“And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.”
He went in and said to them, why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep — the statement that the child is not dead but asleep is simultaneously true and confusing. Jesus is not denying the biological death that has occurred; he is speaking from his own perspective about what is about to happen: for Jesus, this death is temporary, a sleep from which he is about to wake her. The mourners' inability to understand this (they laugh at him in verse 40) communicates the gap between their frame (death is permanent) and Jesus' frame (death is temporary when the Son of God is present).
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