But one thing is needful. — Some of the better MSS. present a singular various-reading, There is need of few things, or of one only. It is obvious that this might be taken either literally or spiritually. They might mean (1) that He who spoke, and the others who were coming, needed not the many things about which Martha was troubled, but a few only, or even but a single dish, to supply their wants; or (2) that the true life of men needed but a few things, such as faith, obedience, the fear of God, or even but one only, the devout and intent love which Mary was then showing. The latter interpretation is clearly most in harmony with our Lord’s usual teaching, though the former has something like a parallel in the teaching of Luke 10:7 of this very chapter. It is not improbable that our Lord designedly used words which had an outer and an inner meaning, the latter intended chiefly for those who “had ears to hear.” There is a singular coincidence between the words here spoken to Martha and those addressed to the young ruler (“one thing thou lackest”), whom we have seen reason to identify with her brother. (See Note on Matthew 19:16.) The omission of “few things” in the received text, may have originated in the wish to give an exclusive prominence to the higher meaning.
Mary hath chosen that good part. — The Greek noun is very nearly the same as that which the younger son, in Luke 15:12, uses for “the portion of goods,” the good part or portion here being nothing less than the eternal life which is the gift of God. Here too we may trace something approaching to a half-playful mingling of the higher and lower meanings of the word which was used in the Greek version of the Old Testament at once for Benjamin’s mess, i.e., portion of food (Genesis 43:34), and for God as the “portion” of His people (Psalms 73:26). Even on the assumption that our Lord spoke in Aramaic, and not in Greek, a like play upon the word would have been equally possible.
The two sisters have come to be regarded as the representatives respectively of the active and the contemplative forms of the religious life, and there is, of course, a certain measure of truth in this view. On the other hand, however, it must be remembered that Martha’s activity, with its manifold distractions, was not Christian activity, and that Mary’s contemplation passed, when the time came for it, as in John 12:3, into full and intense activity. The contrast is rather that between singleness of heart and the character which St. James describes as “double-minded” (James 1:8), i.e., divided in its affections.