The Pharisees were frustrated. Their plan to stop Jesus was failing in front of their eyes. The people who had seen Lazarus raised "bare record" (John 12:17), and the crowd went to meet Him "for that they heard that he had done this miracle" (John 12:18). Barnes paraphrases their meaning: "All your efforts are ineffectual to stop the progress of his opinions." Gill says they were admitting that "all their wise schemes and crafty councils signified nothing." The question is a complaint spoken among themselves.

They answered their own question in the same breath: "behold, the world is gone after him" (John 12:19). No one else replied. Barnes notes where this led: "The fact that he met with such success induced them to hasten their design of putting him to death." The council had already "took counsel together for to put him to death" (John 11:53); now that plan would move faster.

The Greek verb behind "prevail" is opheleo, to profit, to gain, or be of use; the ESV renders it "you are gaining nothing." The "world" (kosmos) here is a way of saying everybody. Barnes says it is as if they said everybody, the whole city, had gone out. Gill notes that some ancient versions read "we prevail nothing," which gives the same sense. Earlier the council had feared, "If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him" (John 11:48). Now it seemed to be happening.

The Pharisees' complaint was truer than they knew. They spoke in exaggeration, yet in the very next verses Greeks come asking, "Sir, we would see Jesus" (John 12:20-21), and Jesus says that when He is lifted up He "will draw all men unto me" (John 12:32). The world really was beginning to go after Him.

The passage also shows that God's purposes do not depend on the approval of the powerful. The council had all the authority, but the raising of Lazarus spoke louder than their orders (John 12:17-18). Matthew Henry, writing on the plot against Lazarus in this chapter, observes that the success of the gospel often makes wicked men so angry "that they speak and act as if they hoped to obtain a victory over the Almighty himself."