- 1 And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him. 2 And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
- 4 But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. 5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. 6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.
- Compare: Matthew 13:53-58; Luke 4:16-30
Jesus Returns Home to Kin
Here Jesus returns to his home — perhaps his home village, or perhaps it merely signals a return to Galilee from more Gentile areas, but it isn’t clear. It also isn’t clear whether he went home very often, but the welcome he receives this time suggests he didn’t. He preaches once again in the synagogue, and just as when he preached in Capernaum in chapter 1, people are astonished.
But astonished at what? In Capernaum, people were amazed at the authority he assumed when he spoke — is the same true here? Perhaps, but that isn’t obviously the case. The question “whence hath this man these things?” might mean something like “where did this guy get all these crazy ideas,” which suggests that the content of his teaching was disturbing.
After services at the synagogue, Jesus tries to perform some of his standard miracles, but they don’t work. Why? Because people here lack sufficient faith. Isn’t that odd? He certainly can’t claim to be omnipotent — and the fact that he “marvelled” at their unbelief means that he can’t be very omniscient, either. What kind of God is this, anyway?
In John 5:13 we read about a sick man who was healed by Jesus even though he had no idea who Jesus was. The man wasn’t simply ignorant of Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah, he was also ignorant of Jesus’ miracle working in other places. Obviously this man couldn’t have had much in the way of faith in Jesus — yet still he was healed. Why him but not Jesus’ relatives and friends?
Some apologists argue that doing miracles here wouldn’t have been consistent with Jesus’ wisdom and goodness. Jesus supposedly knew that miracles wouldn’t serve to convince anyone, and therefore any effort to give them “signs” would only worsen their damnation (presumably because it would entail their rejecting more and more evidence of Jesus’ divinity).
Of course, even if we accept all of that, it raises more questions. If Jesus knew that nothing good would come of his work there, why did he show up in the first place? And what kind of omnipotent, omniscient God is unable to convince barely-literate peasants of the reality of a couple of miracles? The inability to work miracles before a skeptical, cynical audience is a common hallmark of charlatans.
Sadly, the above passage has been useful to those who regard Judaism as having been superseded by Christianity. Jesus was “without honor” in his “own country,” read by some not as his home town but rather as the Jews as a whole. Thus, the unbelief of the Jews in Jesus’ divinity led to the inability of God to work miracles among them anymore and caused the grace of God to be removed from their presence.
» Continue: Was Jesus a Bastard?
