“weeping” = klaio = to weep audibly out of pain and grief; a loud expression of pain or sorrow; to wail or lament; to cry as a child; to mourn for the dead. She and the Jews following her were wailing loudly in their grief, but this is not the liturgical form of wailing practiced by professional mourners; the weeping here came from their loss and was expressed noisily and without restraint, as was the custom of the day.

“deeply moved” (NIV) = “groaned” (KJV) = embrimaomai = derived from brimaomai which in classical Greek is used of the snorting of horses. Embrimaomai, when spoken of men usually means to fret or be painfully moved and then to express indignation or anger against what moved that person, but here there is no sense of indignation or rebuke. Jesus was deeply moved because of the present and future circumstances and groaned in His spirit because of His distress. Compare an audible groan due to distress and one that comes in the spirit; what would the second be like? What would it feel like? The Holy Spirit through John here gives us insight into the heart of Jesus.

“troubled” literally means is “troubled himself”. The word “troubled” is tarasso which means to agitate, to cause one inward commotion and take away calmness of mind. Here Jesus is not troubled by outward circumstances; He stirs Himself up within. He troubled Himself. Faced with death which was a result of the fall of man, Jesus disquiets Himself intentionally. Lightfoot observes that “the expression used here implies that He now voluntarily and deliberately accepts and makes his own the emotion and the experience from which it is His purpose to deliver men.” Of His own free will, Jesus has entered into the griefs and pain of man. Morgan states, “He made Himself responsible and gathered up into His own personality all the misery resulting from sin, represented in a dead man and broken-hearted people round about Him. This was voluntary identification with the sorrow that issues from sin, and was the outcome of righteous wrath against the sin that caused the sorrow. It is a most remarkable unveiling of the heart of Jesus.”

As we shall soon see, Jesus wept for Lazarus, but here He shows anger and revulsion at the cause of death, which is sin. This is a view, not only into the heart of Jesus, but also into the heart of His Father. God hates sin and is repulsed and angered by it, but He also has great pity for us and the condition in which we are found. In fact, that is the very reason that Jesus took on human form and came to this planet.