Leaving Nazareth. — The form of the name in the older MSS. is Nazara. St. Matthew records the bare fact. St. Luke (Luke 4:16-30) connects it with His rejection by the men of this very place, where He had been brought up, and their attempt upon His life. St. John (John 2:12) states a fact which implies (1) that Capernaum had not been before the home of the mother of our Lord and of His brethren, and (2) that there were ties of some kind drawing them thither for a temporary visit. The reasons for the choice of that city lie, some of them, on the surface.
(1.) The exact site of Capernaum has long been one of the vexed questions of the topography of Palestine, but the researches of the Palestine Exploration Society have identified it with the modern village of Tell-Hûm, where their excavations have disinterred the remains of an ancient building of the Roman period, which is supposed to have been the synagogue of the city; possibly, therefore, the very synagogue, built by the believing centurion (Luke 7:5), in which our Lord worshipped and taught (John 6:59). Its position on the shore of the lake, as a town with a garrison and a custom-house, made it the natural centre of the fishing-trade of the Lake of Galilee. As such, it fell in with the habits of the four first-called disciples, who, though two of them were of Bethsaida, were already partly domiciled there. (2.) It was within an easy day’s journey of Nazareth, and so admitted either of another visit thither, as if to see whether those who dwelt there were more capable of faith than they had shown themselves at first (Matthew 13:54), or, as in Matthew 12:46-50, of visits from His mother, and His brethren, when they were anxious to restrain Him from teaching that seemed to them perilous. (3.) Even the presence of the “publicans and sinners” — the latter term including Gentiles, the class of those who had flocked to the preaching of John, and were to be found in the half-Romanised city, and were not to be found in the more secluded villages — may have been one of the elements which led to the decisive choice. (4.) Lastly, St. John’s narrative supplies another link. The healing of the son of one of the Tetrarch’s officers at Capernaum (John 4:46-54) had secured there a certain degree of protection and of influence.
The chronology of John 5:1 is uncertain (see Notes there), but at some time before, or shortly after, this migration to Capernaum, we must place the visit to Jerusalem, and the miracle at Bethesda, which St. John there records.