.' The circumstance referred to in John 11:2 probably accounts for the prior mention of Mary, for Martha appears to have been the elder sister (see Luke 10:38). The name Lazarus is Hebrew (a shortened form of Eleazar) but with a Greek termination.

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Old Testament