Jesus shed tears in frustration: The contribution of dakryō and klaiō to the interpretation of John 11:35 1

Abstract

The shedding of tears of Jesus in Jn 11:35 has often been interpreted in four ways, namely: Jesus’ grief over the death of a friend, Jesus’ sadness over the reality of death in the world, Jesus’ grief over his own impending death, or Jesus’ anger because of the unbelief around him. None of these interpretations ventured into an in-depth analysis of the peculiar use of dakryō (a hapax legomenon) in Jn 11:35 within a narrative that uses klaiō three times (Jn 11:31, 332), even though both dakryō and klaiō belong to the same semantic domain. This article will explore the significance of John’s use of dakryō for the interpretation of Jn 11:35. The article suggests that the lexical shift from klaiō to dakryō signals the reader to differentiate the weeping of Jesus in Jn 11:35 from the weeping of Mary and the Ioudaioi in Jn 11:33. Through a narrative-critical analysis of the contexts of the occurrences of klaiō in the Gospel of John and dakryō in the LXX, along with a narrative-critical analysis of the Lazarus story (Jn 11:1–53), the article proposes that Jesus’ shedding of tears in Jn 11:35 is not to be interpreted in relation to mourning over death, but is rather due to the frustration of Jesus at the lack of faith around him, even by Martha and Mary, two people whom the Fourth Gospel specifically names as loved by him (Jn 11:5). Thus, the act of Jesus in Jn 11:35 may be interpreted as his shedding of tears out of frustration.