Matthew 13:54

When he was come into his own country. — The visit to Nazareth, here recorded in almost-identical terms with Mark 6:1, has so many points of resemblance with the narrative of Luke 4:16 that many critics have supposed it to be a less complete account of the same fact. On this assumption, the narrative must be misplaced in its relation to other facts in one or other of the Gospels. A dislocation of some kind must indeed be admitted in any case, as St. Mark places it after the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter, and makes that event follow the cure of the Gadarene demoniac, and places that on the next day after the first use of parables. We are compelled to admit, as before in the Notes on Matthew 8:1, the almost entire absence of any trustworthy notes of chronological sequence, beyond the grouping, in some cases, of a few conspicuous facts. In comparing, however, St. Matthew and St. Mark with St. Luke, there seems no sufficient ground for hastily assuming identity. The third Gospel places the visit which it narrates, at the very beginning of our Lord’s work, and as giving the reason of His removal to Capernaum. Here, there is no outburst of violent enmity such as we find there, but simple amazement. It seems, therefore, more probable that we have here a short account (short and imperfect, it may be, because our Lord went without His disciples) of another effort to bring the men of Nazareth to acknowledge Him, if not as the Christ, at least as a Prophet. The circumstances of the case in St. Matthew’s record suggest another motive as, at least, possible. He had recently, as in Matthew 12:48, when His mother and His brethren had come in their eager anxiety to interrupt His work, spoken in words that seemed to repel them to a distance from Him. What if this visit were meant to show that, though as a Prophet He could not brook that interruption, home affections were not dead in Him, that His heart still yearned over His brethren and His townsmen, and that He sought to raise them to a higher life? On comparing the account here with that in St. Luke, it would seem almost certain that there was now a less direct assertion of His claims as the Christ than there had been before — a proclamation of the laws of the kingdom rather than of His own position in it. And so the impression is one of wonder at His wisdom, not of anger or scorn at what He claims to be.