Luke 4:23-27 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And he said unto them, &c.— When our Lord came to Galilee, with a view to exercise his ministry, he did not go to Nazareth: on the contrary, he passed by it, and went straight to Cana, which lay not far from Sidon. See John 2:1. This exasperated the Nazarenes. Besides, he had not performed any miracle in their town; far less had he done any like that which they heard he had performed in Capernaum, where he cured the nobleman's sonwithout stirring from Cana. It seems they thought, since their townsman could so easily give health to the sick at a distance, there ought not to have been so much as one diseased person in all Nazareth. At least our Lord's own words suggest this conjecture: He said unto them, Ye surely say to me, (for so it should be rendered) ye apply to me this proverb,—which was a common one among the easterns, Physician, heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country, plainly alluding to the cure of the nobleman's son; as if they had said, "Since thou possessest powers so great, and art able to cure sick persons at a distance, we cannot help thinking, that in thine absence thou oughtest to have recovered the sick of thy native city, rather than those of any other town; it being expected of every physician, that he will bestow his healing virtue and his art upon his own relations and friends who need it, sooner than upon strangers." In answer to their ill-natured whispers, Jesus told them plainly, that his character would suffer nothing by their rejecting him; because it had ever been the lot of prophets to be despised in their own country, Luke 4:24 and see on Matthew 13:57. And with relation to his having wrought no miracle of healing in their town, he insinuated, that the very heathens were more worthy of favours of this sort than they, to such a pitch of wickedness had they proceeded; in which respect they resembled their ancestors, whose great sins God reproved by sending his prophets to work miracles for heathens, rather than for them, in a time of generalcalamities, Luke 4:25-27. By putting them thus in mind of Elijah's miracle in behalf of the widow of Sarepta, a heathen inhabitant of a heathen city, in a time of famine, while many of Israel were suffered to starve; and of Elijah's miracleupon Naaman, the Syrian leper, while many lepers in Israel remained uncleansed; he shewed them both the sin and the punishment of their ancestors, and left it to themselves to make the application. St. James speaks of the same period of time, that the heavens were shut up in the days of Elijah, ch. Luke 5:17 as our Lord does, Luke 4:25 which is grounded either on our Lord's authority here, or was a circumstance, probably, established by tradition: for in both places it is spoken of as a thing well known; nor can we doubt but the account is very exact, though the time is not determined in the Old Testament. Dr. Lightfoot and others have observed, that there is somewhat remarkable in this circumstance of time, as it agrees with the continuance of Christ's public ministry, that as Elijah shut up heaven by his prayers, so that it rained not upon the earth for the space of three years and six months; so from the baptism to the death of Christ the heavens were opened for a like space of time, when his doctrine dropped as the rain, and his speech distilled as the dew. God sent Elijah to Sarepta, a Gentile city in the coasts of Sidon, and so made him the first prophet that was ever sent among the Gentiles; and when our Lord himself went among the Gentiles, it was into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, to shew mercy to a poor woman, as Elijah had done to a poor widow; thereby giving a tacit intimation of the mercy intended to be shewn to the Gentiles. See the note on Matthew 13:58.