Saturday, June 18, 2011

John 4:43-45. Back to Galilee

After the two days he left for Galilee. For Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country. When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.

This transitional; passage has been surprisingly controversial. JC Ryle offers six different explanations and later commentators still more.

It seems strange that Jesus would return to Galilee where he would expect not to be well received. However, it was really only in Nazareth that this was so; he was well received in Cana, and this passage tells us that the Galileans welcomed him (at least at first). Perhaps he returned because the adulation in Jerusalem was too heady and he was not yet ready for the blaze of publicity. He had much yet to teach his disciples.

It was quite common at that time for people from Galilee to travel up to the major feasts in Jerusalem, (remember Jesus' family going up when he was 12) and there were plenty of people in Galilee who would have seen Jesus there. Jesus must have been a quite famous person in his time so that it could be said by St Paul in Acts that these things were not done in a corner. (ACTS 25:26)

No comments: