To waken
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ἐξυπνίζω means to rouse someone from sleep, to wake them up. " John immediately tells readers that the disciples misunderstand the statement as literal sleep, prompting Jesus to clarify plainly, "Lazarus is dead" (John 11:14).
Reader summary
Full entry for ἐξυπνίζω (G1852) · Open the biblical lexicon
ἐξυπνίζω means to rouse someone from sleep, to wake them up. " John immediately tells readers that the disciples misunderstand the statement as literal sleep, prompting Jesus to clarify plainly, "Lazarus is dead" (John 11:14).
The BSB source-word alignment has 1 aligned row for this entry. Common renderings include wake him up (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at John 11:11. Its strongest book concentrations include John (1).
ἐξυπνίζω means to rouse someone from sleep, to wake them up. Its only New Testament occurrence belongs to Jesus' announcement in John 11:11: "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up." John immediately tells readers that the disciples misunderstand the statement as literal sleep, prompting Jesus to clarify plainly, "Lazarus is dead" (John 11:14).
The word therefore sits at the center of a deliberate misunderstanding John records and then resolves, a pattern common across this Gospel. Jesus' choice of 'sleep' language for death is not evasive; it is a claim about what death actually is in light of his own coming action, a state from which he intends to wake the dead as easily as a sleeper is roused. Teachers should let the disciples' confusion do its narrative work: it sets up Jesus' unmistakably plain clarification and then his still more dramatic public raising of Lazarus.
John 11:11 is a small, easily overlooked word doing large narrative work. Jesus does not say Lazarus will be healed; he says he is going to wake him, using the ordinary language of rousing a sleeper. Scripture's language of death as sleep, awaiting a future waking, runs from Daniel 12:2 through Paul's descriptions of believers who 'have fallen asleep' in Christ (1 Cor 15:6, 20), and John 11:11 places Jesus' own authority to wake Lazarus inside that same trajectory, just before he calls Lazarus bodily out of the tomb.
After He had said this, He told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up.”
John 11:11 records Jesus' announcement, 'Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up,' the New Testament's only use of ἐξυπνίζω.
So Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead,
The disciples' misunderstanding of 'sleep' as literal rest forces Jesus to clarify directly, 'Lazarus is dead' (John 11:14), a pattern of misunderstanding-then-clarification that recurs throughout John's Gospel.
And many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, but others to shame and everlasting contempt.
Daniel 12:2 speaks of 'those who sleep in the dust of the earth' waking to everlasting life or shame, giving Old Testament background for describing death as sleep in anticipation of resurrection.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Awakening from sleep with deliberate emphasis on the completeness of rousing someone from slumber.
Awakening from sleep with deliberate emphasis on the completeness of rousing someone from slumber.
to awaken out of sleep (= ἀφυπνίζω): with accusative of person(s), Jhn.11:11.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
1 Greek text appearance shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I wake out of sleep
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How mood, tense, and voice shift the force of this verb in context.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
How this verb appears across 1 occurrences in the NT discourse index (MACULA Greek SBLGNT).
Aspect reflects grammatical form — not authorial emphasis. Participles and infinitives are verbal adjectives and nouns respectively.
Clause data: MACULA Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0) · SBLGNT (Logos/SBL, CC BY 4.0)
ἐξυπνίζω is built from this root:
John 11:11 is a small, easily overlooked word doing large narrative work. Jesus does not say Lazarus will be healed; he says he is going to wake him, using the ordinary language of rousing a sleeper. The disciples take this literally and are corrected. That correction matters because it sets the reader's expectation correctly before the raising itself: this is not resuscitation from a coma, but Jesus exercising the same authority over death that a person exercises over sleep.
Preachers can use this word to describe the confidence with which Jesus approaches Lazarus' tomb, not despair at death's finality, but the calm intention of someone about to wake a friend. This word opens a teaching doorway on Jesus' authority over death: he speaks of waking Lazarus with the same ordinary confidence someone uses to rouse a sleeping friend, previewing the authority he will display publicly at the tomb.
It gives teachers language for hope in the face of death that is neither denial nor despair but confident expectation of Christ's own waking power. It corrects readings that treat 'fallen asleep' language in Scripture as a denial of real, physical death; John 11:14 has Jesus immediately clarify Lazarus is genuinely dead, not merely resting. Frame ἐξυπνίζω as Jesus' deliberate, confidence-carrying word choice for raising Lazarus, clarified by his own plain statement that Lazarus is dead, not as evidence that death is somehow unreal.
John.11.11
Frame ἐξυπνίζω as Jesus' deliberate, confidence-carrying word choice for raising Lazarus, clarified by his own plain statement that Lazarus is dead, not as evidence that death is somehow unreal. Linguistically, ἐξυπνίζω should be allowed to name to wake someone from sleep without carrying claims the cited passages do not make.
Scripture's language of death as sleep, awaiting a future waking, runs from Daniel 12:2 through Paul's descriptions of believers who 'have fallen asleep' in Christ (1 Cor 15:6, 20), and John 11:11 places Jesus' own authority to wake Lazarus inside that same trajectory, just before he calls Lazarus bodily out of the tomb.
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