He entered into a certain village. — The identity of the two names that follow, and, we may add, of the characters connected with the names, leaves hardly room for doubt that the village thus spoken of was Bethany. (See Note on Matthew 21:1.) St. Luke’s reason for not giving the name is probably connected with the singular reticence of the first three Gospels as to the family of Lazarus. St. Matthew (Matthew 26:7) and St. Mark (Mark 14:3) narrate the anointing, which we learn from John 12:3 to have been the act of Mary, but suppress her name. St. Luke gives, in this section, a characteristic anecdote of the two sisters, but suppresses the name of the village in which they lived. None of the first three Gospels name Lazarus, though there seems some reason to believe that the first two narrate a fact in which he took a prominent part (see Note on Matthew 19:16), and that the third gives the name with a special reference to him. (See Note on Luke 16:20.) A probable explanation is that, both on spiritual and perhaps social grounds, reticence as to the family of Bethany was, for a time, generally maintained among the disciples of Jerusalem, and that St. Luke, coming at a later period, and finding his way, as a physician, into the company of devout women, named one fact that seemed of special interest. (See Introduction, and Note on chap Luke 8:1.)
Martha. — The name does not appear in the Old Testament, and is Aramaic rather than Hebrew. It has a point of contact with secular history in having been borne by the Syrian prophetess who accompanied the Roman general, Marius, in his Numidian campaigns. Its meaning, as the feminine of Maran (= Lord), and therefore equivalent to the Greek Kyria, suggests the possible identity of the sister of Lazarus with the elect Kyria (or elect Lady), to whom St. John addressed his second Epistle. (See Note on 2 John 1:1.)