John 4:43

THE NOBLEMAN'S SON.

This lesson, though it follows the last without. break in John's Gospel, is thought to be separated in time by. short interval from the last. It will be noted that Jesus, on leaving Samaria, does not return to his old home at Nazareth, the home of his mother and brethren, but goes to Cana, where he made the water wine, the home of Nathanael or Bartholomew, one of his disciples. It is well known that John did not aim to give. full history of the words and deeds of Jesus (John 21:25), but rather to supply what had been omitted by Matthew, Mark and Luke. It is thought by many that the teaching in the synagogue of Nazareth, related in Luke 4:16-30, occurred at this time, immediately after his departure from Samaria. It certainly occurred early in his ministry, and it is probable that it was at this time. If this view is correct, Jesus passed. Sabbath, soon after his sojourn at Sychar, at his old home, and attended the synagogue where he had often worshiped; was handed the Scripture to read the lesson of the day, as. teacher of established fame; read from Isaiah and spoke words that were at first listened to with profound attention, but soon with disapproval; and when he rebuked sternly the implied demand that he should work. miracle for their gratification, they rose in an angry mob and endeavored to take his life. Passing from their midst, by the exercise of. power, either moral or supernatural, which he often exerted, he turned his back on Nazareth never to return. "For," says John, "Jesus himself testified, that. prophet hath no honor in his own country." Therefore he went into other parts of Galilee. This view is made more probable by the fact that in going from Sychar to Cana, Jesus would pass either through, or very near to Nazareth, it lying almost directly between the two former places. See also Matthew 13:57; Mark 6:4, and Luke 4:24, in each of which passages the same statement is made as in verse 44 by John, and in each case refers to the rejection of Christ by the people of Nazareth.

The return of Jesus brings him once more in that part of Palestine in which his youth was passed and where, until the last year of his ministry, he did most of his teachings and wrought most of his miracles. Though Nazareth might be filled with narrow prejudice against the exalted claims of the boy who had grown up in the humble carpenter's family, whom it had seen so often playing on its hills, or had beheld in his manhood working at the bench, and who, it knew, had never attended any of the great schools of Jewish theology, yet the Galileans, as. body, were far more disposed to listen with favor to his teachings than the proud Jews of the national capital. Though Galilee was not free from its conflicts, yet it furnished Christ all the apostles but one, and that one proved. traitor, and we find evidence that his teachings exerted. profound effect on the Galilean mind in the fact that, after his resurrection, "five hundred brethren at once" were permitted to behold the risen Lord in Galilee. The Galileans, remote from the influence of the temple, and brought into closer contact with Gentile influences, were less prejudiced and narrow, more simple in their faith, and of more open hearts than the Jerusalem Jews. It was among this teachable people that the Savior seemed to love to linger; there was Capernaum "his own city," there he fed the five thousand who attended his ministry on two different occasions, there the transfiguration occurred, there the enthusiastic multitudes sought to make him. king by force, and when on the last Sunday of his earthly ministry he made his entry as. king into Jerusalem, the multitude who surrounded him were mostly Galileans.

43. After two days he departed thence and went into Galilee.

Two days were spent delightfully in sowing the seed of the kingdom in the "good ground" of the Samaritan hearts. Then he went on to Galilee, for which he had started, and which he had left about eight months before. Luke 4:14-15, which probably refers to this time, makes it probable that he spent. short time teaching elsewhere before reaching Nazareth.