Luke 4:16-31

FIRST VISIT TO NAZARETH RESIDENCE AT CAPERNAUM, Luke 4:16-31.

Luke sees a true propriety in selecting the first manifestation of the Lord at Nazareth, as the opening of his history of the great ministry. It was initial, ominous, typical. Here, pre-eminently, “he came to his own, and his own received him not.”

It is strenuously maintained by some commentators that there was but one visit and rejection at Nazareth. This is argued from the fact that in both accounts the same proverb is adduced, and the same reference to Jesus’s relatives is made. But that a repetition of the unwelcome visit should awaken similar trains of thought and language is perfectly natural. On the contrary, it seems scarcely probable that in Matthew and Mark the most exciting part of the affair, the attempt to hurl Jesus from the precipice, should be omitted.