<p>11:14 <i>Then Jesus said to them plainly: Lazarus is dead</i>- See on :12 <i>Lord, if he is fallen asleep, he will recover. </i>Was there a sense of frustration in the tone of the Lord, that they hadn't 'got it' when He had spoken of Lazarus sleeping? I like to think not, but rather the gentleness of a parent explaining something a second time but in more simple language. It makes a good exercise to think what tone of voice the Lord spoke in whenever we read His reported speech. We also sense a relief amongst the disciples, that now their Lord was talking to them on their own level. We get the same feeling at Jn. 16:25,29: &quot;These things have I spoken to you in figurative language. The hour comes, when I shall no longer speak to you in figurative language, but shall show you plainly about the Father... His disciples said: Now you speak plainly&quot;. John's Gospel records the Lord speaking in &quot;figurative language&quot;, to the point that the Jews demanded He tell them &quot;plainly&quot; whether He was Messiah (Jn. 10:24); the other Gospels tend to focus on His 'plain speaking', and the same word is found in Mk. 8:32 for how Jesus &quot;spoke plainly&quot; (AV &quot;openly&quot;). In this sense, the Lord insisted that He had 'spoken plainly' to the Jewish world (Jn. 18:20). Higher critics like to imagine that the words of Jesus recorded in John were never spoken by Him because they are so different in tone to those recorded in the Synoptics. It could appear that we are being presented with two different personalities, the Jesus of John and the Jesus of the Synoptics. I don't accept this; rather does the evidence in John suggest that He spoke in two different styles, &quot;figurative&quot; which John tends to record and &quot;plainly&quot;, and the disciples struggled to understand the &quot;figurative&quot; parts. Just as we do. But see on :16.</p>