Trapp remarks that the words of Mary in this verse and of Martha in the former one show that we are all naturally dis- posed to make too much of Christ's bodily presence.
83. — [When Jesus therefore saw hery etc.~\ This is one of those verses which bring out very strongly the real humanity of our Lord, and His power to sympathize with His people. As a real man, He was specially moved when He saw Mary and the Jews weeping. As God, He had no need to hear their plaintive language, and to see their tears, in order to learn that they were afflicted. He knew perfectly all their feelings. Yet as man He was like ourselves, peculiarly stirred by the sight of sorrow; for human nature is so constituted that grief is eminently contagious. If one in a company is deeply touched, and begins to weep, it is extremely likely that others will weep also. This power of sympathy our Lord evidently had in full possession. He saio weeping and He wept.
Let us carefully remark that our Lord never changes. He did not leave behind Him His human nature when He ascended up into heaven. At this moment, at God's right hand, He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and can understand tears as well as ever. Our great High Priest is the very Friend that our souls need, able to save as God, able to feel as man. To talk of the Virgin Mary feeling for sinners more than Jesus is to say that which is ignorant and blasphemous. To teach that we can need any other priest, when Jesus is such a feeling Saviour, is to teach what is senseless and absurd.
[He groaned in spirit.] There is considerable difficulty about this expression. The word rendered " groaned," is only used five times in the New Testament. In Matt. ix. 30, and Mark i. 43, it is " straitly charged." In Mark xiv. 5, it is "murmured." Here, and at the thirty-eighth verse above, it is "groaned." Now what is precisely meant by the phrase?
(a) Some, as Ecolampadius, Brentius, Chemnitius, Flacius, and Ferus, maintain firmly that the notion of anger, indignation, and stern rebuke, is inseparable from the word " groaned." They think that the latent idea is the deep and holy indignation with which our Lord was moved at the sight of the ravages which death had made, and the misery sin and the devil had brought into the world. They say it implies the stern and righteous wrath with which the deliverer of a country tyran- nized over and trampled down by a rebel regards the desolation and destruction which the rebel has caused.
(&) Some add to this view the idea that " in spirit" means that our Lord groaned through the Holy Ghost, or by the Divine Spirit which dwelt in Him without measure, or by the power of His Godhead.
(c) Some, as Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Euthymius, think " groaned in spirit " means that Christ rebuked His own