Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Crowds of the Jerusalem Jews hastened to Bethany, not so much to see Jesus, whom they knew to be there, as to see dead Lazarus alive; and this, issuing in their accession to Christ, led to a plot against the life of Lazarus also, as the only means of arresting the triumphs of Jesus (see Joh 12:19) --to such a pitch had these chief priests come of diabolical determination to shut out the light from themselves, and quench it from the earth!