Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Luke 7:11

And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.

11-17. The raising of the Son of the Widow of Nain.

11. the day after ] If the reading be right we must understand , ‘day.’ Some MSS. (ABL, &c.) read , which would give a wider limit of time. In Luk 8:1 we have , and it must be admitted that if be the right reading it is unique. For in Luk 9:37, is supplied; and in Act 21:1; Act 25:17; Act 27:18, is omitted. There is no chronological difficulty about the event taking place the ‘next day,’ as I have shewn in my Life of Christ, I. 285. St Luke alone, with his characteristic tenderness, preserves for us this narrative.

into a city called Nain ] In the tribe of Issachar. The name means ‘lovely,’and it deserves the name from its site on the north-west slope of Jebel el Duhy, or Little Hermon, not far from Endor, and full in view of Tabor and the hills of Zebulon. It is twenty-five miles from Capernaum, and our Lord, starting in the cool of the very early morning, as Orientals always do, would reach it before noon. It is now a squalid and wretched village still bearing the name of Nein.

many of his disciples went with, him, and much people ] More literally, ‘there were accompanying Him His disciples, in considerable numbers, and a large multitude.’ In this first year of His ministry, before the deadly opposition to Him had gathered head, while as yet the Pharisees and leaders had not come to an open rupture with Him, and He had not sifted His followers by ‘hard sayings,’ our Lord was usually accompanied by adoring crowds.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

A city called Nain – This city was in Galilee, in the boundaries of the tribe of Issachar. It was about two miles south of Mount Tabor, and not far from Capernaum; It is now a small village inhabited by Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Dr. Thomson (The Land and the Book, vol. ii. p. 158) locates it on the northwest corner of a mount now called Jebel ed Duhy, one hours ride from the foot of Mount Tabor. Of this place he says: This mount is now called Jebel ed Duhy and that small hamlet on the northwest corner of it is Nain, famous for the restoration of the widows son to life. It was once a place of considerable extent, but is now little more than a cluster of ruins, among which dwell a few families of fanatical Moslems. It is in keeping with the one historic incident that renders it dear to the Christian, that its only antiquities are tombs. These are situated mainly on the east of the village, and it was in that direction, I presume, that the widows son was being carried on that memorable occasion. It took me just an hour to ride from the foot of Tabor to Nain.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Luk 7:11-17

And it came to pass the day after that He went into a city called Nain

The funeral of a youth

The miracle requires a few REMARKS and a few REFLECTIONS.

I. The first thing we behold is a FUNERAL PROCESSION. But let us draw near, and contemplate this funeral solemnity. It was the funeral of a young man. We are not informed whether he died by disease or accident, slowly or suddenly; but he was carried off in the prime of life. He was the only son of his mother. There is an ocean of love in the hearts of parents towards their children. But what closes the melancholy tale of this woman is–that she was a widow! A widow is always an affecting character, and she is liable to injustice and oppression from those fiends who take advantage of weakness and distress; as she is deprived of the companion of her journey, and compelled to travel alone; as her anxieties are doubled: and there is none to share them with her.

II. OBSERVE OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR. First, He knew all the particulars of the case. Those who were with Him could only see, as they were passing by, a funeral–but He knew the corpse stretched upon the bier; He knew that it was a young man; that it was the only son of his mother; and that she was a widow! Secondly, He did not wait to be implored. I am found of them that sought Me not. Sometimes, before we call He answers: such a very present help is He in trouble. Thirdly, When He saw her, He had compassion on her. By nothing was our Saviour more distinguished than by pity and tenderness. Fourthly, He said unto her, Weep not. How unavailing, not to say impertinent, would this have been from any other lips! Fifthly, Jesus, without any ostentatious ceremony, went and touched the bier–and they that bare it stood still; all amazement and expectation! Every eye is fixed upon Him. Finally, observe the application, the delicacy–what shall I call it?–of the miracle; and He delivered him to his mother!

III. Let us conclude by three GENERAL REFLECTIONS.

I. WHAT A VALE OF TEARS IS THIS WORLD! HOW various and numerous are the evils to which human life is exposed! Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble!

II. LET THE AFFLICTED REMEMBER THAT THEY ARE NOT LEFT

WITHOUT RESOURCE. Let them learn where to flee in the day of trouble. It is to the Friend of sinners.

III. WHAT THINK YOU OF CHRIST? Does not His character combine every excellency and attraction? (W. Jay.)

Young man, arise

I. I notice first THAT THIS YOUNG MAN IS FOLLOWED BY A BROKENHEARTED MOTHER, A POOR SORROWFUL CREATURE. He was her only son, and she was a widow. Do you know I cannot help thinking that one often sees the same sort of thing now. How many a young man there is who is being borne along towards that fearful interment to which I have already referred, who is followed, as it were, by the tears and expostulations–I may say the anguish, the heart-breaking anguish–of one who loves him as her own soul, and who would readily offer a thousand times over her own life, if only his soul might be saved. Young man, there are a good many fellows who think it a manly thing to slight a mothers love, to go far to break a mothers heart. Believe me, there is scarcely a more unmanly sin possible for anybody to commit. Amongst the saddest incidents in my experience as a mission preacher are cases of this character, where I am addressed by mournful-looking women, who come to me with a terrible burden on their hearts. I ask what it is. It is not about themselves. No! no! so far as they themselves are concerned, they have a good hope through grace. Well, what is the matter? Oh, it is my boy, says the poor stricken creature, my boy. How many are ready to say, as David said about Absalom, Would God I had died for thee. Some little time ago, I had a conversation after one of my services with a minister of the gospel, in the North of England, who said to me, I want to tell you about my son, who is just going to offer himself for the Christian ministry. He had a remarkable conversion, and I should like to tell you about it. Two years ago my dear wife died, and as she was dying, she called her children around her. As they approached her bed one by one, she stretched out her hand and took theirs in hers, and very solemnly, for she was on the brink of eternity, she said to them, I charge ye before God, meet me at Gods right hand. When it came to the turn of my eldest son, I saw that she was greatly moved, for up to that time he had shown no disposition to give his heart to God. She grasped his hand in hers and said, with tears in her eyes, My boy, ere I die, I want you to make me a promise; I want you solemnly to promise me that you will seek for the salvation of your soul. He hesitated, and stood silent for a few moments, hanging down his head. When he lifted up his eyes he met his mothers gaze. That deep, tender, earnest gaze seemed to plead with his inmost heart. I charge you, she said, meet me at Gods right hand. Mother, he said, I will; I will. Her face brightened up; a heavenly smile stole over her features; she lifted up her hands and said, Thank God, I am ready to go now. Well, she died. My son remembered his promise. He began to read his Bible and to pray, and the Lord was pleased to send him a very deep conviction of sin. He became intensely wretched. Weeks passed away. Still he could get no comfort. Weeks became months. He could not shake the subject from his mind. The weight of his sin was continually resting upon his soul, and seemed almost to drive him wild, till on one occasion he found himself in such a state of frenzied agony, that he felt I really can stand this no longer, and suddenly grasping his hat, he dashed out with a determination to drown his sorrows in drink at the nearest gin-house. Down the street he went, and up to the door of the public-house. Just as he stood at the door and was stretching out his hand to open it, it seemed to him as though his mother stood before him. There was the same look upon her countenance that it wore when she took leave of him on her dying bed, and he seemed to see those tears glistening in her eyes. It was no vision, but the thing was so powerfully brought before his imagination, that it was like a vision, and he seemed to hear her saying, My son, your promise! I turned, he said, and fled from the public-house as though I were pursued: I dashed into my own room. Great God! I cried, Thou hast saved me by my mothers prayer; Thou hast saved me from the depths of hell! There and then I cast myself in utter weariness and helplessness and self-despair at Jesus feet, and there and then the pardoning love of Christ reached my heart.

II. Well, there was something more that the eye of Christ rested upon besides this poor broken-hearted woman to whom He said, Weep not. THERE WERE THE BEARERS. NOW this also, as it seems to me, is wonderfully true to life. Wherever I go I find that young men are mostly under the influence of bearers. I know what your strong points are, young men, yes, and I know your weak points too. You are wonderfully gregarious animals. One man goes in one particular direction, and the rest must follow if he happens to be a leader. There is a strange fatuous influence which man exercises over his fellow-man. Ah, my brother, how many a man is as it were held spell-bound by the influence of false friendship. Get him away from his friends and you can do something with him; but so long as he is in their society he is a helpless slave to adverse influences. Yes, I may be speaking to some to-night who, although only young, are already saying, I have gone too far; the chains are bound too tightly round me. I tell you no, in Gods name, No! One touch of almighty power from the finger of Christ, and those chains shall break; one glance from those eyes so full of beneficence, and the shadows of death shall flee away. I remember, some time ago, hearing a remarkable circumstance related by a public speaker to whom I was listening. It happened that a ship was being towed across the Niagara River, in America, some little distance above the well-known falls. Just as she got into the middle of the stream the hawser parted, and the unfortunate ship began to drift down the river stern foremost. Efforts were made to save her from impending ruin, but every effort failed, and the unfortunate ship kept drifting farther and farther down the stream towards the terrible abyss below. The news of the disaster spread along the banks of the river, and in a very short time there were hundreds of people, and they soon swelled to thousands, looking on in breathless anxiety to see what was to become of this unfortunate ship and crew. There is a point that stretches into the river which bears the name of Past Redemption Point, and it is believed in the neighbourhood that nothing that passes that point can escape destruction. The current there becomes so strong, the influence so fatal, that whatever goes by Past Redemption Point is inevitably lost. The excited multitude upon the banks of the river watched the helpless ship drifting down farther and farther till she was within a few hundred yards of the fatal point. One effort after another was made, one effort after another failed; still she drifted. Only a few moments, and she passed the point. There was a kind of sigh of horror from the vast multitude as they saw her swing round, for they knew she was lost. But just as she rounded the point the captain felt a strong breeze smite upon his cheek. Quick as thought he shouted at the top of his voice, All sails set! and in almost less time than it takes me to tell it every stitch of canvas on board the ship was stretched to catch the favouring gale. A cheer broke from the multitude on the shore as they witnessed this last effort for salvation. But would it succeed? The ship was still drifting, though the wind was blowing against it, and she was still moving downwards, stern fore most, though the wind was bellying out all her sails. It was a battle between the wind and the current. With breathless anxiety they watched the result. She slacks! Another moment–they scarcely dare whisper it–she stands! Yes, that terrible downward course was actually stopped. There she was, still as a log upon the water. Another moment, and inch by inch she began to forge her way up the stream until the motion was perceptible to those on shore, and one great shout of victory burst forth from a thousand voices: Thank God, she is saved! Thank God, she is saved! In a few moments more, with considerable headway upon her, she swept right up the stream, by Past Redemption Point, right into the still water, saved from what appeared to he inevitable destruction, just because, in the very moment of moments, she caught the favouring breeze. Young man, in that ship behold a picture of yourself. There is many a young man who, like that ship, has been drifting. You know it; ah! and your friends know it; your mother, praying for you tonight, knows it; your Christian friend that brought you here knows it. You are drifting, drifting, and you know what the end must be. It may lie far on in your lifes voyage, or it may be very near at hand, but before you lies the terrible fall, and the abyss and depth of doom. If you say, How shall I arise? I reply, there is only one way of arising. Fix your gaze to-night upon Him who is the Resurrection and the Life. When I was a young man of eighteen, I was preaching in the open air in the streets of Inverness, when there happened to pass by a young medical student–I think, from Glasgow University. He was like many of you, and had been living an aimless, self-pleasing sort of life. As he passed by in the crowd he heard a young mans voice, and caught the words of Christ, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. The message went home like an arrow to the mans heart; he got away into his own chamber, and there he cast himself by his bedside and exclaimed, O God, that is what I want. Up to this moment my life has been a wasted life; I have nothing to show for it; I have lived for myself; I have lived in vain. I see it all now. There is one power, and only one, that can raise me up and make me really what I ought to be. There and then he gave himself to Christ, and he went forth from that room a new man. He had just received a commission as a surgeon in the army, and soon afterwards he went to India, where, for five or six years, he was a burning and a shining light. Many a poor heathen native heard the truth of the gospel first from his lips; many a godless English soldier was led to the Cross of Christ by that young mans influence; many a brother officer first heard from him the glad tidings of great joy, or, at any rate, first had them pressed home upon his mind. After five or six years service, the Lord called him home. I never met him, never shook his hand. I hope to meet him up yonder, some day. (W. Hay Aitken.)

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

I. WHAT ARE WE HERE CERTIFIED CONCERNING JESUS CHRIST?

1. This miracle attests that He was an authorized messenger of God. This was the direct and immediate conviction that it wrought upon those who witnessed it. There came great fear upon all; and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us, and, That God hath visited His people. Nor were they mistaken in their conclusion from the premises. No one can recall the dead but by the great power of God. Only He who originally gave life can restore it after it is gone.

2. The same forcibly attests the compassionate sympathy of Jesus for human sorrow.

3. And He is as mighty as He is good–as able to help as He is ready to pity. It is no easy thing to console and heal a broken heart. But Jesus not only relieved it, but entirely removed it. In a mere moment of time He dislodged it, and set a light in that darkened mothers soul, brighter than had ever shone there before. This miracle accordingly shows Him possessed of redeeming power, as well as sympathy.

II. WHAT IS PICTURED TO US IN THIS MIRACLE OF THE WORKINGS OF GRACE?

1. Jesus found this young man dead, and being borne to burial. And herein is shown the sad and hopeless condition of everyone apart from Christs gracious interposition for our rescue. The help of man in such a case is utterly powerless. If it were a case of mere physical disorder, the great storehouses of nature might perhaps furnish a remedy. If it were a case of mere functional lethargy or error, some stimulant or alternative might chance to be found out by the physician to correct the ailment. Or if it were a case of mere mental aberration, science and a better philosophy might serve to set the matter right. But the case is one of death; and no power of man has ever been able to bring the dead to life again.

2. He came. There was no going or bearing of the dead man to Christ; but a coming of Jesus to him. The first approaches of grace and salvation are all from the side of a Divine movement toward us. From first to last, He is ever the coming One, who comes to us, approaches us, and brings to us whatever of salvation is ever experienced. Lo! I come!

3. And touched the bier. Not without veritable contact with the polluted things of earth could spiritual quickening be imparted to its fallen inhabitants.

4. Yet it was by the Word that the resuscitation was imparted. He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. All the potency of creatorship and resurrection resides in it, and goes forth through it. People often have a very poor appreciation of the Word. They care not to hear it. Many only despise it. Christs words are spirit, and they are life.

5. When Christs word of command reached the consciousness of this dead man, it then devolved upon him to obey it. Human agency and volition must, after all, cooperate with Divine grace.

III. WHAT, NOW, AS TO THE PROPHECIES AND FOREPLEDGES CONTAINED IN THIS MIRACLE?

1. It was a raising of a dead man to life, and so an exhibition of resurrection power. To raise one requires the power of God; to raise all requires no more. He has raised the dead, and He can raise all.

2. It was the making glad of a very sorrowing heart and a very desolate home. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.)

Jesus and the widow of Nain

I. SORROW.

II. SYMPATHY.

III. SUCCOUR. (R. V. Pryce, M. A. , LL. B.)

Weep not

What, then, is the comfort which even now the gospel of our Saviour mingles with the mourning of His people? What advantage has the Christian under bereavement, and wherein does he sorrow not as others?

I. In the first place, THE GOSPEL HAS ENTIRELY CHANGED THE CHARACTER OF DEATH TO THE DEPARTED THEMSELVES. Thank God, the Christians is a stingless death. Since the guilt of those we mourn was cleansed in the blood of Christ, and their pardon sealed by the Holy Ghost, death did not come to them as an officer of justice, but as an angel of peace. He came to loose the prison-bands of clay and set them free to go home to their Fathers house. O selfish heart, bear silently thy burden and rejoice in secret at the lost ones joy. Why should I not? Love is more gladdened by anothers gladness than grieved for its own trouble. God did two kindnesses at one stroke when He bereft you of your beloved: one kindness to him; another kindness to you. To him, the perfecting of character and bestowal of bliss; to you, ripening of character and preparation for bliss.

II. As Christ teaches us to expect a better resurrection for our dead, so also for ourselves to look for better reunion. Not by their coming back to be for a little while longer with us, is the craving heart to be appeased, but by our going to be for ever with them. This is best. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.)

The miracle at the gate of Nain

I. I learn two or three things from this subject; and first, that Christ was A MAN. You see how that sorrow played upon all the chords of His heart.

II. But I must also draw from this subject that HE was GOD. If Christ had been a mere mortal, would He have had a Tight to come in upon such a procession? Would He have succeeded in His interruption?

III. Again, I learn from this subject that Christ was A SYMPATHISER.

IV. I learn again from all this that Christ is THE MASTER OF THE GRAVE. Just outside the gate of the city Death and Christ measured lances, and when the young man rose, Death dropped. (Dr. Talmage.)

Young man, is this for you?

I. I shall ask you first, dear friends, to reflect that THE SPIRITUALLY DEAD CAUSE GREAT GRIEF TO THEIR GRACIOUS FRIENDS. If an ungodly man is favoured to have Christian relatives, he causes them much anxiety. Many young persons who are in some respects amiable and hopeful, nevertheless, being spiritually dead, are causing great sorrow to these who love them best.

1. The cause of grief lies here: we mourn that they should be in such a case. In the story before us the mother wept because her son was dead; and we sorrow because our young friends are spiritually dead.

2. We also mourn because we lose the help and comfort which they ought to bring us. She must have regarded him as the staff of her age, and the comfort of her loneliness. With regard to you that are dead in sin, we feel that we miss the aid and comfort which we ought to receive from you in our service of the living God.

3. A further grief is that we can have no fellowship with them. The mother at Nain could have no communion with her dear son now that he was dead, for the dead know not anything. Alas! in many a household the mother cannot have communion with her own son or daughter on that point which is most vital and enduring, because they are spiritually dead, while she has been quickened into newness of life by the Holy Spirit.

4. Moreover, spiritual death soon produces manifest causes for sorrow.

5. We also mourn because of the future of men dead in sin.

II. Now let me cheer you while I introduce the second head of my discourse, which is this: FOR SUCH GRIEF THERE IS ONLY ONE HELPER: BUT THERE IS A HELPER. This young man is taken out to be buried; but our Lord Jesus Christ met the funeral procession. Carefully note the coincidences, as sceptics call them, but as we call them providences of Scripture. He meets the dead man before the place of sepulture is reached. A little later and he would have been buried; a little earlier and he would have been at home lying in the darkened room, and no one might have called the Lords attention to him, The Lord knows how to arrange all things; his forecasts are true to the tick of the clock.

III. That hush was not long, for speedily the Great Quickener entered upon his gracious work. This is our third point: JESUS IS ABLE TO WORK THE MIRACLE OF LIFE-GIVING. JESUS Christ has life in Himself, and He quickeneth whom lie will (Joh 5:21). He could derive no aid from that lifeless form. The spectators were sure that he was dead, for they were carrying him out to bury him. Even so, you, O sinner, cannot save yourself, neither can any of us, or all of us, save you. Your help must come from above.

2. While the bier stood still, Jesus spoke to the dead young man, spoke to him personally: Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. Lord Jesus, art Thou not here? What is wanted is Thy personal call. Speak, Lord, we beseech Thee!

3. Young man, said He, arise; and He spake as if the man had been alive. This is the gospel way. Our faith enables us in Gods name to command dead men to live, and they do live.

4. But the Saviour, you observe, spoke with His own authority–Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. Neither Elijah nor Elisha could thus have spoken; but He who spoke thus was very God of very God.

5. The miracle was wrought straightway: for this young man, to the astonishment of all about him, sat up. It did not take a month, nor a week, nor an hour, nay, not even five minutes.

IV. Our time has gone, and although we have a wide subject we may not linger. I must close by noticing that THIS WILL PRODUCE VERY GREAT RESULTS. To give life to the dead is no little matter.

1. The great result was manifest, first, in the young man.

2. A new life also had begun in reference to his mother. What a great result for her was the raising of her dead son!

3. What was the next result? Well, all the neighbours feared and glorified God. These prodigies of power in the moral world are quite as remarkable as prodigies in the material world. We want conversion, so practical, so real, so Divine, that those who doubt will not be able to doubt, because they see in them the hand of God.

4. Finally, note that it not only surprised the neighbours and impressed them, but the rumour of it went everywhere. Who can tell? If a convert is made this morning, the result of that conversion may be felt for thousands of years, if the world stands so long; aye, it shall be felt when a thousand thousand years have passed away, even throughout eternity. (C. H.Spurgeon.)

The widow and her dead son

1. The mystery of Gods providence is encircling our daily lives. God had planned that meeting from eternity. Nothing happens by chance. Every event in the dullest day has a purpose.

2. And a further consideration must of course be our dear Lords tender sympathy with mourners, and His hatred of our last enemy, death. (T. B. Dover, M. A.)

The widow of Nain

Such were the works of our Saviours earthly ministry; and it is of no little moment that we enter fully into their significance. By them, then

(1), He manifested forth His glory; they were the countersigns and credentials of His mission. By them

(2), again, He showed the infinite compassion wherewith His heart was full. By them

(3) He lightened the burden of human suffering. Further

(4), they are the abiding witness to the Church of the truth of His Divinity.

These mighty works bring before us the true glory of our redeemed state. They show us, in the person of our Lord, for what each one of us is training who of His mercy have been baptized into Him, and are daily seeking to grow up into Him in all things. They show us why and how we should strive after a closer union with Him; that we, too, may triumph with Him over these rebellious powers, under which our race has so long groaned. For He is the healer of our spirits as He is of our bodies. Here, too, His words are spirit and are life; for with them goeth forth the mighty Spirit of life. He meets us bearing forth our dead hopes through the citys gate; He meets us when our hearts are faint and weary; when we feel the emptiness of all with which this world has sought to cheat our earnest longings for the great, the real, and the true. He stands beside the bier, He bids us weep no more, He stops our mourning steps; the dead hear Him; hopes of youth, aspirations of heart, dreams of purity, of reality, of high service, with which once our spirits kept glad company, but which had withered, and sunk, and died, as the hot and scorching sun of common life arose upon us–these revive; they sit up; they begin to speak; they find a voice; they turn to Him; and He gives them back to us, and bids us cherish them for Him. On Him, then, may our affections fix. On Him, the Healer, the Restorer of humanity, may our hearts learn to lean the secret burden of their being.

1. If earthly trouble is upon us, let us fly to Him; let us beware of all those who would cheer us without Him; let us be always sure that the poison of the asp is hidden under their softest and most enticing words.

2. Or, is it the heavier burden of spiritual trouble under which we groan? Let us see here that His purpose is the same. For why does God suffer this to harass oftentimes His faithful servants, but to teach them to lean more simply upon Him? (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.)

Young man, Arise!

There is something specially touching and impressive in a village funeral. In a small population every family is known; and death, when it enters, throws a general sadness and gloom around. There were several things that combined to make this funeral peculiarly affecting.

1. Raise up for a moment the sheet that is spread over the corpse (for the coffin is borne on an open bier), and look on that pale countenance–it is the face of a young man. Perhaps it was consumption that laid its withering hand upon him, or fever may have snapped the thread of life; but there he is, cold, motionless, and still. I think death never seems so utterly cruel, as whoa it cuts one off in the bloom of opening manhood. And yet, mysterious as is the event, and deeply affecting, it is no uncommon one. It occurs every week in London. Even in this church I have seen some of the most bright and promising lives suddenly brought to a close. Your youthful strength gives you no guarantee that death is far away. Nobody steps out of the world when he expects to do so. Though for twenty years you have never had an ache or a pain, you can make no safe calculation about the future. A fine, amiable, robust fellow of twenty, who used to worship here, was sitting in his office one day, when a fellow-clerk came up merrily, and slapping him upon the back, said, Well, how are you this morning? That good-humoured blow injured the spine, and after some weeks of almost total paralysis, the young man was borne to his last resting-place.

2. There is another thing that adds much to the impressiveness of this funeral: the young man is an only son. Well, I imagine that, let a family circle be ever so large, the parents feel there is not one of them that can be spared. Every one is dear, every one is precious. A rich and benevolent gentleman, who had no children of his own, was entering a steamboat one day, when he noticed a poor man with a group of little ones around him, all in a state of pitiful destitution. Stepping up to him, he proposed to take one of the children, and adopt it as his own. I think, said he, it will be a great relief to you. A what! exclaimed the other. A relief to you, I said. Such a relief to me, sir, rejoined the poor man, as to have my right arm cut off; it may be necessary, but only a parent can know the trial. But, an only son, in whom all the hopes and the joys of the parents centre: ah! it is long since the extreme bitterness of such a bereavement passed into a proverb (Zec 12:10).

3. I have not yet finished the picture. You will not wonder that this funeral created exceptional sympathy, and that much people of Nain joined the procession, when I remind you that this young mans mother was a widow. The light of her dwelling was now put out; the comfort and support of her advancing years taken away. No doubt he had been a good son, or his death would not have created so profound a feeling in the place.

4. With Dr. Trench, I believe that this majestic voice was something more than a summons back to this mortal life–that it included also an awakening of the young man to a higher and a spiritual life; with nothing short of which would the Saviour have delivered him to his mother. He gave him back to her who bare him, not merely to be for a few years longer her earthly companion, but, as now a saved and regenerate man, to be to her a joy both for time and for eternity.

(1) Arise from the death of unbelief. Conversion is a passing from death unto life. When you become a saved man, it is as though a corpse were quickened into life.

(2) Arise from the bondage of sin. You cannot afford to be lost. The interests at stake are too tremendous to be imperilled by delay. Wont you yield, and say, Yes, Lord, at Thy bidding I arise, to live from this day for Thee? But some young man will say, I feel the force of all you say; I know I ought to be a Christian, and shall never be happy till I am one; but it is no use trying; sin has got the upper hand of me, and when certain temptations meet me, I fall, and must fall, and will fall. I remember of a young man talking to me in that style, and saying, I believe the gospel to be true: that Christ is an omnipotent Saviour, I have not a doubt. I can fully trust Him, so far as that is concerned; and yet I dare not profess Him, because I know that a particular sin has complete mastery over me, and I am not going to be a hypocrite. But I took him by the buttonhole, and said, Let me read a verse to you, and then I turned to Joh 1:12 –As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God; and I showed him that, when one accepts Christ, he accepts Him, not merely as a Saviour from guilt and from hell, but as a Saviour from lust, and from vile passions, and from evil thoughts; and that He must be trusted for this just as for the other.

(3) Arise from the apathy of indolence. The great mass of nominal Christians are asleep. The only thing they want religion for is its comfort; it gives them a pillow to lay their heads on. Is that the purpose for which you have enlisted? When the stern Scottish chief was walking round his encampment one night, he saw his own son lying on a pillow of snow which he had carefully gathered and packed together before he lay down; the father kicked the pillow from under his sons head and said, Come, I will have no effeminacy here. I want robust men in my army. Oh, how many in Christs army are fast asleep, not on a bolster of snow, but on a pillow of down. Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. Arise from the slumber of lethargy and come and grapple with the foe. (J. Thain Davidson. D. D.)

The raising of the widows son

Some places have been made famous by a single incident. Nain is the village of the widows son whom Jesus raised from the dead. By no other event is Nain known. For a moment the light of heaven fell upon it, and haloed it with a glory which has attracted the eyes of all the Christian ages, and then it disappeared into its former obscurity. The site of the ancient village is well authenticated; it is occupied by the modern Nein, a squalid, miserable collection of huts, situated on the northwestern edge of Jebel el Duhy, or the Little Hermon, where the hill slopes down into the plain of Esdraelon. Our Lord came to Nain on His way south to keep the Passover. The day before He had healed the centurions servant at Capernaum; and now, after having walked eighteen miles since the cool hours of early morning, He toiled slowly in the afternoon up the steep slope leading to the village. He was tired and footsore. But there was work for the Father awaiting Him, in the doing of which He would find His meat and drink. They were carrying a dead man to his burial on the east side of the village, where the rough rock was full of sepulchral caves.

1. It would be difficult to make the picture of desolation more complete than the evangelist has done by a few simple words. Notice that the three recorded miracles of restoration from the dead were performed upon young persons.

2. We are apt to look upon the fact of Jesus meeting the funeral procession at the precise moment when it was issuing out of the gate of the city as a mere chance or fortunate coincidence. But nothing really occurs by chance; there is no such divinity in the universe.

3. And when the Lord saw her He had compassion on her. It is not said that the bereaved mother addressed Jesus. But He knew all the circumstances of the case. Never was there a human heart so feeling as His. The very word employed in our version to express His sympathy denotes His exquisite tenderness. It signifies the unutterable pity which a mother has for her offspring. Jesus Himself was, strictly speaking, the only son of His mother; and, as Joseph was in all probability dead by this time, she, too, was a widow, worn down by the duties and cares of a humble home. We cannot wonder, then, that the woman who came before Him in agonizing circumstances, similar to those in which He would soon have to leave His own mother, drew from His heart a peculiar compassion, and induced Him, unsolicited, to perform for her one of His rarest and supremest acts of mercy.

4. And said unto her, Weep not. This weep not different from that addressed to the hired mourners of Jairuss household. There it was uttered in indignation, for the purpose of restoring quiet; here it is said in deepest sympathy, for the purpose of cheering and soothing. How often do these words proceed from the lips of earthly comforters! No argument here for stoicism under sorrow. No one need be ashamed of tears, since our Saviours eyes were filled with them. The very existence of tears shows that God has designed them and has a use for them. When Christ then, says, Weep not, He does not mean to forbid tears, or to make us ashamed of them; but to give us a reason, a sufficient cause for drying our tears.

5. He came and touched the bier. Not necessary for Him to do this, so far as the exercise of His Divine power was concerned. But there was deep significance in what He did. He violated the letter of the law that He might keep its spirit.

6. And they that bare him stood still. They were struck by a sudden consciousness that they were in the presence of One who had a right to stop them even in their progress to the tomb; and they waited silently and reverently for what He might say or do. What a scene for the genius of a great painter does the imagination picture at this sublime expectant moment, when the power of God is about to be visibly displayed. The mother bowed down with grief, and yet lifting up to the face of Jesus eager eyes, in which a new-born hope struggles with the tears of despair; the bearers of the bier standing still with looks of awe and astonishment; the motley groups of the funeral procession, and the multitude who followed Jesus in their picturesque Oriental dresses, turning to one another as if asking the meaning of this strange proceeding; the calm, holy form of Jesus touching the bier, and the last red level rays of the sun setting behind the green hills on the western horizon, haloing with a sacred glow the head of the Redeemer, and the shrouded figure that lies motionless and unconscious on the bier, speaking touchingly of that sun that shall no more go down!

7. The stillness is broken by words such as human ears had never heard before–Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. How suggestive of omnipotence is that I.

8. And he that was dead sat up and began to speak. What did he speak about? His lips were sealed upon those things which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Our Lord Himself, after His resurrection, said not a single word regarding what He had seen and heard during the three days when His body was in Josephs tomb and His soul in Hades. How opposed is all this to the so-called revelations of spirits, given to those who call themselves spiritualists.

9. And He delivered him to his mother. Who can describe the unutterable gladness of that restoration? The revulsion of feeling must have been painful in its very intensity. But the evangelist has left a veil over it, for there are feelings with which a stranger may not intermeddle. Truly the promise was literally fulfilled to her, Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.

10. Upon the spectators the effect of the wonderful miracle was overwhelming. A great fear fell upon them, that strange instinctive fear produced by sudden contact with the invisible world, which we feel even in the presence of our beloved dead, on account of the awful mystery in which they are shrouded. They glorified God that the long period during which there had been no prophet, no supernatural sign, no communication between heaven and earth, nothing but the continuous motion of the wheels of providence along the same beaten track, and the uniform action of the dull unchanging signals of nature that carried the general despatches of the universe, had come to an end at last. They had open vision once more, and a sense of the nearness of heaven. But far short were their impressions and conceptions, however vivid at the moment, of the glorious truth. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)

The story of Nain

I. THE WORDS OF CHRISTS CONSOLATION WERE SIMPLE, AS ALL CONSOLATION OUGHT TO BE. Too much talking spoils comfort. Give few words, but let them be crowded with the infinite of feeling.

II. CHRIST PUT THIS COMPASSION OF HIS AT ONCE INTO ACTION. NO sooner had the feelings of pity arisen within Him than He came forward and touched the bier, did what He could to help the woman. That is a deep lesson to us, though a commonplace one. What an absurd self-deception it is to call ourselves Christians if we never, like Christ, come forward and touch the bier.

III. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF DIVINE POWER IN THE MIND OF CHRIST. Contrast His consciousness of Divine power with His lovely, sad, and hidden life.

IV. IT WAS ALWAYS FOR PROFOUND MORAL AND SPIRITUAL ENDS THAT CHRIST USED THE POWER HE WAS CONSCIOUS OF POSSESSING.

V. THE SPIRITUAL LESSONS TO BE DRAWN FROM THE MIRACLE.

1. Often in the midst of death that we meet the true life.

2. Every miracle has a two-fold object, to meet some physical want or distress, and to point to Christ Himself as the one alone who could relieve the higher wants of the spirit of man. It is with us spiritually as it was with the widows son. Upon the path of life comes Christ, and touches the bier, and that which was dead arises. (Stopford Brooke, M. A.)

The widows son of Nain

This miracle has much in common with Christs other two miracles of raising from the dead. The same calm authority, the same Divine self-confidence is evident in them all.

I. CHRISTS IMPULSE OF COMPASSION. We are not satisfied with our knowledge of any man until we have seen something of his impulses.

1. See how this illustrates the greatness of Christ. His air was not distraught. His sympathies were as prompt, His considerateness as full and tender, as though not a care was on His spirit.

2. Remember, too, how Christ subordinated family affection to the call of the gospel. How hard and irresponsive, how cold and unsympathetic, are men who have sacrificed affection to obedience.

3. This gives us a view of God which we sorely need. Nature reveals one whom the strong may adore; a God for the happy. Christ reveals God as coming down to us in compassion and tender personal sympathy.

II. THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTS COMPASSION. For simple unmingled grief, simple unmingled comfort is the only balm. He could afford often to dispense with speech, because His life was unmistakably a witness for God. Simplicity is the great want of modern Christian life. If it were deeper it would be less fussy. (A. Mackennal, D. D.)

The widow of Nain

I. THE BEREAVED MOTHER. Painter, as well as physician, we can believe St. Luke to have been. Desolation was never more graphically and pathetically summed up than in the words, The only son, &c. Then, too, it is hard for the young and strong to leave the world. Cut off prematurely, sayest thou? What if it be that the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, and thus bear much fruit. Bereaved mother, a word to thee! If thy son is dear to thee, think him as much so to thy Saviour.

II. OUR LORDS ATTITUDE ON THIS OCCASION.

1. In the associations of the miracle there is much of deepest interest:

(a) Our Lords power to grapple with sudden emergencies.

(b) His sensitive compassion.

(c) The paucity of His words.

2. The miracle itself: All its details are commonplace, entirely divested of any clothing of the would-be wonderful.

(a) In the mercy there were the elements of fresh trials. Again there were all the anxieties to undergo, all the battle again to fight, the prospect again of severance.

(b) Why are miracles of resurrection no longer possible? Because there is no longer the same end to be nerved.

(c) Such miracle typical. Death a type of sin. Renewal of human nature a resurrection with Christ.

III. THE PEOPLE WHO ACCOMPANIED THE MOURNER.

1. Gratifying as their sympathy would be, the very crowds would cause her to feel more solitary.

2. In the feelings excited by the performance of the miracle, we trace no thought for those of the mother. We find only superstitious fear, which, in its turn, gives place to wild enthusiasm. The words of the people seem to denote that the miracle recalled those of Elijah and Elisha, and the prophets vision (Eze 37:1-28). They indulged in sentimental Messianic dreams; they built themselves up afresh in national pride; they gave themselves over to self-important babbling. We have only here a fresh illustration of that false spirit to which it was our Lords sad destiny to minister. With all their enthusiasm He knew that there was no real life, no deep apprehension of the character of the truths He had come to teach. (W. J. Gordon.)

Gospel for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

I. SOME MIRACLES OF THIS KIND WERE NEEDED, IN ORDER TO GIVE A FULL VIEW OF THE WORK AND POWER OF CHRIST.

II. Of this most striking class of miracles ONLY THREE ARE RECORDED, AND WE MUST SUPPOSE ONLY THREE WERE WROUGHT. For this infrequency there may have been many reasons.

1. A desire to make the miracle mote striking by its isolation.

2. The unbelief of the people. Christ is never asked to raise the dead. Even Martha just hints and no more, that God will grant whatever He asks.

III. THERE IS A GRADATION IN THE MIRACLES, LEADING UP, AS IT WERE, TO A CLIMAX. Just dead; twenty-four hours dead; four days dead. In all cases, the fact of the death well-ascertained, and abundance of witnesses secured. What must be the feelings of a man between one death and another?

IV. A MIRACLE PRODUCES ITS EFFECT ACCORDING TO THE STATE OF MIND OF THOSE WHO WITNESS IT. It does not necessarily carry conviction. Here a fear comes on all, and they glorify God. In the second miracle they are astonished with a great astonishment. At the crowning miracle, the hatred against Jesus having become more intense, some went their way to the Pharisees and reported what Jesus had done. (G. Calthrop, M. A.)

The miracle of Nain

How splendid the career of Jesus! Observe here–

I. WHAT THE REDEEMER BEHELD.

II. WHAT CHRIST FELT–Compassion. His eye affected His heart.

1. Agreeable to His nature.

2. Agreeable to all His works.

III. WHAT CHRIST SAID–Weep not. Was it not a very harsh and unreasonable demand?

1. Might she not have reminded Him that to weep was in accordance with the feelings of our nature?

2. Have not the best of men wept?

3. This was an extremely afflictive case. Still He insists that she must weep not. We shall soon perceive the reason: He was about to remove the cause of sorrow.

IV. WHAT THE REDEEMER DID.

1. He touched the bier. Arrested it in its course; bearers felt it impossible to advance; finger of God was upon it. Hence they stood still-astonished, amazed.

2. He commanded the corpse to arise. Although dead, he heard the voice of the Son of God, and lived. His spirit heard it in Hades–the invisible state, and came back.

3. He delivered him to his mother. Christ might have insisted on the consecration of himself to His service, as a disciple, evangelist, or apostle. Compassion commenced, and compassion gave the finishing stroke to this splendid and Divine scene.

4. The people glorified God. The glory of God was the grand object and end of Christs undertakings.

Application: See in this young man–

1. A striking picture of the natural state of man.

2. Learn the only means of restoration.

3. God is greatly glorified in the salvation of sinners. (J. Burns, D. D.)

Christian attendance at a funeral

What are the sentiments with which we attend a funeral?

I. OUR CONDUCT IN RELATION TO THE DECEASED AND HIS SURVIVING FAMILY.

1. Let us attend the funeral not merely for the sake of politeness, but out of Christian charity.

(1) Such attendance is in conformity with human nature.

(2) It is beneficial to ourselves, reminding us that we are brethren, children of the same heavenly Father.

2. Let us succour the deceased, by remembering him in our prayers, &c.

3. Let us console the family of the deceased.

(1) Let us weep with them that weep. Compassion is like balsam.

(2) Let us speak comfort to the grief-stricken family. Remind them of the dispositions of Divine Providence, of immortality, and future reunion.

(3) Let us perform consoling works.

II. OUR CONDUCT WITH REGARD TO OURSELVES. A funeral is a warning to us.

1. Look at the corpse.

(1) What has it been? What we are: full of life and health, full of hopes, prospects, and plans for the future. Was this person young or old, rich or poor, beautiful or deformed, learned or illiterate? It does not matter. No one is secured against death. The only important question is this: Was the dead person virtuous or wicked?

(2) What is it now? What we all shall be: a hideous corpse, deprived of life and beauty, deprived of all advantages of mind, form, and earthly conditions. Only one thing has been spared by death: the good and evil deeds done in life.

(3) How has it come to this state? In the same way as that by which we must pass–death. Has death come unexpected, or after an early warning? When and where?

(4) What will it be? Like every one of us, a prey to vermin, an inhabitant of the grave. So passes the glory of the world. But, at the same time, it is the seed of a future body–either glorious or ignominious.

2. Let us turn our eyes to Jesus, the Life-giver. (Tschupik.)

A bereaved mother

The mother of poor Touda, who heard that I wished to see him once more, led me to the house where the body was laid. The narrow space of the room was crowded; about two hundred women were sitting and standing around, singing mourning songs to doleful and monotonous airs. As I stood looking, filled with solemn thoughts, in spite of, or rather because of, perhaps, the somewhat ludicrous contrasts about me, the mother of Touda approached. She threw herself at the foot of her dead son, and begged him to speak to her once more. And then, when the corpse did not answer, she uttered a shriek, so long, so piercing, such a wail of love and grief, that tears came into my eyes. Poor African mother! she was literally as one sorrowing without hope; for these poor people count on nothing beyond the present life. For them there is no hope beyond the grave. All is done, they say, with an inexpressible sadness of conviction that sometimes gave me a heartache. As I left the hut, thinking these things, the wailing recommenced. It would be kept up by the women, who are the official mourners on these occasions, till the corpse was buried. (Du Chaillu.)

The voice of a funeral

Every funeral is Gods repetition of His anathema against sin. When our friends are carried to the silent sepulchre the Lord of all does in fact say to us, See what a bitter thing sin is; it takes the light from the eye and the music from the ear; it silences the voice of song, and palsies the hand of skill; it quenches the fire of love upon the hearts altar, and removes the light of understanding from the brains judgment seat, and gives over the creature once so lovely and beloved to become a putrid mass, a horror and a loathing, so that affection itself cries out, Bury my dead out of my sight. Thus every gravestone and every green hillock in the cemetery may be regarded as the still small voice of God solemnly condemning sin. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

A risible sermon

Archbisbop Leighton, returning home one morning, was asked by his sister, Have you been bearing a sermon? Ive met a sermon, was the answer. The sermon he had met was a corpse on its way to the grave. The preacher was Death. Greatest of street-preachers!–nor laws nor penalties can silence. No tramp of horses, nor rattling of carriages, nor rush and din of crowded streets can drown his voice. In heathen, pagan, and Protestant countries, in monarchies and free states, in town and country, the solemn pomp of discourse is going on. In some countries a man is imprisoned for even dropping a tract. But what prison will hold this awful preacher? What chains will bind him? He lifts up his voice in the very presence of tyrants, and laughs at their threats. He walks unobstructed through the midst of their guards, and delivers the messages which trouble their security and embitter their pleasures. If we do not meet his sermons, still we cannot escape them. He comes to our abode, and, taking the dearest object of our love as his text, what sermons does he deliver to us! His oft-repeated sermons still enforce the same doctrine, still press upon us the same exhortation, Surely, every man walketh in a vain show. Surely they are disquieted in vain. Here we have no continuing city.

Power of sympathy

Happy is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected as April airs upon violet roots. Gifts from the hand are silver and gold; but the heart gives that which neither silver nor gold can buy. To be full of goodness, full of cheerfulness, full of sympathy, full of helpful hope, causes a man to carry blessings of which he is himself as unconscious as a lamp of its own shining. Such a one moves on human life as stars move on dark seas to bewildered mariners; as the sun wheels, bringing all the seasons with him from the south. (H. W. Beecher.)

Silent sympathy

Bishop Myrel had the art of sitting down, and holding his tongue for hours, by the side of a man who had lost the wife he loved, or of a mother bereaved of her child. (Victor Hugo.)

The compassion of mankind a sign of the compassion of mankinds Head and Lord

Contrast between the two compassions of which the bereaved mother was the object. Helpless compassion of multitude; mighty compassion of Christ.

I. The Father sent His Son into the world to adopt and justify these common and daily human compassions, and to reveal what had all along been implied though hidden in them.

II. Jesus Christ shared in the compassion of the Jewish mourners, and shares now in such compassion everywhere because He is the Son of Man.

III. The text, however, reminds us that He who comes to meet the funerals of our kind and unites His compassion with our compassion, is more even than the Son of Man, the Head of our race. And when the Lord saw her. The Son of Man, who is the Lord, has compassion with humanity in its troubles. (T. Hancock.)

The power of Christs voice

Only three such reprieves recorded in the Gospels. Not fewer, that there might be no doubt as to the fact; not more, that the fact might not be too common.

1. All whom our Lord called back to life were comparatively young. It was death as a blight that He checked and restrained.

2. In all three cases it was kindness to the living which chiefly moved Christ to raise the dead. In each act we see Jesus in a higher character than a worker of miracles; it showed Him as the binder of broken hearts.

3. The resurrection of the dead is the result of the Divine power of Christ, In the most stupendous of all His works of power He put away secondary means; the creative command went direct from the creative voice to the matter and the spirit which were bound to obey that voice. The mode of working is majestic, Divine.

4. The three risings which took place at the command of Christ were preludes and foreshadowings of His own. But they did but imperfectly resemble that one complete resurrection. Christ rose at no word of command, but because He had life in Himself.

5. Taking our stand upon the truth that Christ is risen from the dead, we may see in these revivals the foreshadowings of that universal revival, when all the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and live. If you do not hear and obey the gentle, persuasive, loving voice of Christ now, it will be ill with you when that great voice sounds which will call all of us from our graves, and which we shall then be compelled to hear and obey. (The late Dean of Ely.)

Visit to Nain

We crossed Hermon, and found ourselves in a small decayed village on the edge of another bay of Esdraelon, which runs between the hills of Galilee and Hermon to the north. It was Nain. It is poor, confused and filthy, like every village in Palestine, but its situation is very fine, as commanding a good view of the plain, with the opposite hills, and especially of Tabor, that rises like a noble wooded island at the head of the green bay. And Nain, in the light of the Gospel-history, is another of those fountains of living water opened up by the Divine Saviour, which have flowed through all lands to refresh the thirsty. How many widows, for eighteen centuries, have been comforted; how many broken hearts soothed and healed; by the story of Nain–by the unsought and unexpected sympathy of Jesus, and by His power and majesty! What has Nineveh or Babylon been to the world in comparison with Nain? And this is the wonder constantly suggested by the insignificant villages of Palestine, that their names have become parts, as it were, of the deepest experiences of the noblest persons of every land and every age. (Norman Macleod, D. D.)

THE WIDOW OF NAIN.

Forth from the city gate the pitying crowd
Followed the stricken mourner. They came near
The place of burial, and, with straining hands,
Closer upon her breast she clasped the pall,
And with a gasping sob, quick as a childs,
And an inquiring wildness flashing through
The thin grey lashes of her fevered eyes,
She came where Jesus stood beside the way.
He looked upon her, and His heart was moved.
Weep not! He said; and as they stayed the bier,
And at His bidding laid it at His feet,
He gently drew the pall from out her grasp,
And laid it back in silence from the dead.
With troubled wonder the mute throng drew near,
And gazed on His calm looks. A minutes space
He stood and prayd. Then taking the cold hand,
He said, Arise! And instantly the breast
Heaved in its cerements, and a sudden flush
Ran through the lines of the divided lips,
And with a murmur of his mothers name,
He trembled and sat upright in his shroud.
And while the mourner hung upon his neck,
Jesus went calmly on His way to Nain. (N. P. Willis.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 11. Nain] A small city of Galilee, in the tribe of Issachar. According to Eusebius, it was two miles from Mount Tabor, southward; and near to Endor.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Luke alone gives us an account of this miracle of our Saviours. Matthew mentions only the raising from the dead of Jairuss daughter. Luke adds this. John adds that of Lazarus, Joh 11:57, by which our Lord did mightily show his Divine power, and gave us some firstfruits of the more general resurrection, as well as declared himself to be, as he elsewhere saith, the resurrection and the life. The place where this miracle was done was called Nain. H. Stephen Heb., Chald., Gr. et Lat. nomina, & c., tells us, it was a city or town about two miles from Mount Tabor, at the foot of the lesser Mount Hermon, near to Hendor. It was the custom of the Jews to bury their dead without their cities. Christ met this dead body carrying out. He was it seems her only child, and she was a widow, so under a great affliction, God by this providence having quenched the only coal she had left in Israel.

And when the Lord saw her, (the text saith), he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. None moved him on the behalf of the widow, neither do we read that she herself spake to him; only our Saviours bowels were moved at the sight of her sorrow, and consideration of her loss. It is observable that our Saviour wrought his healing miracles:

1. Sometimes at the motion and desire of the parties to be healed.

2. Sometimes at the desires of others on their behalf.

3. Sometimes of his own free motion, neither themselves nor others soliciting him for any such act of mercy toward them;

and that in the three first miracles, (of which Matthew and Luke give us an account here and Mat 8:1-34), which he wrought after his famous sermon on the mount, he gave us an instance of all these, in his healing of the leper personally beseeching him, of the centurions servant at the entreaty of the elders of the Jews, and of the widows son here, upon his sight of the womans affliction, none soliciting him. Thereby showing us that we ought not to stay our hand from doing good when we have proper objects and opportunities before us, until we be importuned and solicited there unto. Christ saying to her,

Weep not, forbade not the natural expression of her passion, but signified a sudden and not expected resurrection, so as she should not weep without hope. This said, he cometh and toucheth the bier, or the coffin, and saith not, Young man, in the name of God, I say unto thee, Arise; but,

Young man, I say unto thee, Arise; thereby declaring to them (would they have understood it) that he was the Son of God, and while he was on earth had a power in and from himself by the word of his mouth to command the dead to arise. His word was effective, and to evidence it, it is said, that

he that was dead sat up, so as all might take notice of the miracle,

and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother; to let him know his duty to be subject to her, and the jurisdiction she had over him.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

11. Naina small village notelsewhere mentioned in Scripture, and only this once probably visitedby our Lord; it lay a little to the south of Mount Tabor, abouttwelve miles from Capernaum.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And it came to pass the day after,…. The Vulgate Latin reads “afterward”, not expressing any day, as in Lu 8:1, but the Syriac, Arabic, Persic, and Ethiopic versions, read to the same sense as we, the day after, the next day, on the morrow, after he had cured the centurion’s servant in Capernaum, where he staid all night:

that he went into a city called Naim; which Jerom p places near Mount Tabor, and the river Kison. The q Jews speak of a Naim in, the tribe of Issachar, so called from its pleasantness, and which seems to be the same place with this. The Persic version reads it, “Nabetis”, or “Neapolis”, the same With Sychem in Samaria, but without reason:

and many of his disciples went with him; not only the twelve, but many others:

and much people; from Capernaum, and other parts, that followed him to see his miracles, or for one end or another, though, they did not believe in him; at least these were only hearers, and had, not entered themselves among the disciples,

p Tom. 1. ad Marcellum, fol. 44. B. & Epitaph. Paulae. fol. 60. A. q Bereshit Rabba, sect. 98. fol. 86. 1.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The Widow of Nain.

      11 And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.   12 Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her.   13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.   14 And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.   15 And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.   16 And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his people.   17 And this rumour of him went forth throughout all Juda, and throughout all the region round about.   18 And the disciples of John showed him of all these things.

      We have here the story of Christ’s raising to life a widow’s son at Nain, that was dead and in the carrying out to be buried, which Matthew and Mark had made no mention of; only, in the general, Matthew had recorded it, in Christ’s answer to the disciples of John, that the dead were raised up, Matt. xi. 5. Observe,

      I. Where, and when, this miracle was wrought. It was the next day after he had cured the centurion’s servant, v. 11. Christ was doing good every day, and never had cause to complain that he had lost a day. It was done at the gate of a small city, or town, called Nain, not far from Capernaum, probably the same with a city called Nais, which Jerome speaks of.

      II. Who were the witnesses of it. It is as well attested as can be, for it was done in the sight of two crowds that met in or near the gate of the city. There was a crowd of disciples and other people attending Christ (v. 11), and a crowd of relations and neighbours attending the funeral of the young man, v. 12. Thus there was a sufficient number to attest the truth of this miracle, which furnished greater proof of Christ’s divine authority than his healing diseases; for by no power of nature, or any means, can the dead be raised.

      III. How it was wrought by our Lord Jesus.

      1. The person raised to life was a young man, cut off by death in the beginning of his days–a common case; man comes forth like a flower and is cut down. That he was really dead was universally agreed. There could be no collusion in the case; for Christ was entering into the town, and had not seen him till now that he met him upon the bier. He was carried out of the city; for the Jews’ burying-places were without their cities, and at some distance from them. This young man was the only son of his mother, and she a widow. She depended upon him to be the staff of her old age, but he proves a broken reed; every man at his best estate is so. How numerous, how various, how very calamitous, are the afflictions of the afflicted in this world! What a vale of tears is it! What a Bochim, a place of weepers! We may well think how deep the sorrow of this poor mother was for her only son (such sorrowing is referred to as expressive of the greatest grief,– Zech. xii. 10), and it was the deeper in that she was a widow, broken with breach upon breach, and a full end made of her comforts. Much people of the city was with her, condoling with her loss, to comfort her.

      2. Christ showed both his pity and his power in raising him to life, that he might give a specimen of both, which shine so brightly in man’s redemption.

      (1.) See how tender his compassions are towards the afflicted (v. 13): When the Lord saw the poor widow following her son to the grave, he had compassion on her. Here was not application made to him for her, not so much as that he would speak some words of comfort to her, but, ex mero motu–purely from the goodness of his nature, he was troubled for her. The case was piteous, and he looked upon it with pity. His eye affected his heart; and he said unto her, Weep not. Note, Christ has a concern for the mourners, for the miserable, and often prevents them with the blessing of his goodness. He undertook the work of our redemption and salvation, in his love and in his pity, Isa. lxiii. 9. What a pleasing idea does this give us of the compassions of the Lord Jesus, and the multitude of his tender mercies, which may be very comfortable to us when at any time we are in sorrow! Let poor widows comfort themselves in their sorrows with this, that Christ pities them and knows their souls in adversity; and, if others despise their grief, he does not. Christ said, Weep not; and he could give her a reason for it which no one else could: “Weep not for a dead son, for he shall presently become a living one.” This was a reason peculiar to her case; yet there is a reason common to all that sleep in Jesus, which is of equal force against inordinate and excessive grief for their death–that they shall rise again, shall rise in glory; and therefore we must not sorrow as those that have no hope, 1 Thess. iv. 13. Let Rachel, that weeps for her children, refrain her eyes from tears, for there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border, Jer. xxxi. 17. And let our passion at such a time be checked and claimed by the consideration of Christ’s compassion.

      (2.) See how triumphant his commands are over even death itself (v. 14): He came, and touched the bier, or coffin, in or upon which the dead body lay; for to him it would be no pollution. Hereby he intimated to the bearers that they should not proceed; he had something to say to the dead young man. Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom, Job xxxiii. 24. Hereupon they that bore him stood still, and probably let down the bier from their shoulders to the ground, and opened the coffin, it if was closed up; and then with solemnity, as one that had authority, and to whom belonged the issues from death, he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. The young man was dead, and could not arise by any power of his own (no more can those that are spiritually dead in trespasses and sins); yet it was no absurdity at all for Christ to bid him arise, when a power went along with that word to put life into him. The gospel call to all people, to young people particularly, is, “Arise, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light and life.” Christ’s dominion over death was evidenced by the immediate effect of his word (v. 15): He that was dead sat up. Have we grace from Christ? Let us show it. Another evidence of life was that he began to speak; for whenever Christ gives us spiritual life he opens the lips in prayer and praise. And, lastly, he would not oblige this young man, to whom he had given a new life, to go along with him as his disciple, to minister to him (though he owed him even his own self), much less as a trophy or show to get honour by him, but delivered him to his mother, to attend her as became a dutiful son; for Christ’s miracles were miracles of mercy, and a great act of mercy this was to this widow; now she was comforted, according to the time in which she had been afflicted and much more, for she could now look upon this son as a particular favourite of Heaven, with more pleasure than if he had not died.

      IV. What influence it had upon the people (v. 16): There came a fear on all; it frightened them all, to see a dead man start up alive out of his coffin in the open street, at the command of a man; they were all struck with wonder at his miracle, and glorified God. The Lord and his goodness, as well as the Lord and his greatness, are to be feared. The inference they drew from it was, “A great prophet is risen up among us, the great prophet that we have been long looking for; doubtless, he is one divinely inspired who can thus breathe life into the dead, and in him God hath visited his people, to redeem them, as was expected,” Luke i. 68. This would be life from the dead indeed to all them that waited for the consolation of Israel. When dead souls are thus raised to spiritual life, by a divine power going along with the gospel, we must glorify God, and look upon it as a gracious visit to his people. The report of this miracle was carried, 1. In general, all the country over (v. 17): This rumour of him, that he was the great prophet, went forth upon the wings of fame through all Judea, which lay a great way off, and throughout all Galilee, which was the region round about. Most had this notice of him, yet few believed in him, and gave up themselves to him. Many have the rumour of Christ’s gospel in their ears that have not the savour and relish of it in their souls. 2. In particular, it was carefully brought to John Baptist, who was now in prison (v. 18): His disciples came, and gave him an account of all things, that he might know that though he was bound yet the word of the Lord was not bound; God’s work was going on, though he was laid aside.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

Soon afterwards ( ). According to this reading supply , time. Other MSS. read (supply , day). H occurs in Luke and Acts in the N.T. though old adverb of time.

That (H). Not in the Greek, the two verbs and having no connective (asyndeton).

Went with him ( ). Imperfect middle picturing the procession of disciples and the crowd with Jesus. Nain is not mentioned elsewhere in the N.T. There is today a hamlet about two miles west of Endor on the north slope of Little Hermon. There is a burying-place still in use. Robinson and Stanley think that the very road on which the crowd with Jesus met the funeral procession can be identified.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

The day after [ ] . Others read ejn tw eJxhv, soon after. So Rev. Luke’s usage favors the latter.

Nain. Mentioned nowhere else in the Bible. “On the northern slope of the rugged and barren ridge of Little Hermon, immediately west of Endor, which lies in a further recess of the same range, is the ruined village of Nain. No convent, no tradition marks the spot. But, under these circumstances, the name alone is sufficient to guarantee its authenticity. One entrance alone it could have had – that which opens on the rough hillside in its downward slope to the plain. It must have been in this steep descent, as, according to Eastern custom, they ‘carried out the dead man, ‘ that, ‘nigh to the gate ‘ of the village, the bier was stopped, and the long procession of mourners stayed, and ‘the young man delivered back to his mother'” (Stanley, “Sinai and Palestine “).” It is in striking accord with the one biblical incident in the history of Nain that renders it dear to the Christian heart, that about the only remains of antiquity are tombs. These are cut in the rock, and are situated on the hillside to the east of the village “(Thomson,” Land and Book “).

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

WIDOW’S SON OF NAIN HEALED V. 11-18

1) “And it came to pass the day after,” (kai egeneto en to hekses) “And it occurred on the next day,” the following day, the day after the healing of the centurion’s servant that was near to death, Luk 7:2; Luk 7:10. This is the only Gospel that recounts this event.

2) “That he went into a city called Nain;” (eporeuthe eis polin kaloumenen Nain) “That he went into a city that is called Nain,” a small town or hamlet west of the Sea of Galilee, just south of Nazareth. This name means “lovely,” It is the only time it is mentioned in the New Testament. Nain is located about 15 miles south of Capernaum.

3) “And many of his disciples went with him,” (kai suneporeuonto auto hoi mathetai autou) “And many of his disciples went in colleague (close association) as his new covenant church band, with him,” the company of His witnesses that He had called and chosen to be with, follow, and carry on His labors when He was gone, Joh 15:16; Joh 15:26-27; Joh 20:21; Act 1:20-22.

4)“And much people.” (kai ochlos polus) “And a huge crowd,” followed them as they journeyed, perhaps returning to their homes throughout Judaea to the South, Mat 6:17.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

Luk 7:11

. And it happened, that he went into a city. In all the miracles of Christ, we must attend to the rule which Matthew lays down. We ought to know, therefore, that this young man, whom Christ raised from the dead, is an emblem of the spiritual life which he restores to us. The name of the city contributes to the certainty of the history. The same purpose is served by what Luke says, that a great multitude from every direction followed him: for Christ had many attendants along with him, and many persons accompanied the woman, as a mark of respect, to the interment of her son. The resurrection of the young man was beheld by so many witnesses, that no doubt could be entertained as to its truth. There was the additional circumstance of its being a crowded place: for we know that public assemblies were held at the gates. That the dead man was carried out of the city was in accordance with a very ancient custom among all nations. Jerome says that, in his time, the city of Nain was still in existence, two miles below Mount Tabor, in a southerly direction.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

CHRIST AND THE BEREFT WOMAN

Luk 7:11-16

THE language of this text marks the progress which characterized Christs work. The only instances the world has known of absent treatments that were effective, were associated with the word and work of the Great Physician.

But He is able to do more than recover with a word. Death has commonly discouraged further endeavors of professional healers, but the Man from Nazareth marched as bravely into the presence of this arch-enemy as He stood before the lesser foe. No sooner had He recovered the centurions servant than He set out for Nain, followed by a great multitude. At the gate of that city He faces another crowd. They are mourners. Their wails express sympathy for a widow, whose only son has been snatched from the home, and whose mothers heart has been torn out. Christ could have passed it by without a word, waiting, as is the wont of men, in silence, while the procession went on. On the contrary, He faced the company, laid His hand upon the bier and the bearers stood still, and, as One who had authority even against death, He said,

Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And He gave him to his mother. And fear took hold on all: and they glorified God saying, A great prophet is arisen among us: and God hath visited His people.

Think with me then about The Great Grief, The Great Gift, and The Great God.

THE GREAT GRIEF.

This woman was stripped of her only support. Since the husbands death, she had looked to this lad, and he had never disappointed her. The noblest boys I know on earth are widows sonsthe boys who have learned to bear the yoke in youth, and whose strength of character is the direct consequence of the burden suddenly pushed upon them by a fathers death. It would be an extremely interesting thing to go into history and see what a host of earths greatest men have been developed in widows housesgreat preachers, great statesmen, great physicians, great lawyers; and many of the United States presidents have been widows sons. The grandfather of Wendell Phillips died at thirty-four and left William, the only boy, to undertake the headship of the house at an early age. He in turn was taken away in comparative youth and Wendell Phillips was orphaned the year after the lad entered a Latin school. Carlos Martin, Phillips biographer, says, Thus the entire education and outfit of the family devolved upon the mother. The sagacious manner in which she managed gave her son, no doubt, that respect for and appreciation of female ability which became one of his characteristic traits.

Many a time I have stood beside the grave of a young father and marveled at the providence which permitted his removal at a time when he was so much needed; but as I look back now to my early ministry, I can see the interests of those bereft sons and daughters were not overlooked of God, for they have grown to be the most beautiful women and the most wholesome men I know. What a grief, then, for a widow to have the son upon whom she had leaned since her husbands death, suddenly snatched away. Such was the experience of this suffering woman.

She was bereft of an only son. I shall never forget how a boy, who, being the only son and heir to a large fortune, was early spoiled and gave his parents no little trouble. When one day he was running away from home, he stopped by our house and my mother undertook to counsel him. Among other things she said, Julius, remember that you are your mothers only son, and if you ran away from home it would break her heart.

Thats a fact, Mrs. Riley, you have five sons and you wouldnt miss one, but since I am my mothers only boy, I guess she would miss me. The suggestion that because she had five sons she would not miss one, struck my mother as little short of ludicrous, and as she reported it to us that night, she heartily laughed.

But, as a matter of fact, the mother who has but one son, losing him, does suffer more than she who has others left to comfort her heart. The Scriptures recognize this, and when they would present a sorrow without redeeming features, they speak of it under the figure of the loss of an only son. For instance, when Jeremiah was pleading with apostate Israel, telling them of the sorrows that were overtaking them on account of sin, he says,

O daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee mourning, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation: for the destroyer shall suddenly come upon us (Jer 6:26).

Zechariah also, anticipating the time of the Lords second appearance, voices Him after this manner,

I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look unto Me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn (Zec 12:10).

Amos, voicing the prophecy of the Lord against the non-repentant people, says,

I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and 1 will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day (Amo 8:10).

There are people in these days who make it their business to praise death. I saw a poem the other day, Laus Mortesor Praise to Death. The language was beautiful and the ideas had a certain comfort, but the theology of it was utterly false. I would almost as soon praise the devil as to praise death, seeing that the latter is his work. Instead of death being a bright angel, it is the blackest angel that ever breathed despair into the earth. Instead of grief over death being condemnable, Christ himself shared in it, and at Lazarus grave, wept. It is the triumph of the last enemy, and the widows wails had occasion; she was sorrow stricken indeed.

There will come a time when men can mock at death. Paul makes it plain when that time is, namely, at the appearance of Jesus Christ the graves shall give up their dead, and the living mortals shall be suddenly changed to immortal. Then shall be brought to pass the saying that death is swallowed up in victory. Then, and not till then, may incorrupt, immortal man mock at this enemy, calling in gleeful triumph, O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?

This woman was stricken for the second time. Doubtless she had pled in the hour of her husbands sickness, but met the strange experience of unanswered prayer, and when he went down into his grave, her faith was well nigh eclipsed, and she walked for weeks with faltering steps, through which time this growing lad soothed and comforted her, and became her stay. His rich love, his manly behavior, his brave service, his beautiful face, helped her in the race of years to recover from the deep sting of widowhood.

When Joseph Parkers wife died, he went into his pulpit on the following Thursday to find a great and sympathetic audience, to speak to them on The Ministry of Silence in the Time of Sorrow. His text was, None spake a word unto him for they saw that his grief was great (Job 2:13). Some of the things he said on that occasion reveal the stricken heart as eloquently as language could. He said, Some of us have moment by moment no God. God has for the moment forsaken us. Blessed be the dear Christ. Down to the very last, He wrought out some new revelation for us, and at the last He made it possible for us to be atheists, saying, My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me? Some of us are thankful that Jesus Christ ever said those words. To us they are a large portion of the New Testament. They create a great sanctuary of darkness wherein it is lawful to mourn and to despair. And then, without any direct reference to his personal sorrow, and yet evidently voicing the same while saying nothing about it, he said, And so we come to Christ for help and He seems to be a long way off. He seems to have nothing to say to this heart or that. We sent for Him and He abode two days in the place where He was. When He came He wept, as the women and children about us had been doing all the time. We said, The Almightiness is reduced to tears: the Omnipotence has no recourse. God has turned His back upon us that He may relieve Himself with weeping.

How many of us know the meaning of Parkers words? If it is not a present experience, it is a memory of the past; some sunless days, such a blackness of darkness, such as Father Ryan wrote of when he said:

They come to evry life, sad, sunless days With not a light all oer their clouded skies;And thro the dark we grope along our ways With hearts fear-filled, and lips low-breathing sighs.

What is the dark? Why cometh it? and whence?Why does it banish all the bright away?How does it weave a spell oer soul and sense?Why falls the shadow whereer gleams the ray?

Hast felt it? I have felt it, and I know How oft and suddenly the shadows rollFrom out the depths of some dim realm of woe,To wrap their darkness round the human soul.

Those days are darker than the very night;For nights have stars, and sleep, and happy dreams;But these days bring unto the spirit-sight The mysteries of gloom, until it seems

The light is gone forever, and the dark Hangs like a pall of death above the soul,While rocks amid the gloom like storm-swept bark,And sinks beneath a sea where tempests roll.

But the end is not yet, for, as Joseph Parker continues concerning the work of Christ, Then came the new revelation, and the greater strength, and the all piercing cry, and the resurrection voice, and the Come forth which made Death quake and give up its prey.

Not many women are so privileged as was this widow of Nain. Her great sorrow was met by a greater joy; her anguished grief was destined to end in the richest ecstacy that ever ravished a human heart. If she had been sore stricken, she was to be filled suddenly and fully with joy, for in one moment the great grief was converted into

THE GREAT GIFT

As at Lazarus grave, Christ here proved His power against Death, saying unto the young man,

I say unto thee, Arise, and he that was dead, sat up, and began to speak, and He gave him to his mother.

It expressed His compassion. Few men have ever walked the earth having power at their command, whose hearts were so often struck with compassion as was the heart of Christ. Few men did I say? Pardon the term. No man ever walked the earth, with power at his command, who knew such compassion for the multitude as did Jesus. When He looked upon the hungry crowd, He had compassion on the multitude because they continued three days and had had nothing to eat, and would not send them away fasting, lest, happily, they faint on the way. When the blind appealed to Him, Jesus, being moved with compassion, touched their eyes and straightway they received their sight. When the father of the epileptic son came, having heard of the character of Jesus, he said,

Ofttimes it hath cast him both in the fire and into the water to destroy him, but if Thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us.

When He looked into the face of Israel and was reminded that they were down-trodden, living in their own land with liberties gone, we are told that He looked with compassion on them because they were as sheep without a shepherd. When He would present the heart of His own Father, He did it under the figure of the prodigal, and represented Him as running to meet the son, and being moved with compassion.

In this respect He not only excels the ordinary man with whom power is, but He contrasts him, for coldness and selfishness has too often kept the grace of love and sympathy from the crowd; much less, compassion. A writer calls attention to the fact that Tennyson, so much lauded for his beautiful sentiments, in his Palace of Art speaks of the crowd as darkening droves of swine. And even Carlyle says, The people of the British Isles were forty millionsmostly fools. The Literary Digest tells the story of a college graduate who after years of most unspeakable misfortune, decided to appeal to a classmate upon whom fortune had smiled. He sought out the rich banker and was escorted into his presence. The banker, impressed by the signs of suffering and misfortune in both the face and clothing of his old associate, said in a shocked manner, Goodness, man, what has happened to you? The unfortunate one began to tell his story. He passed from one disaster to another. He told him of the loss of his wife, of the dying of an only son, of misfortune after misfortune which had overtaken him and left him penniless. As the tale unfolded, the bankers eyes began to dim with tears, his shoulders shook with sobs. He rose and walked unsteadily to a bell, and when the porter entered, in response to the summons, the banker said to him, James throw this man out; he is breaking my heart. But when the heart of Christ broke, it was with a compassion that found a benevolent expression, and the appeals of the sore-distressed were relieved thereby. And Christ is the same yesterday, and to day and for ever.

This gift prefigured our resurrection. The greatest symbol of the resurrection from the grave, found in Gods Word, is the report of the resuscitations at the word of Christ. Mark you, this man sat up at the word of Jesus. I say unto thee, Arise! The time is coming, when, by the sound of His voice, He shall enter every grave of earth, and even the sea, and the body of every sleeping saint, shall arise, for

the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise.

Paul, speaking to this theme of the resurrection, said,

Christ is the first fruit; afterward, them that are Christs at His Coming.

And he also associated it with the sound of the trumpet,

For the trump shall sound and the dead shall he raised incorruptible, for this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. Then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

Truly, ours is a Blessed Hope. Hence, at the side of the bier we sorrow not as others who have no hope, for, believing that Jesus died and rose from the dead, we also believe that they that sleep with Him, will God bring with Him.

Dr. Behrends, in The Old Testament under Fire makes this the glory of Christianity. Fie says, Christianity lives and moves and has its being in eternitythe eternity which never began and which never ends. The God in whom we believe is from everlasting to everlasting. The law which we honor can never become obsolete. It will remain when heaven and earth shall have passed away. The Saviour, in whom we trust, has conquered death, bringing life and immortality to light, showing us that corruption must put on incorruption, and the grave become the cradle of an endless life. The Risen Lord is our Leader, whom we follow into the gloom of the sepulcher, that we may emerge with Him into the glory of the unending day. Everything in the Christian confession is keyed to immortality and eternal blessedness. There shall come an end to weakness and weariness, an end to pain and tears; while the songs of our pilgrimage shall swell into the unending psalm of victory and joy!

It was by some such thought that Isaac Watts was inspired to write:

Why do we mourn departing friends,Or shake at deaths alarms?Tis but the voice that Jesus sends,To call them to His arms.

Are we not tending upward, too,As fast as time can move?Nor would we wish the hours more slow,To keep us from our love.

Why should we tremble to convey Their bodies to the tomb?There the dear flesh of Jesus lay,And scattered all the gloom.

The graves of all the saints He blessed,And softened every bed;Where should the dying members rest,But with the dying Head?

Thence He arose, ascending high,And showed our feet the way;Up to the Lord we, too, shall fly At the great rising day.

It symbolized the saints reunion. He gave him to his mother. Can you imagine the meeting? In the fifteenth chapter of Lukes Gospel, we have a picture of the return of the prodigal son, and it is a scene of unspeakable joy. The servants bring forth quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and kill the fatted calf that he may be fed. Did you ever think of what the father said, For this, my son, was dead, and is alive again? When that change is true in fact, who can imagine the music or measure of joy? I have seen a mother receive into her arms the son who had been lost but a few hours. Oh, such ecstacy! There were smiles on her face that would have wreathed an angels! Who can tell what will be the ecstacy of that hour when broken families shall be made complete again; and separated friends shall meet to part no more, since saints coming from the East and from the West, from the North and from the South, shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac in the Kingdom of God. What greetings! What embraces! What heavenly happiness! Aye, it was a great gift! All that she had ever received beside was forgotten in that wondrous moment when Christ gave back the boy, bringing him from the cold embrace of death in a living response to a mothers love.

It prepares one to think of

THE GREAT GOD

The people thought of it

and fear took hold on all, and they glorified God, saying, A great prophet is arisen among us, and God hath visited His people!

This fear was of His holy person. Whenever God stands in the midst of the people, sinners are made afraid, not because He speaks in thunder tones; not because His sore threat against their sins is voiced afresh, but because they feel their unholiness in the presence of Him who is without spot or stain, or any such thing. You will remember in the days of Moses how, when God appeared in the mount, in thunderings and lightnings, the people fell on their faces, and said to Moses, Speak thou with us; let not God speak with us, lest we die. You will remember that when Jesus revealed Himself to Peter after His resurrection, Peter fell at His feet and said, I am an unclean man. You will recall how, when John caught a vision of Him after He had ascended into Glory, and was standing on the right hand of God, he fell at His feet as one dead. But oh, think of His response! John says, He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not!

The people recovered this fear sufficiently to praise Him, and their first statement revealed a great truth

This Prophet was from His presence. A Great Prophet is arisen among us. For how long had Israel looked for that prophet? You go back to Deuteronomy, and you read, Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him ye shall hearken. And ever since, they had been looking for him. When Christ appeared, they plied Him with the question, Art Thou Elijah? When He declared, I am not, they put yet another, Art Thou the Prophet? The prophet! When Christ met the woman at the well, she voiced to Him her expectation of the coming Messiah, who was Gods Prophet. When Christ wrought the miracle to feed the hungry crowd that gathered round Him beyond the sea, the people, seeing the signs which He did, said, This is of a truth the Prophet which cometh. The Prophet. It is a blessed word! He was not so much a fore teller; He was a forth-tellerGods spokesman; and to this hour, a Prophet has been the peoples friend.

He has not come to them with smooth words, but often with harsh sayings, and yet He has always spoken in love. Dwight Hillis has truly reminded us of the fact that the greatest men of modern times have been veritable prophets. He says, Emerson stood forth telling each individual that being is better than seeing; telling the orator and publicist that it is good for a man to have a hearing, but better for him to deserve the hearing; telling the reformer that the single man, who indomitably plants himself upon his divine instincts and there abides, will find the whole world coming around to him. And Carlyle also was Gods propheta seer, stormy indeed and impetuous, with a great hatred for lies and laziness, and a mighty passion for truth and work; lashing our shams and hypocrisies; telling our materialistic age that it was going straight to the devil, and by a vulgar road at that; pointing out the abyss into which luxury and licentiousness have always plunged. Like Elijah of old, Carlyle loved righteousness, hated cant, and did ever plead for justice, and mercy, and truth. If his every sentence was laden with intellect, it was still more heavily laden with character. To the great Scotchman, God gave the prophets vision and the seers sympathy and scepter.

But the Prophet of all times was the Man from Nazareth, who performed the miracle for the widows son.

This miracle was wrought by Gods power. The greatest difficulty with present-day divine-healers is the disposition to assume something, or to claim for themselves. Christ, who was none other than God, and who spake by His own power and in His own Name, forgot not to give His Father the glory. Hear Him as He says, I am in the Father and the Father in Me; the words that I say unto you, I speak not for Myself, but the Father abiding in Me doeth His works. One mark of the false prophet is self-esteemthe claim of special privileges, gifts or powers. The greatest and truest prophet that ever walked the earth, that wrought the miracle for the widows son, and permitted the people to praise not Him but the Father, was the man from Nazareth.

This people justly gave God the praise. It is an ungrateful world; we are a forgetful folk. Like the nine lepers, we receive and go our way in silence, and as a result of it, the people know not what God hath wrought; and are given little chance to glorify God, declaring, We never saw it on this fashion.

Oh, visited man, speak! Oh, woman, with a personal experience of Divine grace, speak! Give God the glory! To His Name belongs the praise!

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

CRITICAL NOTES

Luk. 7:12. Carried out.Places of burial were outside the towns, to avoid ceremonial defilement.

Luk. 7:13. The Lord.This title for Jesus is much more frequently found in the third and fourth Gospels than in the first and second, and is perhaps an indication of their having been written when Christianity was somewhat widespread.

Luk. 7:14. The bier.An open coffin.

Luk. 7:15. He delivered.This is closely connected with what is said in Luk. 7:13, He had compassion on her. Cf. 1Ki. 17:23; 2Ki. 4:36.

Luk. 7:16. There came a fear on all.Rather, fear took hold on all (R.V.).

Luk. 7:17. Juda.It is evident that the miracle of Nain, as being a greater marvel of power than any which Jesus had previously exhibited, raised His fame to the highest pitch. His name was spread abroad, not only in the immediate neighbourhood of the town in which the miracle was wrought, but throughout Juda also. It was upon this that news of our Lords wonder-working power reached the Baptist in his prison (Speakers Commentary). A comparison has often been drawn between the miracles of raising the dead which are recorded in the Gospels. The daughter of Jairus was newly dead, the widows son was being borne to the grave, while Lazarus had been dead four days and his body was in the grave, at the time of the working of the respective miracles by which they were recalled to life.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Luk. 7:11-18

The Compassionate Lord of Life.Observe

I. The meeting of the two processions.Jesus is coming up to the city, with a considerable crowd following, and meets the funeral coming out of the gate. Face to face stand the Prince of life with His attendants and the waiters on death. The dead man, dead in his youth, and when most needed, the lonely mother, the sympathising or gossiping crowdthese show the ravages of death, the sorrow that shadows all human love and every home, and the unavailing, though well-meant, consolation which men can give. That procession is going one way, and He and His the other. They come in contact, and His power arrests the march, sends the dead back living, and the mourner glad. That meeting may stand for a symbol of His whole coming and work. Why this widow should have been chosen out of all the mourners that laid their dead to rest that day we do not know. The reasons for the distribution of His gifts are generally beyond us.

II. Christs unasked pity.The sight of the extreme grief of the poor mother, whom He knew to be reduced to utter loneliness, and probably to poverty, by the death of her only bread-winner and object of love, went straight to Christs heart. Misery appealed to Him even if it was dumb. His perfect manhood was perfectly compassionate, and was hindered from the freest flow of pity by no selfishness. One great glory of this miracle is spontaneousness. Neither request nor faith precedes it. How should they? Death was a final and inexorable evil, and none of the three recorded raisings from the dead was in answer to prayers or belief in His power. The last thing that could have occurred to that weeping mother was that this Stranger, whom she was too much absorbed to notice, could give her back her son. But if there was no prayer, there was sorrow and there was need; and sorrow which He could soothe, and need which He could supply, never made their moan in His hearing in vain. Most of His miracles had some measure of faith in some persons concerned as a precedent condition. But that was a condition established for our sakes, not for His. His love and power were tied to no one manner of working, and unasked, untrusted, probably unobserved, He feels the impulse of pity, which is love turned towards misery, and the impulse moves His all-powerful will. While ordinarily He is still wont to be found of those that seek Him, He still finds and blesses some who seek Him not.

III. Christ the compassionate immediately becomes the consoler.Very beautiful is it that the soothing words Weep not are said before the miracle, as if He would not wait even for a moment before seeking to calm the sorrow. But words which are impotent on other lips, and only make tears run faster, are of sovereign power when He speaks them. Nothing is emptier than the usual well-meant attempts to comfort. What is the use of telling not to weep when all the cause of weeping remains? But if we know that He is with us in trouble, and can hear His whisper of comfort, the sharpness of pain is lulled, though the wound remain. He comforted the widowed heart by the utterance of His sympathy before He gave her back her dead, and therein He reveals Himself to all as the compassionate, and therefore the Consoler even of sorrows that will last as long as life. His Weep not is not rebuke nor a vain attempt to stop the expression without touching the source of grief, but is a specimen of His continual work, and a prophecy of the time when there shall be no more sorrow, nor crying.

IV. To compassion and comforting succeeds the stupendous act of life-giving.Christs look and word to the mother showed His heart, if not His purpose, and so the bearers halt in silent obedience and expectation. Jesus spake two wordsYoung man, ariseas if waking him from sleep, and the young man sat up. How bewildered he would be, finding himself there on the bier, in the blazing light, and with this crowd around him! He began to speaksome confused exclamations, probably, like those of a suddenly awakened man, not knowing where he was or how he came there. Like the other cases of resurrection, this one suggests many questionsWas return to life a kindness to the young man? how did the experience during death fit in with that of earth? and others which might be raised but not answered. As to the first of these, no doubt, this and all the cases are presented as done out of compassion for the mourners; but we cannot suppose that that motive is irreconcilable with regard for the persons raised, and we may be assured that the gain to the mother was not attained by loss to the son. Probably the restoration of his bodily life was the beginning of his spiritual life.

The whole incident may be regarded as a revelation of Christs power, or as a revelation of deaths impotence. Christ stands forth as the Prince and Giver of life. His word is enough. Wherever that dead man was, he heard and obeyed. The ease with which the miracle is done contrasts with the effort of Elijah and Elisha in their analogous acts. The assumption of authority by Christ is of a piece with all His tone. The whole is His proclamation that He is Lord both of the dead and living. It is prophetic too, for it foreshadows the day when they that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God. The miracle also teaches the impotence of death, which is but His servant, and vanishes at His bidding. It demonstrates the partial operation of death, as affecting not the person, but only the body. It shows that when a man dies he is not ended, but that personality, consciousness, and all that make the man are wholly unaffected thereby. He gave him to his mother. Who can paint that reunion? May we not venture to see in Christs action here some dim forecast of the future, when, amid the joy of heaven, we too may hope to be reunited to our dear ones, lost awhile. Surely He who brought this young man back from the dead to soothe a widows sorrow, and found joy in giving him back to a mothers arms, will do the like with us, and let lonely and yearning hearts clasp again their beloved.Maclaren.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luk. 7:11-17

Luk. 7:11-17. At the Gate of Nain.In this most touching story we see Jesus as a true friend. From a true friend we expect compassion, comfort, help.

I. A friend needed.

II. A friend found.He offers to the widow pity, comfort, help.

III. A friend still needed and still near.Jesus is the same. Heaven has made no change in His friendship. He by His spirit still raises the spiritually dead, and by His mighty word will yet raise the physically dead.Spence.

Luk. 7:11-15.

I. The compassion of Jesus.

II. The pains taken by Jesus in all that He did.

III. The power shown by Jesus.Brown.

The Lord of Life.

I. Two crowds (Luk. 7:11-12).In the midst of the one a dead man. In the midst of the other the Life of the world. In the first death in its hardest, cruelest form; for the dead man was just entering on mans life, and his only real mourner was his widowed mother.

II. The meeting.The pity of Jesuspity of sight, of speech, of touch, a whole body of pity. The power of Jesuspower brought forth by pity. A true picture this of the Saviour.Lindsay.

I. The Saviours tender sympathy.

II. The Saviours words of power.

III. The Saviours spreading fame.W. Taylor.

The Divine Consoler.

I. The widow mourning.

II. The widow comforted.By

(1) a word of compassion;
(2) a word of power.Watson.

Luk. 7:11. The Beauty of the Narrative.The exquisite literary skill of St. Luke is nowhere more clearly manifested than in telling of this incident; it and the walk to Emmaus will stand comparison with the masterpieces of literary style in any language. Abundant particulars are given which serve to call up a very vivid picture: the city, the gate, the multitude that followed Jesus, the long funeral procession that met them, the open bier, the mans age and circumstances, his mothers condition, the feeling manifested by Christ, His actions and words, His gestures, the eager attention of the bystanders, the astonishment at the miracle, and the excited comments passed upon it, are all touched upon. Yet there is no wearisome elaboration of details and no height of colouring. The story is told without using adjectivesthe great resource to which modern word-painters betake themselves. So far from St. Lukes work being of the word-painting order, it is simply a clear conception of the whole scene with all its details, expressed in a perfectly simple, natural manner.

Luk. 7:12. The only son.The special circumstances of this bereavement are carefully noted:

1. The man was young.

2. He was an only Song of Solomon 3. His mother was a widow. In several places in Scripture grief for an only son is taken as the very type of griefas an expression of the keenest distress the soul can feel. O daughter of My people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee mourning, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation (Jer. 6:26). Cf. also Zec. 12:10; Amo. 8:10. Indeed, to a Jewish mind this form of bereavement was specially grievous, since it was regarded as often a direct punishment for sin.

And she was a widow.St. Luke has told us the sum of her misery in a few words. The mother was a widow, with no further hope of having children; nor with any upon whom she might look in the place of him that was dead. To him alone she had given suck. He alone made her home cheerful. All that is sweet and precious to a mother, was he alone to her! A young man (Luk. 7:14)that is in the flower of his age; just ripening into manhood; just entering upon the time of marriage; the scion of his race; the branch of succession; the sight of his mothers eyes; the staff of her declining years.Gregory of Nyssa.

Luk. 7:13. Had compassion.In some cases Christ wrought a miracle when asked by a sufferer, in some cases when asked by their friends, and in some cases, as here, of His own accord. No request was presented to Himthe only appeal was that of the sorrow which filled the mothers heart, and touched the spectators with sympathy. What comfort there is in this thoughtthat our needs, our helplessness, our grief, speak louder than our prayers and fill the heart of Christ with compassion. Some sought blessings from the Saviour; but this was a case in which He sought out the sufferer, with the purpose of stanching her sorrow. The purpose for which Christ wrought miracles is often unwisely said to have been to attest His mission by displaying the Divine power which He possessed. But clearly this was not His motive on the present occasion: His one idea was to do goodto comfort the sorrowful.

Weep not.He felt authorised to administer consolation; in the unexpected, almost accidental, meeting with the funeral procession, He recognised a signal given Him by the Father to put forth His power to comfort human sorrow and to overcome death.

This Case a Special Appeal to Christs Pity.It is not wonderful that Christ had compassion in sorrow like this. Could He forget, as He looked at this weeping mother, that He was Himself the son of a widow, and the stay of her widowhood? or fail to foresee the day, only some months distant, the noon of which would see His own mothers heart pierced with the sword as she stood by His dolorous cross, of which the eve should weep over her as she followed His body to its rocky grave? But forasmuch as He Himself must die that dead men may live, and forasmuch as His mother was soon to weep over His grave that all mourning mothers might thenceforth weep less bitterly, therefore He went forward to this widow, and with a voice in which there must have trembled a strange tenderness said unto her, Weep not!Dykes.

An Authoritative Summons.Here is something quite unusual. A man at once compassionate and wise does not try to check natural grief. He rather endeavours to find some consideration that will abate and moderate it. But here is no argument, no consolatory words; only a simple, weighty, authoritative summons, Weep not! This arouses attention, stirs expectation of something to come.Laidlaw.

Luk. 7:14. Touched the bier.The gesture of touching the bier was a very significant one: it was symbolical of His power to arrest with His finger the triumph of death, and revealed almost unconsciously the majesty with which He was clothed. Life had met death, wherefore the bier stopped.

Young man, I say to thee.By this word Christ proved the truth of the saying of Paul, that God calleth those things which are not as though they were (Rom. 4:17). He addresses the dead man, and makes Himself be heard, so that death is changed into life. We have here:

(1) a striking emblem of the future resurrection, as Ezekiel is commanded to say, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord (Eze. 37:4); and

(2) we are taught in what manner Christ quickens us spiritually by faith. It is when He infuses into His word a secret power, so that it enters into dead souls, as He Himself declares, The hour cometh, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they who hear shall live (Joh. 5:25).Calvin.

Sleep and Death.In sleep as in death there is a sundering of the connection between soul and body, though in the one case it is but temporary, while in the other it is permanent. Yet just as the sound of the human voice is sufficient to restore the connection in the case of one buried in sleep, so the Saviours word avails to restore connection, even in the case of the dead.Godet.

The Lord of Life and Death.There is incomparable majesty in the phrase, I say unto thee. He to whom it was addressed seemed to have passed away beyond the reach of the human voice; no lamentations of his mother and friends could reach his ear. Yet the Saviour spoke as one whose words resounded through the world of the grave and could give commands which even the dead must hear and obey. The Lord of life and death speaks with command. No finite power could have said so without presumption or with success. That is the voice that shall one day call up our vanished bodies from those elements in which they are resolved, and raise them out of their dust. Neither sea, nor death, nor hell can offer to detain their dead when He charges them to be delivered (Hall).

The Compassionate Heart, Mouth, Feet, and Hand.Here was a conspiration of all parts to mercy: the heart had compassion, the mouth said Weep not, the feet went to the bier, the hand touched it, the power of the Deity raised the dead.Ibid.

Luk. 7:15. Sat up and began to speak.The return of life is marked by movement and speech: the rigid corpse resumed its vital functions, the mute tongue was loosened. The young man thus restored by the creative power of Christ became as it were His possessionhe belonged by the gift of life for a second time to the Saviour. But Christ gives him over to his mother.

A Spiritual Resurrection also.The feeling of sympathy expressed by our Saviour for the mother is put forth as the motive which created the resolution in Jesus to raise up the person reposing on the bier. But this does not exclude the idea of this action having a reference also to the resuscitated person. Man as a sentient being can never be only a means, as would here be the case were we to regard the joy of the mother as the only object of the raising of the youth from the dead. Her joy, on the contrary, is only the immediate but more unessential result of this action, recognisable by those who were present; the secret result of this resuscitation was the spiritual raising up of the youth to a more exalted state of existence, through which only the joy of the mother assumed a true and everlasting character.Olshausen.

Luk. 7:16. Fear.This effect is often mentioned in connection with the miracles of Jesus. Cf. Luk. 5:26; Luk. 8:37; Mar. 4:41. It is the natural shrinking of sinful human nature from the evident presence of the power of an all-holy God. Like feeling is recorded in the case of almost all appearances of angels recorded in Holy Scripture. Cf. also Simon Peters words and action in Luk. 5:8.

Prophet.The use of this name in connection with the work wrought by Jesus indicates the true idea of the prophetic office. The prophet is not a mere predictor of future events: he is the representative of God and spokesman for God; he brings benefits from God to man, and proofs of the Divine interposition in the government of the world.

Visited His people.After a long interval of silence and apparent inactivity (cf. Luk. 1:68-69). The miracle now wrought reminded the people of those of Elijah and Elisha. Yet there was a notable difference between the two. For though these prophets raised the dead, they did so laboriously; Jesus immediately and with a word: they confessedly as servants and creatures, by a power not their own; Jesus by that inherent virtue which went out of Him in every cure which He wrought. Elijah, it is true, raises the dead; but he is obliged to stretch himself several times upon the body of the child whom he raises, he struggles, he feels his limited power, he is agitated; it is very evident that he invokes another power to help him, that he recalls from the kingdom of death a soul that is not altogether subject to his word, and that he is not himself the controller of death and of life. Jesus Christ raises the dead in the same way that He does the most ordinary of actions: He speaks with authority to those who are plunged in an eternal sleep; and it is very evident that He is the God of the dead as of the living, never more tranquil than when He does the greatest deeds (Massillon).

The Three Miracles of raising the Dead.The comparison of the three miracles of raising the dead (referred to above in the Critical Notes), as illustrating various degrees of spiritual deadness from which Christ can awaken the soul, has often been made by the older writers. It is strikingly expressed by Doune: If I be dead within doors (If I have sinned in my heart), why suscitavit in domo, Christ gave a resurrection to the rulers daughter within doors, in the house. If I be dead in the gate (If I have sinned in the gates of my soul), in my eyes, or ears, or hands in actual sins, why suscitavit in port, Christ gave a resurrection to the young man at the gate of Nain. If I be dead in the grave (in customary and habitual sins), why suscitavit in sepulchro, Christ gave a resurrection to Lazarus in the grave too.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Butlers Comments

SECTION 2

The Sorrowing (Luk. 7:11-17)

11 Soon afterward he went to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. 12As he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a large crowd from the city was with her. 13And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, Do not weep. 14And he came and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, Young man, I say to you, arise. 15And the dead man sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother. 16Fear seized them all; and they glorified God, saying, A great prophet has arisen among us! and God has visited his people! 17And this report concerning him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.

Luk. 7:11-13 Compassion: Nain is about 20 miles southwest of Capernaum; a good days walking distance. It is about 2 miles west of Endora place famous for a temporary resurrection from the dead (Samuel) in the days of King Saul. As Jesus drew near to the gate of this village He came upon a funeral procession. A young man had died and left his widowed mother without any visible means of support, This woman was in great sorrow not only because she had lost both husband and son and was now without the companionship of those nearest and dearest on earth, but also because she would be frantic to know where to turn for physical help and sustenance. A job market for women whereby they might earn a living was unheard of in those days. Women were expected to marry and keep house. Jesus had compassion on this heart-broken, weeping widow and said, Do not weep. Then He touched the bier.

The Hebrew word for coffin is mittah (2Sa. 3:31); the Greek word is sorou (Luk. 7:14) and is translated here bier. Closed coffins as we know them were unknown among the Hebrews. The bier was an open, flat, wooden frame on which the corpse was carried from the house to the grave. Burial was usually very soon after the death of a person (less than 10 hours) because of hygienic reasons. Anyone who touched a dead body or anything which a dead body might contact, was declared by Old Testament law, unclean for seven days (Num. 19:1-22). Jewish funeral processions were highly emotional and demonstrative. The corpse was usually dressed in clothes worn normally, stretched out on a beir with a cloth thrown over it (Act. 5:6). Sometimes burial spices were added to the body. The poor were buried in earthen graves; the rich in rock-hewn tombs. Lack of proper burial was regarded as a great indignity and a judgment of God. The funeral procession from the home to the grave was accompanied on foot by friends and relatives of the deceased, weeping, wailing and casting dust and ashes on their heads. Sometimes mourners tore their clothing near the neck of their garments as a sign of grief. Usually every funeral was attended by hired mourners paid by the family of the deceased. When the funeral procession started toward the burial place, the women would go first because, the rabbis said, as Eve, a woman brought death into the world, women should lead deaths victims to the grave. Funeral processions were always noisy with graphic demonstrations of mourning (whether there was much sorrow or not). The Hebrews considered it very improper not to have loud wailing and mourning at a funeral. Flutists, playing sad music on their instruments, also accompanied these processions. When the sad rites were finished at the grave, the family would gather for a funeral meal, to eat the bread of mourning. Mourning lasted for 30 days; for the first three days, no work was done at all, and no greeting answered in the street.

The Greek word used to describe Jesus compassion is esplagchnisthe. There are other Greek words translated compassion, but this word connotes the feeling of psychosomatic emotions. It is the word translated bowels in the KJV. The bowels or intestines were regarded by Greeks and Hebrews as the seat of passion and affection. What Jesus felt for this widow and the mourners was intense and deeply emotional. While Jesus had compassion for the weeping widow, at the same time He commanded her (klaie, Gr. imperative mood), Weep not! A godly person knows when and what to weep about. Stoicism is no Christian virtue. Jesus weptmore than once (Joh. 11:35; Luk. 19:41; Heb. 5:7). But believers are not to grieve as those who have no hope (1Th. 4:13). Perhaps Jesus is encouraging this widow and these mourners to refrain from excessive grief and to look to Him as Lord of life. Life is to be found by looking beyond death through trust in Christ. Penitence for the sin that brings death is the proper expression of mourning. This is what Jesus wept about! Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Luk. 7:14-17 Celebration: Jesus raised the widows son from the dead. This incident is one of at least three resurrections from the dead performed by Jesus recorded in the gospels (Jairus daughter, Luk. 8:49 ff; and Lazarus, Joh. 11:1-57). Luke alone tells of the widows son, but his credibility is unassailable. A physician would hardly record such a story without checking out all details. The fact that Luke alone records this incident merely confirms the statement in Johns gospel (Joh. 20:30-31) that there were many miracles, teachings and events in Jesus life not recorded at all. He might have raised more than three!

Jesus could have raised this young man from the dead at a distance as He had healed the dying slave of the centurion; He could have walked alongside the funeral procession and brought the lad back to life without a word or a touch, but He chose to touch the bier. His objective was not merely to bring a dead man back to life but to bring the comfort of salvation to any who would believe in Him as Lord, so He must show that the power of Life resides in Him. For a Jew to touch a dead body or anything a dead body had defiled made the Jew ceremonially unclean for seven days (cf. Num. 19:11 ff). Death is the result of sin (Gen. 2:17). When a man died, he was a symbol of sin, and his body a source of defilement to the living. Jesus was not defiled because He was without sin. He demonstrated vividly by touching the bier of the dead that He is the Lord of death and lifeHe is the solution, the cure for sin and its results. Those who trust Him will conquer death because He has conquered it for them.

Jesus spoke to the dead man. Jesus expected the dead man to hear him and respond by sitting up. Either Jesus was who He claimed or a complete maniac. Any man who would go out into a street today, stop a funeral procession, command the mourners to stop weeping, touch the casket and say to the dead person, I say to you, arise, would be called a lunatic and probably incarcerated.
The dead man sat up and began to speak. And He gave him to his mother. Unbelievers try to destroy the historicity of this event by declaring it to be a myth.

a.

Such declarations are arbitrary. No evidence is offered to prove it is a myth. Where is the testimony from the first century that what Jesus did was mythological?

b.

Such a declaration is contrary to the authenticity and credibility of the record of Luke the physician. And there is evidence from the first century to establish Lukes veracity.

c.

Such a declaration impugns the character of Jesus. The gospels portray Him as honest, trustworthy, compassionate and a doer of good. How could He be guilty of such dissimulation if He only pretended to raise a dead man.

d.

It is incredible to suppose every time Jesus sought to raise someone from the dead that He could chance upon someone only apparently dead or in a coma.

e.

Those eyewitnesses to this resurrection did not react as if it were mythological or allegorical. They were seized (Gr. elaben, taken) with fear. Something unnatural, extraordinary and amazing happened.

Moments before this whole company of people had been possessed with mourning, bitter wailing, grief and sadness. Now it is turned into a celebration of happy praise for God. Those who witnessed this awesome event testified, A great prophet has arisen among us! . . . . God has visited His people! The idea that God would visit His people is a Messianic expression of both the Old and New Testaments. It is particularly expressed in Isa. 7:14 in the term Emmanuel which means God with us (see also, Mat. 1:23; Zep. 2:7; Isa. 29:6; Luk. 1:68; Luk. 1:78; Luk. 19:44; Psa. 8:4; Heb. 2:6). The report of this miracle spread throughout the land of the Jews, reaching even down into Judea. We wonder how many believed in Jesus as a result of the report. One thing is certain, it is proof that Jesus means what He says about some day calling all the dead from their tombs (Joh. 5:28-29, etc.), some to eternal life, others to eternal damnation.

Appleburys Comments

Raising the Widows Son
Scripture

Luk. 7:11-17 And it came to pass soon afterwards, that he went to a city called Nain; and his disciples went with him, and a great multitude. 12 Now when he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, there was carried out one that was dead, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. 14 And he came nigh and touched the bier: and the bearers stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. 15 And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother. 16 And fear took hold on all: and they glorified God, saying, A great prophet is arisen among us: and, God hath visited his people. 17 And this report went forth concerning him in the whole of Judaea, and all the region round about.

Comments

soon afterwards.The footnote in some Bibles reminds us that many ancient manuscripts suggest that this event occurred on the next day, that is, the day following the healing of the centurions son. Nain is some fifteen miles from Capernaum. It is possible that Jesus made the journey within the time limit. But more likely, Luke merely says that this miracle followed after the other one without specifying the exact day on which it occurred.

and a great multitude.Large numbers of people witnessed this miracle. A crowd accompanied Jesus and His disciples, and another crowd from the city of Nain was with the funeral procession. With that many people having witnessed the miracle, Luke had no difficulty verifying the facts as he was preparing to write to Theophilus.

the only son of his mother.Note the details which suggest the genuineness of this miracle: Luke tells of the exact spot where it occurredwhen He drew near the gates of the city. The dead man was young and the only son of a widowed mother.

when the Lord saw her.Luke had become convinced of the deity of Jesus and didnt hesitate to refer to Him as the Lord. See Rom. 10:9-10.

he had compassion on her.The word signifies a deep stirring of the emotions. Jesus had pity and sympathy for the distressed mother. Literally, the word refers to the vital organs of the body: the heart, the liver, the intestines and others. We know that fear, anger, joy, anxiety affect the function of these organs. The language of the New Testament expresses it in a bold term. It means that Jesus was deeply affected by the sight that met His eyes; His pity and compassion were really felt.

Weep not.Jesus put His compassion into words when He said, Dont crydont go on weeping. How helpless, by contrast, we often find ourselves when we try to comfort the sorrowing. Dont cry has little effect unless the cause of grief is removed. Thats exactly what Jesus did, for He raised the son from the dead and gave him back to his weeping mother.

Dont go on crying can have meaning to the Christian as he looks to the resurrection when the enemy which is death shall be abolished. Paul urged the Christians at Thessalonica not to sorrow as those who have no hope. He assured them that Christ will come and that the dead in Christ will be raised and the living will be caught up with them to meet the Lord in the air. These are indeed words of comfort. 1Th. 4:13-18; Rev. 14:13; 1Pe. 1:3-5; 1Co. 15:50-58; 2Co. 4:16 to 2Co. 5:8.

And he that was dead sat up.Luke stresses this astounding thing: at the command of Jesus the dead man sat up and began to talk. Jesus gave him back to his mother.

Fear took hold on all.The fear that held all in its grasp was not the fear that makes man a coward, but the fear that makes him bow in reverence before his God. They all praised God for what He had done, and they were all sure that God had raised up a Prophet in their midst.

God hath visited his people.He had blessed them with the presence of Jesus the Son of God. The miracle that showed His compassion prepared them to accept His deity.

Reports about Jesus activity quickly spread throughout all the country of Palestinehere called Judeaand the surrounding territory. These reports reached the ears of Johns disciples.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(11) He went into a city called Nain.The narrative that follows is peculiar to St. Luke. The name of the city has survived, with hardly any alteration, in the modern Nein. It lies on the north-western edge of the Little Hermon (the Jebel-ed-Dhy) as the ground falls into the plain of Esdraelon. It is approached by a steep ascent, and on either side of the road the rock is full of sepulchral caves. It was on the way to one of these that the funeral procession was met by our Lord. We may reasonably infer that the miracle that followed was one which, from its circumstances, had specially fixed itself in the memories of the devout women of Luk. 8:1, and that it was from them that St. Luke obtained his knowledge of it. (See Introduction.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

38. THE RAISING FROM THE DEAD, THE SON OF THE WIDOW OF NAIN, Luk 7:11-17 .

(Given by Luke alone.)

The next day after the healing of the centurion’s servant, Jesus, with a number of his disciples, took an excursion to the village of Nain, situated in the great plain of Esdraelon, about five miles northward from the Lesser Hermon. As this was a distance of about twenty-five miles from Capernaum, the company of Jesus must either have, according to eastern custom, set out very early, or have arrived as eve was approaching.

Our Lord enters on the eastern side of the town, attended by his retinue of followers, attracted by his ministry and his miracles. As he approaches, his company is met by a procession with bearers sustaining a bier, carrying a corpse through the gate of the city of the living to the city of the dead. There was no close coffin; but the body of a young man lay stretched upon the bier, with his face, feet, and hands probably bare, wrapped in the habiliments of burial. The much people of the city indicated the respect entertained for the dead. There seems to be but a single mourner, and she had but a single son to mourn for.

“On the northern slope of the rugged and barren ridge of Little Hermon,” says Stanley, “immediately west of Endor, which lies in a farther recess of the same range, is the ruined village of Nain. No convent, no tradition marks the spot. But under these circumstances the name is sufficient to guarantee its authenticity. One entrance alone could it have had that which opens on the rough hillside in its downward slope to the plain. It must have been in this descent, as, according to Eastern custom, they ‘carried out the dead man,’ that ‘nigh to the gate’ of the village the bier was stopped, and the long procession of mourners stayed, and the young man delivered back to his mother. It is a spot which has no peculiarity of feature to fix it on the memory; its situation is like that of all villages on this plain; but, in the authenticity of its claims, and the narrow compass within which we have to look for the touching incident, it may rank among the most interesting points of the scenery of the Gospel narrative.” Palestine, p. 349.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘And it came about soon afterwards, that he went to a city called Nain; and his disciples went with him, and a great crowd.’

Jesus’ popularity with the ordinary people continued, and a great crowd followed Him as he and His disciples approached Nain. Nain is the modern Nen in the plain of Jezreel six miles SSE of Nazareth and on the slope of Little Hermon. Its ancient gates have not yet been discovered, if it had any, but insufficient work has as yet been done on the site to be sure. However ‘gate’ can indicate simply an entrance thought of metaphorically as a gate. The fact that so obscure a place as Nain is mentioned is a clear indication that some genuine wonder occurred there that made men remember it..

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Jesus Raises from the Dead the Widow of Nain’s Son In Luk 7:11-17 we have the story of how Jesus raised from the dead the widow of Nain’s son. This passage of Scripture testifies of the power of God’s Word even over death itself. It was the raising of the dead that provoked John the Baptist to ask Jesus about his Messiahship in the following passage (Luk 7:18-35).

Luk 7:16 Comments The Gospel of Luke places emphasis upon the office and ministry of Jesus Christ as a Prophet. Jesus is referred to as a prophet five times in the Gospel of Luke (Luk 1:76; Luk 7:16; Luk 7:39; Luk 13:33; Luk 24:19). In contrast, Jesus is referred to a prophet by Matthew on two occasions (Mat 21:11; Mat 21:46), by John on two occasions (Joh 7:40; Joh 9:17), while Mark makes no such reference.

Luk 1:76, “And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;”

Luk 7:16, “And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his people.”

Luk 7:39, “Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.”

Luk 13:33, “Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.”

Luk 24:19, “And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:”

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Raising of the Widow’s Son.

The miracle:

v. 11. And it came to pass the day after that He went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him and much people.

v. 12. Now, when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the city was with her.

v. 13. And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.

v. 14. And He came and touched the bier; and they that bare him stood still. And He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.

v. 15. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And He delivered him to his mother.

Jesus did not remain in Capernaum after he had healed the centurion’s servant, for the very next day we find Him approaching the little town of Nain, which was located at about an equal distance from Nazareth and Mount Tabor, to the south. Its name, Vale of Beauty, gives some idea of the surroundings, as they were also described by the early church historians. Jesus was accompanied, not only by a large number of His disciples, but also by a great multitude of people. As they came near to the gate of the city, a sad sight met their eyes, a funeral train just leaving the town for the burial-ground outside the gates. This was an exceptionally sad funeral, since the dead man was an only son, and his mother was a widow. Both husband and son taken away by death: her position merited sympathy such as was given her by her fellow-citizens, a great multitude of whom went with her to the grave. “This woman had two misfortunes on her back. First, she is a widow; that is a misfortune enough for a woman that she is desolate and alone, has no one from whom she may expect comfort. And for that reason God is often called in Scriptures a Father of the widows and orphans, as Psa 68:6, and Psa 146:9: The Lord preserveth the strangers; He relieveth the fatherless and widow. Secondly, she had only one single son, and he dies before her, though he might have been her comfort. Thus God acts here, takes the husband and the son away; she would much more gladly have lost house and home, yea, her own body than this son and her husband. ” “But this is pictured before us that we should learn that before God nothing is impossible, whether it be called damage, adversity, wrath, as severe as it may be. and remember that God sometimes suffers the punishment to go both over the good and the evil, yea, that He even permits the evil people to sit in the garden of roses and lets them suffer no want, but toward the pious He acts as though He is angry with them and cares nothing for them. ” Note: There is a great contrast between the procession which is leaving the city, with sad and mournful steps, and that which is about to enter the city, happy because of the Savior in their midst. As Luther says, the Lord here boldly steps in the way of death, as the Mighty One, who has authority and might over him. Also: In Capernaum it is the daughter of Jairus, a mere child, that has barely closed her eyes in death; at Nain it is a young man, in the strength of incipient manhood, whose body is on the way to the place of burial; at Bethany it is a man in his best years that has rested in the grave for four days; surely enough diversity in these miracles of raising the dead.

When Jesus saw the funeral procession and noticed the peculiar sadness of the burial, His heart was moved with the deepest sympathy for the bereaved mother. lie had all the feelings of a true man, and those feelings, which are brought out in our case but imperfectly and unwillingly, He showed without reserve, Heb 4:15. His word to the widow was: “Weep not!” With what an expression of heartfelt compassion Jesus must have spoken the word, and how fully the poor woman realized the cordiality of the greeting and its power, to which she clung! So the Lord often reminds also us, when we are in great sorrow and trouble, of some of the verses and Scripture-passages which we learned in our youth or read at some time, as a form of introduction to the help which He graciously grants us. Jesus then stepped to the frame upon which the dead man lay, He touched the coffin: the hand of Life rapped at the chamber of death. Those who carried the coffin stood at the touch of the Lord’s hand. Then Jesus, as the Lord of life and death, gave a peremptory command: Young man, to thee I say, arise! He speaks to the dead as though he were merely sleeping. At His word the soul is reunited with the body, and death must yield up his prey. And the dead man, who was all ready to be buried, suddenly sat up and began to speak. He was restored to life. And Jesus gave him back to his mother, restored to the widow the one treasure which remained for her in life. She had been “surrounded with great pains and terror that she must have thought that God, heaven, earth, and everything were against her; and because she looks at things according to her flesh, she must conclude that it is impossible for her to be relieved of this fear. But when her son was awakened from death, then no other feeling took hold of her than as though heaven and earth, wood and stones, and everything was happy with her; then she forgot all pain and sorrow; all that went away; just as when a spark of tire is extinguished when it falls in the midst of the sea. ” On the last day, when the Lord will return for judgment, He will halt the great funeral procession which is moving forward all over the world, He will bring the dead back to life, He will heal all wounds which death has made, He will reunite all those whom death has separated. Then there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, Rev 21:4. That is the hope of the believers. While they are in this vale of tears, they cling to the hope of the Gospel. And this hope will then be realized and revealed in them.

Luk 7:16-17

The effect of the miracle:

v. 16. And there came a fear on all; and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited His people.

v. 17. And this rumor of Him went forth throughout all Judea and throughout all the region round about.

At this manifestation of almighty power which they had seen with their eyes, a fear and dread of the supernatural fell upon, took hold of, all the people. They felt the presence of God in this Man of Nazareth. But they did not acknowledge Him as the Messiah in spite of the greatness of the miracle. Merely as a great prophet they heralded Him; only as a visitation of God’s grace did they look upon His coming. Their faith and understanding fell far short of that of the centurion of Capernaum. A mere recognition and acceptance of Jesus as a great prophet and social reformer is not sufficient at any time. All men must know Him to be the one and only Savior of the world. Only this knowledge and trust will bring salvation.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Luk 7:11. Called Nain: Nain was situated a mile or two south of Tabor, and near Endor. The apostles most probably were of the number of the disciples who went with our Lord; because it is not to be imagined, that he would suffer the chosen witnesses of his miracles to be absent, when so great a miracle was to be performed as the resurrection of a person from the dead, and to be performed so publicly, in the presence of all those who were attending the funeral. The circumstance here recorded probably happened towards the evening.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Luk 7:11-12 . The raising of the young man at Nain ( , a pasture ground, situated in a south-easterly direction from Nazareth, now a little hamlet of the same name not far from Endor; see Robinson, Pal. III. p. 469; Ritter, Erdk. XV. p. 407) is recorded in Luke alone; it is uncertain whether he derived the narrative from a written source or from oral tradition.

] in the time that followed thereafter, to be construed with . Comp. Luk 8:1 .

] in the wider sense, Luk 6:13 , Luk 17:20 .

] in considerable number, Mehlhorn, De adjectivor. pro adverb, pos. ratione et usu, Glog. 1828, p. 9 ff.; Khner, ad Xen. Anab. i. 4. 12.

] This introducing the apodosis is a particle denoting something additional: also. Comp. Luk 2:21 . When He drew near, behold, there also was, etc. See, moreover, Act 1:11 ; Act 10:17 .

] Comp. Luk 9:38 ; Herod. vii. 221: ; Aeschyl. Ag. 872: ; Tob 3:15 ; Jdg 11:34 ; Winer, p. 189 [E. T. 264 f.].

The tombs ( , comp. Act 5:6 ) were outside the towns. See Doughty, Anal. II. p. 50 ff.

] scil. , which, moreover, is actually read after by important authorities. It should be written in its simplest form, (Vulg. and most of the codd. of It. have: haec). Beza: . (et ipsi quidem viduae).

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

4. A second Excursion from Capernaum. The Son of Man manifested as Compassionate High-Priest at Nains Gate and Simons Table; but at the same time as the Holy Messiah as opposed to the Offence taken by John, the People, and the Pharisees.

Luk 7:11-50

a. The Young Man At Nain (Luk 7:11-17)

(Gospel on the 16th Sunday after Trinity.)

11And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many [a good many]of his disciples went with him, and much people. 12Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother,13and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. Andwhen the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. 14And he came and touched the bier [the coffin]: and they that bare him stood still. And he said,Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. 15And he that was dead [the dead man] sat up, and began to speak.And he delivered him to his mother. 16And there came a fear [an astonishment] on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and,That God hath visited his people. 17And this rumour of him went forth throughout all Judea, and throughout all the region round about.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Luk 7:11. The day after.By this noting of the time, Luke gives us full liberty to make the raising of the young man at Nain to follow immediately after the healing of the servant of the centurion at Capernaum. It took place sc. . If with some we were obliged to read , then surely () would have followed. See De Wette ad loc.

Nain., perhaps , now only a little hamlet, Nein, only inhabited by a few families, then a small town in the tribe of Issachar, hard by the source of the brook Kishon, not far from Endor, two and a half leagues from Nazareth. The name signifies The lovely, perhaps on account of the pleasant situation in the plain of Esdraelon. Except in this passage it does not occur in the sacred history. The fathers Eusebius and Jerome knew it as a village two Roman miles southward from Tabor. See Winer in voce.

Of His disciples.We may understand here in a more extended sense of the word, without thereby excluding the twelve apostles, who had been the day before called and consecrated, and to whose further training and strengthening in faith such a miracle as that now to be accomplished at the very beginning of their apostolic life was as desirable as beneficent. The multitude doubtless consisted partly at least of hearers of the Sermon on the Mount, who now were to see anew how the Saviour fulfilled His own precept, Be merciful as your Father is merciful.

Luk 7:12. Carried out.Comp. Act 5:6. Graves were commonly outside the towns. was apparently omitted by A. 54. because it was of course understood, for which reason there is no ground to put it in brackets, (Lachmann.) Respecting the variations of the reading (sc. ), which moreover only slightly change the sense, see Meyer ad loc.

Luk 7:13. The Lord.An appellation peculiarly frequent in Luke; comp. Luk 10:1; Luk 11:39; Luk 12:42; Luk 13:15; Luk 22:61, especially adapted to indicate the majesty revealing itself in His discourse and action. Bengel has a fine remark: Sublimis hc appellatio jam Luca et Johanne scribente usitatior et notior erat, quam Mattho scribente. Marcus medium tenet. Initio doceri et confirmari debuit hoc fidei caput, deinde prsupponi potuit.

Weep not.As with Jairus, his fear, so with this widow her grief is first allayed, before the Lord displayed His miraculous might, . Comp. Mat 9:36. It is the manifestation of the compassionate High-priest, which is so conspicuously dwelt on by the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews also, kindred as he is in spirit with Paul and Luke (Heb 2:16; Heb 2:18; Heb 4:14).

Luk 7:14. The coffin (). It was open above. Since the bearers and the funeral train had of themselves stopped at the approach and the address of Jesus, who certainly was not wholly unknown to them, it is not necessary with Meyer to remark in their instantly standing still a trace of the extraordinary. Miracula prter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda. If the bearers also felt compassion for the mother, it is more probable that they themselves expected help.

Young man.The mighty word of the Prince of Life; comp. Luk 8:56; Joh 11:44. The instant rising and speaking of the dead, shows that not only life but also strength and health have returned, and the Lord, by giving him back to his mother, completes the miracle of His power by the highest act of His love. It is remarkable how the Saviour immediately after their restoration, manifests a visible care as to the dead raised by Him. To the daughter of Jairus He causes food at once to be given; Lazarus He causes to be relieved of his grave-clothes.

Luk 7:16. An astonishment.Not with all, it is true, equally deep, and perhaps not wholly free from superstition, but yet so far of genuine stamp as it led to a thankful glorifying of God and the Lord Jesus. That they extol Him as a prophet will not surprise us if we consider that the prophets not only foretold future things, but also performed miracles, and among them the raising of the dead.

Hath visited.Comp. Luk 1:68. In respect to the sthetical explanation of the miracle, there is a beautiful homily of Herders, which deserves to be compared.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The raising of the dead belongs in the fullest sense of the word to that class of , which serve as symbols of the life-giving activity of our Lord, Joh 11:25-26. They do not become fully conceivable unless we hold fast to the union of the Divine and human in the person of Jesus, and to the certainty of His own resurrection. To consider the three dead persons whose resurrection is related to us as only apparently dead, is rationalistic caprice. But even though we acknowledge on good grounds the reality of their physical dying, it is by no means implied in this, that all receptivity for the influence of the miraculous word of the Saviour had departed from them. From the very fact that they heard this miraculous voice (allowing their raising to be once established by a purely historical criticism) we may, it seems to us, infer the opposite. For this voice makes its way, not to the body, but to the spirit, of the departed. And who now will decide when the separation of the spirit from the body is irrevocable, and their re-union utterly impossible? This only takes place when the bodily organism is wholly destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, and this is in these instances by no means the case. It is not mutilated, wholly decayed bodies which the Lord revives, but bodies that have just died, whose corporeal organism needs not to be re-created and restored, but only to be reanimated. There was still a thoroughly trodden way between the corpse and the spirit which had left it, and so much is clear, that the corpse of the departed in its earliest stage is very different from a mummy or from a corrupt mass. (Lange.) This remark is perhaps of no interest for those who conceive the connection between soul and body as external, such as there is between bird and cage; but the more deeply modern science considers, along with the undeniable distinction, the intimate connection also of spirit and matter, the less venturous appears the conjecture that the spirit immediately after death stands as yet in a closer connection with its scarcely-abandoned dwelling-place than many are disposed to believe. This appears especially to have been the case with the dead persons whom Jesus raised. Departed in a time in which life and immortality had not yet been brought to light, they could at most surrender themselves to death with composure, without longing after death; they were moreover still bound to the earth by holy bonds of blood or sympathy. If ever tears, prayers, and entreaties might still fetter a spirit to the earth or call forth a longing after life, it was here the case, and scarcely do they hear the voice of Omnipotence when they can and will obey.

2. If, therefore, the possibility of the raising of the dead, as related in the Gospel, cannot be denied per se, its reality is sufficiently established. The Saviour Himself enumerates (Luk 7:22) among the signs of His redeeming activity, and what had already been performed by the prophets, beseemed Him, the highest Ambassador of the Father, yet more. Of the witnesses of these facts there were many, and those not exposed to suspicion, and even in a later period, testimonies as to this point are not wanting. See particularly the fragment of Quadratus, an Evangelist of the apostolic age, in Eusebius (H. E. iii. 3), who moreover declares that this apostolical writer was yet extant in his time, and was known to him as well as to the most of his brethren. Jerome also (Catal. Script, Luke 19) gives an account of it. When this account was written the youthful persons raised by the Saviour might have been still living.The strongest proof of their truth lies however in the internal character of these narratives of miracles. Whoever, with freedom from prejudice, reads the account of the raising at Nain or at Bethany will always repeat the exclamation: ce nest pas ainsi quon invente. As respects the silence of Matthew and Mark with reference to this miracle, it is difficult to give any other answer than conjecture. Perhaps it arises from the fact that the name of the youth or his mother was not more particularly known. The silence of Matthew could also be explained if we were at liberty to assume that in this expedition from Capernaum he had perhaps remained behind a single day in order to finish the settlement of his affairs. That of Mark is sufficiently explained by the fact, that his Gospel is laid out on a much more limited scale. In view of the great abundance of matter, moreover, no one of the narrators undertook to be complete, and the distinction into more ordinary and more difficult miracles, which latter especially they were not to pass over if these should not be controverted, was to them in their simplicity apparently wholly unknown.

3. In comparing the raisings of the dead on the part of the Saviour with those of the prophets on the one hand and those of the apostles on the other, there comes into view as well a remarkable distinction as a beautiful agreement. The Saviours raisings of the dead are attended with an exalted composure and majesty and acting from His own completeness of might, before which that tension and strain of all the powers of the soul which we more or less observe in the prophets and apostles, wholly vanishes. What to us appears supernatural, for Him appears the highest nature.
4. The event at the gate of Nain might be called one of the most striking proofs of the consoling doctrine of a providentia specialissima. The time of the death and the burial of the young manthe road taken by the funeral trainthe meeting with the Lord directly at the decisive momentnothing of all this is casual here. Time, place, and circumstances, all are ordered to reach a glorious goal; comfort to the afflicted; glory for the Lord; revelation of the quickening power of God.

5. The Saviours raising the dead was on the one hand a symbol of the life which He causes to arise in the spiritually dead world through His word and His spirit; on the other hand, a prophecy of that which in the shall take place in far greater measure. Both points of view He Himself conjoins in the strictest manner. Joh 5:24-29.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Nains gate, the sanctuary of the glory of God. We see, here has He revealed His glory as: 1. The great Prophet who confirms His preaching with the most astonishing signs; 2. the compassionate High-Priest who dries the tears of the sorrowing; 3. the Prince of life who snatches from the grave its booty.The journey of the Saviour in the midst of His disciples a perpetual confirmation of His promise, Joh 1:51.The personal meeting together of the Prince of Life with the spoil of Death.How Death strives with Life and Life with Death: 1. Death: a. strikes down the most vigorous age; b. rends the holiest bonds; c. occasions the bitterest tears; 2. Life is here: a. revealed; b. restored; c. dedicated to the glory of God.The meeting of the Saviour with the funeral train a proof of the most special Providence of God.Nains gate, a school for Christian suffering and consolation.Weep not: 1. How easy to use this word; 2. how difficult to obey the injunction; 3. how blessed to dry the tears.Christ the Life of man: 1. In the creation; 2. in the renovation; 3. in the resurrection.The resurrections word of might: 1. The exalted tone; 2. the mighty working; 3. the God-glorifying echo of this word.How the Lord: 1. Comforts the sorrowing; 2. awakens the dead; 3. unites the severed.The dawn of eternity breaking over the gate of Nain.Glory rendered to God, the best fruit of the miracles of Jesus.How the word of the Saviours might transforms everything: 1. A funeral train into an array of witnesses of His miracles; 2. a bier of the dead into a field of resurrection; 3. a mourning widow into a thankful mother; 4. a public road into a sanctuary of the glory of God.He who marvels at great faith has also compassion on the deepest misery.The love of the Lord: 1. A prevenient; 2. a comforting; 3. an all-accomplishing love.Eph 3:2-6.The youth raised from the coffin; Jairus daughter from the death-bed; Lazarus from the grave.The journeyings of Christ a gracious visitation of God to His people.Nain, in a few moments changed from a vale of misery into a vale of beauty (Nain the lovely).The work of the Lord: 1. On the soul of the mother; 2. on the body of the son.Spiritually awakened children a gift of the Lord to parents.Fear and joy here most intimately united.The renown of the Saviour at this period of history of His life as yet continually on the increase.

Starke:Genuine Christians follow Christ whether the way goes towards Cana or towards Naintowards Tabor or towards Golgotha.Brentius:The Lord passes over no city with His grace. The day-spring from on high visits even the meanest villages and hamlets at the right time; oh, excellent consolation!Cramer:The world is a lovely Nain, but death destroys all pleasure therein.Weep with them that weep, rejoice with them that rejoice.Bibl. Wirt.:Young people should not put the thoughts of death so far from them, but pray with Moses, Psa 90:12.Nova Bibl. Tub.:How often does the Lord call to one spiritually dead, Arise; and he nevertheless continues to he there.Majus:Those who are awakened to spiritual life speak with new tongues and walk in a new life.Osiander:Upon noble deeds follows a good report, a renowned name.

Lisco:Christ the Vanquisher of Death: 1. In His gracious affection for man; 2. in His divine might and majesty.The funeral.Heubner:Life presses in; death flies; admirable change: life is victorious over death.Jesus look is even yet directed upon the suffering ones in His church.Whoever is afraid of death is afraid of the Lord Jesus. Scriver.The joy of reunion.Arndt:This history a mirror of sorrow and consolation: 1. A mirror of sorrow: a. Vanity of the world; b. return to the dust; c. the uncertain goal and hour; d. the vanishing of worldly comfort; e. the funeral train, the way of all flesh, processus mortis, 2. A mirror of consolation: a. Christs countenance, the friendly countenance of God; b. the compassionate heart of Jesus; c. His gracious voice: Weep not; d. His stretching forth the hand; e. His vivifying word.Fuchs:The preaching of the young man at Nain to the Christians of our time: 1. Who lives shall die; 2. who dies inherits life.A glance upon: 1. The dead young man; 2. the weeping widow; 3. the almighty Lord; 4. the astonished people.Rieger:Two mighty dominions: 1. A dreary one of death; 2. a joyful one of life.Petri:The wholesome knowledge: 1. Of our true need; 2. of the Almighty help of the Lord.Westermeier:The funeral train in the gates of Nain: 1. The dead man who is carried out; 2. the mourners who follow after; 3. the Comforter who suddenly appears.

N. B. We may remark that the homiletical treatment of this narrative should be guarded against a too sentimental representation of the death of the young man, the sorrow of the widow, the joy of reunion, and the like. Nothing is easier than in this way to elicit from the hearers a stream of tears, but the sublime simplicity of Luke remains in this also an unsurpassed model, and the development of the specifically Christian element in this Pericope promises more fruit than the fanciful treatment of its merely human or dramatic elements.

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

(11) And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain: and many of his disciples went with him, and much people. (12) Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, Behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the city was with her. (13) And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. (14) And he came and touched the bier; and they that bare him stood still: and he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. (15) And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak: and he delivered him to his mother. (16) And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his people. (17) And this rumour of him went forth throughout all Judea, and throughout all the region round about.

This city of Nain lay near Mount Tabor, and not very remote from Capernaum. The case of this poor widow, and her dead son, is not noticed by either of the Evangelists, except Luke, and therefore it may be proper to attend to it somewhat more particularly. The history is but short, yet it is wound up to the most finished description of sorrow. This youth was not an infant, whose endearments had not therefore been long, so as by time to work deeper holdfast in the affections; but one arrived to manhood, in the flower of his age, and capable of recompensing a mother’s care. And what made the loss more bitter, he was her only son ; so that in his death she had been stripped of all. And, as if all this was not enough to weigh her down with overmuch sorrow, she was a widow; so that she had no husband to bear a part with her in the affliction, and to drink a portion of the sorrowful cup. Yea, an husband dead, and child too, so that she was desolate.

The scriptures have noticed the distress of such bereaving providences, as among the heavy calamities of life. Jer 6:26 ; Zec 12:10 . And we find this case attracted the attention of the Son of God. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her. Reader! what a sweet thought it is to relieve the sorrows of the Lord’s people, that the eye of Jesus is always upon them. And his knowledge of their distresses is not only as God, but his feeling for them is as man. Blessedly is it said of him, in that he hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted. Heb 2:18 .

The miracle he wrought in raising this young man from the dead, became the fullest and most decided evidence of his own sovereign power and Godhead. For although there are on record in scripture, several instances of the Lord’s servants, for the confirmation of the faith, working such miracles, yet not one without first praying to the Lord to justify them as his servants, in the accomplishment of such deeds. But in the instance before us, here is the immediate act of Jesus, saying, Young man, I say unto thee, arise! I beg the Reader to notice this, with that due attention so decided a testimony gives to the Godhead of Christ. Joh 10:37-38 . The improvements to be drawn from this miracle of Jesus, are very many; but it would swell our little work into too great a bulk to notice all. Yet, I cannot allow myself and Reader to leave it altogether, without first observing, what a most lovely view it affords of the tenderness and compassion of Christ. Truly was it said of him by the Prophet, He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. And I would request the Reader, while beholding this affection of character to his people while on earth, to remember that He is the same Jesus now in heaven. And the most blessed part of the subject is, that He not only knows what the exercises of his redeemed are, as God; but He knows also, and feels for them as man. That union of God and man in One Person, gives him both the power to know all, and the fellow-feeling to administer the suited relief to all; and in such a way, as without this union of the two natures, could not have answered our wants, and his glory, as Mediator. Oh! the preciousness of such views of Christ!

Reader! allow me to add one thought more on this glorious miracle of our God and Savior. Think what a testimony it carries with it concerning Him, and his Almightiness of character, as the resurrection and the life. Surely, He who raised the widow’s son, can and will raise the members of his own mystical body, at the last day. They shall arise by virtue of their union with Him. All that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and come forth. But the dead in Christ shall rise first. For thus the charter of grace runs. He shall quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you. Read in confirmation those precious scriptures: Isa 26:19 ; Joh 5:28-29 ; 1Th 4:16 ; Rom 8:11 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

11 And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.

Ver. 11. A city called Nain ] A fair town not far from Tiberias, and watered by that ancient river, the river Kishon,Jdg 5:21Jdg 5:21 , as saith Jerome.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

11 16. ] RAISING OF A DEAD MAN AT NAIN. Peculiar to Luke .

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

11. ] With regard to the variety of reading here, Schulz remarks that St. Luke, when is understood, uses , see ch. Luk 8:1 . On the other hand Meyer observes that when is understood, he never prefixes : see reff.: so that internal as well as external evidence is divided.

NAIN occurs no where else in the Bible. It was a town of Galilee not far from Capernaum, a few miles to the south of Mount Tabor, ‘on the northern slope of the rugged and barren ridge of Little Hermon,’ Stanley. A poor village has been found in this situation with ruins of old buildings. See Robinson, iii. 226. The (or ) of Josephus, B. J. iv. 9. 4, on the borders of Idumea, is a different place. See Winer, Realw.; and Stanley’s description, Sinai and Palestine, p. 357, edn. 3.

This is one of the three greatest recorded miracles of our Lord: of which it has been observed, that He raised one (Jaeirus’s daughter) when just dead , one on the way to burial , and one (Lazarus) who had been buried four days .

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Luk 7:11-17 . The son of the widow of Nain . In Lk. only. ( ), in the following time, thereafter; vague. . would mean: on the following day ( , understood), i.e. , the day after the healing of the centurion’s servant in Capernaum. Hofmann defends this reading on the negative ground that no usage of style on the part of Lk. is against it, and that it better suits the circumstances. “We see Jesus on the way towards the city of Nain on the north-western slope of the little Hermon, a day’s journey from Capernaum. It is expressly noted that His disciples, and, as is well attested, in consider bable numers, not merely the Twelve, were with Him, and many people besides; a surrounding the same as on the hill where He had addressed His disciples. Those of the audience who had come from Judaea are on their way home.” The point must be left doubtful. W. and H [74] have ., and omit . : there is still a little hamlet of the same name ( vide Robinson, Palestine , ii. 355, 361). Eusebius and Jerome speak of the town as not far from Endor. Some have thought the reference is to a Nain in Southern Palestine, mentioned by Josephus. But Lk. would hardly take his readers so far from the usual scene of Christ’s ministry without warning.

[74] Westcott and Hort.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Luk 7:11-17

11Soon afterwards He went to a city called Nain; and His disciples were going along with Him, accompanied by a large crowd. 12Now as He approached the gate of the city, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a sizeable crowd from the city was with her. 13When the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her, and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14And He came up and touched the coffin; and the bearers came to a halt. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!” 15The dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother. 16Fear gripped them all, and they began glorifying God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and, “God has visited His people!” 17 This report concerning Him went out all over Judea and in all the surrounding district.

Luk 7:11 “He went to a city called Nain” This account is recorded only in Luke. It seems not to be a special event, but a typical event in the travels and ministry of Jesus. Nain is about six miles southeast of Nazareth, close to Mt. Tabor. It is parallel to what Elijah did in Luk 4:25-26 (cf. 1Ki 17:17-24).

“His disciples were going along with Him, accompanied by a large crowd” There was always a large crowd of the sick, the curious, and religious leaders following Jesus. Much of Luke’s presentation of Jesus’ life and teachings is structured as travel narratives. These travel narratives include many of the teachings found in Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount.” In Luke, Jesus is heading toward the climatic confrontation in Jerusalem. As always in the Gospels, Jesus’ healings had several purposes:

1. to help a needy person (a lady in Luk 7:13)

2. to witness to:

a. the disciples (for maturity)

b. the crowd (for saving faith)

c. the townspeople (cf. Luk 7:12)

d. the religious leaders who were always there

3. to demonstrate His Messiahship

Luk 7:12 “the only son of his mother” How did Jesus know this fact? Possibly

1. someone in the crowd told Him

2. this is another example of His supernatural knowledge

3. this is an editorial comment by the evangelist

The fact that this was the only son meant this woman had no means of support!

“a sizeable crowd from the city was with her” Jewish funerals involved the entire community and were remarkably noisy and emotional.

Luk 7:13 “Lord” This is the first use of this title for Jesus in Luke. See SPECIAL TOPIC: NAMES FOR DEITY at Luk 1:68.

“He felt compassion for her” This is a developed connotation from “bowels.” The ancients thought the lower viscera or the major organs (heart, liver, lungs) were the seat of the emotions (cf. Septuagint of Pro 12:10; Pro 26:22; Jer. 28:13,51; 2Ma 9:5-6; 4Ma 10:8; Bar 2:17). Paul uses this metaphor often (cf. 2Co 6:12; 2Co 7:15; Php 1:8; Php 2:1; Col 3:12; Phm 1:7; Phm 1:12; Phm 1:20). Luke, probably following Paul, also uses it (cf. Luk 1:78; Luk 7:13; Luk 10:33; Luk 15:20; Act 1:18). It is meaningful to me to know of the human emotions and empathy that Jesus shares with us (cf. Mar 1:41; Mar 6:34; Mar 8:2).

“and said to her” She would have been leading the funeral procession (Alfred Edersheim, Jewish Social Life)..

“do not weep” This is a present active imperative with the negative particle, which usually implies stop an act in process.

Luk 7:14 “coffin” This refers to an open bier (cf. NRSV). Jesus did not fear ceremonial defilement by touching ceremonially unclean things or people.

“Young man, I say to you, arise” This man’s age is uncertain, for in Jewish society one was considered to be a young man up to the age of forty. The verb is an aorist passive imperative. Jesus has power over death and hades (cf. Rev 1:18). What a powerful sign of His Messiahship (cf. Luk 7:22).

Luk 7:15 “The dead man sat up and began to speak” The verb “sat up” is rare and used only by medical doctors in Greek literature. The NT never records the words of those who have been raised from the dead. What powerful evidence to confirm Jesus’ words and ministry!

Luk 7:16 “they began glorifying God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen among us” Jesus did work similar to Elijah and Elisha in the very same geographical area. These people were attributing to Jesus the highest title that they knew.

“God has visited His people” The Jews had experienced YHWH”s visitation many times. God is active in the life of His people. There is a real tension in the Bible between the transcendence of God and the immanence of God. He is the Holy One of Israel, yet Father!

Luk 7:17 All the Synoptic Gospels have these summary statements (cf. Mar 1:28; Mar 1:45; Mat 4:24; Mat 9:31; Mat 14:1), but Luke has the most (cf. Luk 4:14; Luk 4:37; Luk 5:15; Luk 7:17). Jesus did not perform miracles (healing, exorcisms, raising the dead) in secret, but in public, and word of it spread rapidly to a needy, expectant Palestine.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

Verses 11-17 peculiar to Luke. Selected because it is connected with the Lord’s Person as God-raiser of the dead; and as Man-full of compassion.

And. Note the Figure of speech Polysyndeton (App-6), the “many ands” in these verses (11-17) emphasizing every detail. The “ands” in the English do not always agree with those in the Greek.

it came to pass. A Hebraism. See note on Luk 1:8.

Nain. Now, Nein. Occurs only here in N.T. The ruins are on the slope of Little Hermon, west of Endor.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

11-16.] RAISING OF A DEAD MAN AT NAIN. Peculiar to Luke.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Luk 7:11. ) So , ch. Luk 8:1. Ancient translators generally understand this expression of a day following, I know not whether precisely, the next day. The Vulgate has deinceps; but the genuine text of the Vulg. has, according to Mill, alia die. Mill cites no authority: and yet it is not of much consequence; for the sense even thus may be indefinite. Altera die [the second or next day], sequenti die,[70] which the Vulgate elsewhere is wont to use, would be different.[71] The series of events in this place requires a less definite time; for the raising of the young man of Nain is connected more closely with the subsequent message [deputation] sent by John, than with the preceding healing of the centurions servant, as we have shown in the Harmony of the Gospels, 62. [The daughter of Jairus was first raised to life before the young man of Nain: and on that account the faith of Jairus is the more praiseworthy, because it had no precedent to look to of a dead man raised to life by Jesus. The Lord secretly raised the daughter of Jairus, and ordered that act of raising the dead to be even kept secret; but then next He raised up both the young man of Nain and Lazarus publicly. Nain was one of those cities of which mention is made in Mat 11:1, nay, indeed previously in Mat 9:35. For since the disciples went to the city of Nain in a body [whereas when sent forth they went by two and two, Mar 6:7], there is hardly reason to doubt that the raising up of the young man took place before the sending forth of the Twelve Apostles, who were confirmed in the faith by this very miracle.-Harm., p. 296.]-, Nain) The specification of the name of the town, as also the double multitude [the much people following the Lord, and also the much people following the funeral of the young man, Luk 7:11-12] of spectators, confirms the certainty of the miracle.

[70] Not die sequenti: the latter may be a day following: the former is necessarily the following day.-ED. and TRANSL.

[71] ab and the oldest MSS. of Vulg. have deinceps. c has sequenti die.-ED. and TRANSL.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Luk 7:11-17

12. RAISING THE SON OF THE WIDOW OF NAIN

Luk 7:11-17

11 And it came to pass soon afterwards,-Soon after the restoration of the centurion’s servant in Capernaum, Jesus and his disciples and the great multitude went to the city “called Nain.” “Nain” is not used anywhere else in the Bible its exact location has not been determined. Many think that it was on the northern slope of Mount Hermon; immediately west of Endor, which lies in a further recess of the same range of mountains. It was probably about twelve or fifteen miles from Capernaum. Luke is the only writer of the gospel that records this miracle, as John is the only one that records the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead. We do not know why others omitted the record of this miracle. Jesus was on one of his preaching tours through Galilee when he went to Nain.

12 Now when he drew near to the gate of the city,-This small town was a walled city, hence the “gate” of entrance to it. Most of the towns and villages were walled for protection. As Jesus and his company came near to the gate, “there was carried out one that was dead.” The burial of bodies within the town or city was forbidden, hence the sepulchers and tombs were located without the limits of the cities and villages. Luke describes very minutely the scene; it was a “funeral procession” of “the only son of his mother” and this mother “was a widow.”

13 And when the Lord saw her,-It is significant that the “Lord saw her”; no bereaved heart or contrite spirit ever escaped his attention. It seems that Jesus and his disciples with a multitude following him were going into the city of Nain and met the funeral procession as it came out of the city. It is very probable that this mother had never seen Jesus before; he was a stranger to her so far as we know, and yet when he saw her he said in his compassion for her, “Weep not.” The sympathies of Jesus are in full and lively exercise for this bereaved mother. The word translated “weep” is that which denotes the outward expression of grief. The people in, the East gave vent to their sorrow in loud shrieks and lamentations over the bodies of the dead. Oftentimes they employed persons whose office it was to sing dirges and utter dolorous groans and lamentations; they were “professional mourners.” The louder they would groan and shriek the greater was the grief supposed to be. It is not known whether there were such “professional mourners” in this funeral procession that Jesus met.

14 And he came nigh and touched the bier:-“The bier” was an open frame upon which the dead body, wrapped in folds of linen, was placed and carried on the shoulders of four, and sometimes six persons, to the grave or tomb. Jesus touched the bier as a signal for the bearers to stand still. “The bearers stood still.” There must have been a dignity and air of authority in our Lord to stop in this way the procession of such a solemn occasion by a simple gesture, or the mere laying his hand upon the bier. When the bearers stopped Jesus simply said: “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” The authority and power with which Jesus spoke should be observed. There are three records of Jesus’ raising the dead. The first is the raising of the daughter of Jairus (Mat 9:18-19; Mat 9:23-26; Mar 5:22-24; Mar 5:35-43; Luk 8:41-42; Luk 8:49-56); the widow’s son (Luk 7:11-17); and the raising of Lazarus (Joh 11:35-53). In all of these miracles Jesus’ authority is expressed by “Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise”; “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise”; and “Lazarus, come forth.” All of these forms are expressive of our Lord’s power to perform the act.

There are seven instances of restoration to life recorded in the Bible: (1) the child of the widow of Zarephath (1Ki 17:22); (2) son of the Shunammite woman (2Ki 4:33-36); (3) the case of a man raised by touching Elisha’s bones (2Ki 13:21); (4) Jairus’ daughter (Mat 9:18-19; Mat 9:23-26; (5) the widow’s son (Luk 7:11-17); (6) the raising of Lazarus (Joh 11:35-53) and (7) Tabitha or Dorcas by Peter (Act 9:36-42). Our Lord’s resurrection differs from all these; these all died again, but Jesus arose never to die again.

15 And he that was dead sat up,-The young man that was dead obeyed the voice of Jesus and sat up and began to speak. His speaking proved the reality of the raising from the dead to the large company. It should be recalled that Jesus and his disciples were present and a great multitude had followed them again there was a great multitude that waas following the funeral procession; putting these two large groups together, we have many witnesses to this resurrection. In no case where the dead were restored to life does the Bible tell us what they said; their experience and their knowledge of anything beyond death are withheld from us. The body was in full view and there was no possible chance for deception in this case. It is a beautiful touch of sympathy described by Luke when he reports that Jesus “gave him to his mother.”

16, 17 And fear took hold on all:-The people were filled with awe, and praised God for what they had seen. In their praise they said: “A great prophet is arisen among us; and, God hath visited his people.” They at once recalled Elijah and Elisha and declared that a great prophet like these had arisen “among us,” and that God had visited his people again with a prophet. It had been about four hundred years since the prophets ceased to bring God’s message to the people.

And this report went forth concerning him-Such a miracle would be reported quickly and would have a wide circulation; the whole country would ring with the many accounts and rumors of his work. All Galilee, Samaria, and Judea would be talking of this great prophet and of his wonderful power. With the rumor would go the probability that this prophet was the Messiah himself. The crowds that witnessed this would help to norate the report. One crowd followed Jesus and another was following the bier and friends of the widow and her son; both crowds help to broadcast the great miracle which they had witnessed.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

God Hath Visited His People

Luk 7:11-23

Nain lay near the plain of Esdraelon, on the slopes of Little Hermon. Two confluent streams met there-those with Christ and those with death, Luk 7:11-12. He wipes away tears by removing the cause. When the young are being borne by their young companions to graves of sin, it is thus that the Master arrests them. See Eph 5:14. There was a threefold gradation in the power He put forth-to Jairus daughter, just dead; to this young man, on the way to burial; and to Lazarus, who was three days dead. The depression from Johns long confinement in the gloomy fortress of Machaerus, east of the Dead Sea, and the fact that Jesus had not sent to deliver him, were the double root of this sad lapse from the position taken up on the Jordan bank, when he recognized and indicated the Lamb of God. But our Lord did not chide; He understood, Psa 103:9. His miracles of mercy and power are His best evidences, and He left John to draw his own conclusions, Isa 35:5-6. May ours be the blessedness of the un-offended, who will trust Christ, even though He does not hasten to deliver them just as they had hoped!

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

he went: Act 10:38

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE PRINCE OF LIFE

He went into a city called Rain.

Luk 7:11

The Gospels tell us of Jesus raising three people to lifean only daughter, an only brother, and an only son; these three are clearly to show His power over death in every stage. Jairuss daughter was laid upon the bed when Jesus restored her (Luk 8:53-55). Lazarus was shut up in the grave when Jesus restored him (Joh 11:43-44). The son of the widow of Nain was being carried between his bed and the grave (Luk 7:12).

It is the last of these cases which we are considering. It beautifully illustrates our Lord as the Prince of Life. Let us fix our thoughts upon Him:

I. In His gracious consolation.What a comfort was His presence to the sorrowing widow (Psa 46:1; Job 23:2-3). It was just at the time when she needed support (Isa 41:10; Isa 43:2, Psa 23:4). How gracious was the word He spake to her: Weep not (2Co 1:3-4). All His words are intended to give peace (Joh 16:33; Mat 11:28-29). How tender was the help He proffered!He came and touched the bier (Psa 17:7; Psa 18:35; Psa 20:6). This was indeed lovingkindness on the part of Jesus (Psa 103:4). It only shows us that we have not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

II. In His life-giving power.One word from Him is enoughHe that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life (Joh 5:24). The word is quick (living) and powerful (Heb 4:12). Thus it was here (Luk 7:14; Rom 10:17). He that was dead sat up. Christ can do the same now. People are just as dead in sin as this widows son was naturally so. Think of the Ephesians (Eph 2:1-5). What was the word to them? (Eph 5:14). Jesus is even now calling. It is our fault if we do not listen (Isa 65:12; Jer 7:13). Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life (Joh 5:40; cf. Joh 3:19).

Let us take two words of the Psalmist in connection with this. First, a prayerWilt Thou not revive us again? Secondly, a resolutionI will hear what God the Lord shall speak (Psa 85:6; Psa 85:8).

Bishop Rowley Hill.

Illustration

The village of Nain is considered to be one of the few unquestioned sites in the Holy Land. The modern village (still called Nain) lies northwest of the edge of Little Hermon. It is described as having at the present time a singularly desolate and dreary appearance. Dr. Tristram asserts that it must have been a walled town, as ruined heaps and traces of walls still remain. Only a few insignificant Moslem dwellings scattered about amidst the remains of better days now exist. The burying-ground is about ten minutes walk from the village eastwards, and it was shortly after the procession had issued forth from the gate of the city that it was encountered by our Lord. An old Mussulman pointed out to Dr. Tristram, unasked, a heap of stones, which he said were the ruins of the widows house. A little mosque, called still The Place of our Lord Jesus, marks doubtless the site of an early Christian chapel.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

The Raising of the Widows Son

Luk 7:11-17

INTRODUCTORY WORDS

Events crowded rapidly into the life of our blessed Lord. His days of service in behalf of the sick, the blind, the lame, the halt, the maimed, and diseased are thus summed up by one of the Apostles: “Jesus of Nazareth * * who went about doing good.”

1. The sympathetic Christ. Wheresoever Christ went, the sorrows of others fell upon Him. He could not cast off the woes of the people among whom He moved if He would, and He would not have cast them off if He could.

Our Lord was properly called the Son of Man, because He entered into everything which concerned man. He could not have come as a sin-bearer in the day of His final great Atonement, when upon Calvary’s Cross He hung the Just for the unjust, without feeling the sense of sin’s ravages all along during His earth life, as He journeyed toward His Cross.

Every groan, every heartache, every soul anguish, which had fallen upon man, fell upon Him. To the poor. He was poor; to the stricken, He was stricken. He could weep with those who wept, as truly as He could rejoice with those who rejoiced. He sat with sinners, He ate with sinners, and He bore the sinner’s sins.

There is a verse in Mat 8:1-34 where it says: “When the even was come, they brought unto Him many that were possessed with devils: and He cast out the spirits with His Word, and healed all that were sick: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the Prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.”

We can plainly see in the Scriptures quoted that the Lord Jesus during the whole three years of His ministry was carrying our sicknesses, and bearing our pains. He was truly the sympathetic Christ making every sorrow and every sigh which belonged to man, His own.

2. The counteractive Christ. Our Lord was not merely sympathetic, but He met the needs of the people who claimed His sympathy and His help by actually removing their sicknesses and their pains.

He came to undo the works of the devil, and He did undo them. As He saw the funeral cortege of the widow’s son wending its way toward the cemetery, the sorrow of a widowed mother was transferred to His own countenance. Immediately her grief was His. Thus He set about to meet her need. He stopped the procession, spoke the word, and gave back to the woman her son, alive again.

Our Lord Jesus looks down from Heaven today upon a world swayed by Satan, and ruled by lust. He will not be satisfied until He has dethroned Satan, and instead thereof, has established His own rule and righteousness upon the earth.

Our Lord Jesus Christ was working toward this end in His earth life, as He went about doing good-steadily pressing toward His Calvary death.

God is a just God, and Christ could by no means deliver those under the power of sin and Satan, unless He, Himself, had taken their sins upon Himself. Not only, therefore, were all of Christ’s blessing’s bestowed upon the guilty, during His earth ministrations, based upon His substitutionary death, but every blessing which the present hour and the Millennial Age bring, will be based upon the result of His substitutionary work.

I. WAS THE RAISING OF THE WIDOW’S SON A MERE HAPPEN SO? (Luk 7:11)

Our key verse says: “And it came to pass the day after, that He went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and much people.”

1. The event of the preceding day, was it a “happen so”? If you will run your eyes over the first part of Luk 7:1-50, you will find the story of the centurion’s servant, and of how he was healed.

The centurion had appealed unto Christ through the elders of the Jews, that He would heal his servant, who was about to die. As Christ approached the centurion’s home, the centurion sent friends saying unto Him, “Lord, trouble not Thyself: for I am not worthy that Thou shouldest enter under my roof.” Then he asked Christ merely to send a command that his servant might be healed, and it would be done. Immediately Christ acquiesced, and lo, the servant was made whole from that very hour. Was all of this a “happen so”?

2. The event now before us, was it a “happen so”? As Jesus moved on His way, He came into the city of Nain. We stop a moment to ponder. Were the healing of the centurion’s servant and the raising of the son of the widow of Nain just happen-sos? Were they no more than casual occurrences? Or, was there a directive will which made possible all of these miraculous manifestations?

For our part, we believe that everything which occurred in Christ’s life was purposeful and not accidental. He, Himself, said just before He went to the Cross, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.” Therefore, He had an especially assigned task. He plainly taught that He did not His own will, but His Father’s will. He said, “The work which My Father hath given Me to do, shall I not do it?”

There is a majesty of pre-direction, of election, pre-destination, fore-ordination, which marked the stately steppings of the Son of God. Things did not come to pass as mere “happen sos.” They came to pass just as everything in God’s plan and purpose comes to pass. They came to pass because they were ordained of God.

II. A DEAD MAN BEING CARRIED OUT (Luk 7:12)

1. A dead man in the road. As the Lord came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead youth carried out. This body of death lay directly in the pathway of our Lord.

There have been many dead men in the road. Whenever we see death, we are beholding another demonstration of God’s great fiat in the Garden of Eden, “Thou shalt surely die.”

There was a dead man in the road, because sin brings death. “The wages of sin is death.” “Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” Death not physical alone, but death eternal.

As Christ came down the highway, life met death. Our Lord once said, “I am the * * Life.” Christ, the Life, was about to manifest Himself. Hear His words, “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

Let us not think, therefore, that Jesus a mere wonder-worker, or mere healer or a mere teacher of beautiful ethics, or even a mere supreme man, was coming down the road. Let us think that life was coming down. God the Son, and Son of God; God in whom we live, and move, and have our being was coming down the road. Jesus, not only the creator of physical life, but the creator of the new life, was coming down the road.

2. Here is a strange contrast. Inherent righteousness approaching the results of inherited sin. The Life-giver, the holy One, approaching the dead, the sin-stricken one.

Do we comprehend now, as we behold this seemingly casual meeting, why something had to happen? Could Christ allow death and its ravages to pass by Him unchallenged? Could He, the Resurrection and the Life, allow the sway of death to go on its way unhindered, unchallenged, unrebuked? Not so.

Something must be done. A great lesson must be taught. The Divine power of Christ in establishing life where there was death, must be demonstrated. Our Lord was not slow to grasp the opportunity. Let all who follow the lesson seek to catch the vision of the power of a living, eternal Christ.

III. SIN AND DEATH BRING TEARS (Luk 7:13)

As the funeral procession left the city, we behold the largeness of its sweep. First, there was the mother, whose only son was being buried, and she was a widow. Secondly there was much people of the city with her. This was no mean man whom death had stricken; and his disease had brought no small amount of sorrow.

When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto her, “Weep not.”

1. Christ stood near by His own empty tomb and said, “Why weepest thou?” First of all our mind goes to the women who surrounded the sepulcher of Christ, and particularly to Mary who stood without at the sepulcher weeping. Even now we can hear the query of the angels: “Woman, why weepest thou?” Then as Mary turned away she saw Jesus standing, but knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus likewise said unto her, “Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?”

Beloved, death is always full of tears because death means sorrow and separation.

We have shown above how life was meeting death. We wish now to say that joy was meeting sorrow. Our Lord Himself was all joy. He was the Man of Sorrows, only because He bore our sorrows. Inherently He was joy. Did He not say, “That My joy might remain in you”? Was He not anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows? Thus, again, we ask: “What must happen when joy meets sorrow? when singing meets sighing? when gladness meets tears?”

Is it not the province of Christ to wipe away all tears from all faces. In His presence there is no room for pain, and heartache, and grief.

2. Christ met the challenge of a mother’s tears and said, “Weep not.” To the distracted women who wept about His tomb, He said, “All joy,” that is, “All hail.” Is not this exactly why the Lord came to earth? Did He not suffer that we might sing? Have you not read how He said: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because * * He hath sent Me to heal the broken hearted.” Truly, God is the God of all comfort.

IV. THE COMMANDING CHRIST (Luk 7:14)

1. Christ’s mastery over men. Our verse tells us that “He came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still.”

It was a very unusual happening. The bier, or coffin as we commonly call it, was being borne along by the pallbearers. The crowd from the city surged behind. However, when Jesus with all authority and power stepped forth and touched the bier, immediately the funeral procession stood still, as the people from the rear gathered round.

There was another time that Christ stepped upon a scene of commotion and distress; when, at His command the winds and the waves stood still. Peter had said: “Lord, we perish.” Jesus, unabashed, and without nervous excitement, quietly arose, and, turning His face full against the storm, with uplifted hands, He commanded: “Peace be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”

Thus we see here the commanding Christ, and the obeisance of the populace.

2. Christ’s mastery over death. The second clause of our verse reads: “And He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” Strange? Yes, it was passing strange. This command of our Lord was unlike anything known to men.

The day before, as we have suggested, Christ had merely spoken the word, and a servant sick and ready to die was made well. Now, however, by the word of His command a young man already dead, and about to be buried, was made alive.

Have we not read how the Lord Jesus says, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live”? Again, have we not read: “For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth”?

Truly, to Christ is given authority. “As the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.”

V. THE OBEDIENT DEAD (Luk 7:15)

We have now come into the realm of the impossible. However, to God, “All things are possible.”

Luk 7:15 says: “And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak.”

1. A sad comparison. When we think of a dead man, sitting up at the command of the Lord Jesus; we are grieved as we think of multitudes, millions, of the living who are impervious to His voice. How remarkable is the statement: “He that was dead sat up,” in comparison with that other statement, “All day long I have stretched forth My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.”

When we read the words, “And the dead man sat up” how sad do those other words seem: “How often would I * * and ye would not.”

Of course, there is a difference in these comparisons. Jesus Christ used His authority dogmatically when He said to the dead, “Arise”; but He did not use this same authority, when He pleaded with Israel to “Arise.” God has given free-will agency to men and nations. He has an effectual calling, He also has a permissive calling. One is followed by “must,” the other by “may.”

The dead man had no power to withstand the voice of life. He sat up, not because he had the power to sit up. He sat up because somewhere, outside of himself, there was Omnipotence and Omnipotence was speaking.

2. An acknowledging voice. The young man who was dead not only sat up but he began to speak. His words were an unmistakable testimony to the fact that he was alive again.

We hesitate just a moment to say that every one who has known the power of God in a new life, begins to speak. We have decided to write, He who is made alive will speak; “for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,”

VI. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF A NEW LIFE (Luk 7:15, l.c.)

There is a very significant expression in this last clause. Here it is: “And He delivered him to his mother.”

1. A new life in the old place. Somehow to us there comes a deep significance in it all. A young man en route to dissolution, to moldering in the dust, finds everything changed. Instead of the dark tomb, he is sent back to the warmth of home and a mother’s love. Instead of being buried and forgotten, he is thrust again into a throbbing world with every responsibility of life and of service.

When he faced the people on the next day, he faced them from a different angle. As he walked along the streets of Nain, parents would point him out to their children; the citizen would point him out to the stranger, saying, “That is the young man who was dead, but lives again.”

Yes, he was back in the old life, but he was back there with a brand new conception of life. He was back as one who was risen again. He was back as one who had something he never had before.

Do you remember the time you were dead in trespasses and in sins, and the Lord said unto you, “Arise”? Do you remember the throbbings of that new life? From that day till this, you have had a new life in the old place, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.” Let us live our new life, in a new way.

2. A new opportunity with an enlarged responsibility. No one can say that the young man of Nain did not feel the calling of God to a vitalized life. Certainly, a new sense of living and a new realization of responsibility gripped him. He felt this in his attitude toward the mother, whose loving embrace welcomed him home again. He felt this in his relation to his townsmen who had walked behind his bier as they were carrying him to the grave. He could truly say, “Life is real, life is earnest, and I will buy up and redeem my time.”

VII. THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A WONDERING PEOPLE (Luk 7:16-17)

1. A fear came upon them all. There was something so wonderful in the event by the roadside, that it staggered the people. They had gone forth grief-stricken; they had come back awe-stricken. Something had happened, something new, something strange, something Divine.

Some could but say, that “a great Prophet is risen up among us.” Others cried, “God hath visited His people.”

This same result comes upon us all whenever the mighty power of the living Christ is manifested. In a revival, swept with the power of the Spirit where souls are being born again, we have seen more or less of this same spirit of fear, and sense of awe. The world rushing on in its mad way, may deny that there is a God; it may decry the fact that Christ Jesus is Saviour; but, they who sit under the power of a real old-fashioned Holy Ghost revival, where men, dead in trespasses and sins are being made alive, will bow their heads and acknowledge God.

2. A voice of praise fell upon them. Our verse says, “And they glorified God.” What else could they do! They could not glorify man, for man could not raise the dead. They knew that God had spoken, that God had wrought, and they glorified Him.

Would that there was more of praise as we see God moving in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.

3. They told Christ forth. Luk 7:17 concludes our study, It says: “And this rumour of Him went forth throughout all Judea, and throughout all the region round about.”

Beloved, the days are darkening. It is high time that the Spirit of the Lord should lift up His standard, for the enemy is coming in as a flood. God grant that those of us who do believe in a living exalted Lord, may render a testimony in the demonstration of His power, until it shall be rumored throughout all the land that Jesus lives.

AN ILLUSTRATION

“How hear we every man in our language, wherein we were born?” (Act 2:8, marg.). In the post office of Buenos Aires they make a specialty of languages. Great numbers of immigrants reach that enterprising city every year. They all soon visit the post office, and the government has made it a point to greet them there with some one speaking their native tongue. It is said that the other day, at the same time, a German, a Chinese, a Frenchman, two Poles, a Lithuanian, and three Englishmen, none of them able to speak or understand a word of Spanish, entered that friendly post office, and all came out feeling that they had reached another homeland. Let every Christian get the spirit of that post office in his own life. No one should be a stranger to a Christian. He should speak the language of love, which is current in every land. He should feel the sympathy which is the universal interpreter. Have we not, in these considerations, come to the heart of Pentecost? In Christ, every one of that conglomerate multitude had found a friend. In Christianity each one of them, though from a far-distant land, had reached the home of his soul.-From Christian Herald.

Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water

1

Nain was a village of Galilee, the same district that contained Capernaum. As usual, as Jesus journeyed toward this place the crowds followed him.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

THE wondrous event described in these verses, is only recorded in Luke’s Gospel. It is one of the three great instances of our Lord restoring a dead person to life, and, like the raising of Lazarus and the ruler’s daughter, is rightly regarded as one of the greatest miracles which He wrought on earth. In all three cases, we see an exercise of divine power. In each we see an comfortable proof that the Prince of Peace is stronger than the king of terrors, and that though death, the last enemy, is mighty, he is not so mighty as the sinner’s Friend.

We learn from these verses, what sorrow sin has brought into the world. We are told of a funeral at Nain. All funerals are mournful things, but it is difficult to imagine a funeral more mournful than the one here described. It was the funeral of a young man, and that young man the only son of his mother, and that mother a widow. There is not an item in the whole story, which is not full of misery. And all this misery, be it remembered, was brought into the world by sin. God did not create it at the beginning, when He made all things “very good.” Sin is the cause of it all. “Sin entered into the world” when Adam fell, “and death by sin.” (Rom 5:12.)

Let us never forget this great truth. The world around us is full of sorrow. Sickness, and pain, and infirmity, and poverty, and labor, and trouble, abound on every side. From one end of the world to the other, the history of families is full of lamentation, and weeping, and mourning, and woe. And whence does it all come? Sin is the fountain and root to which all must be traced. There would neither have been tears, nor cares, nor illness, nor deaths, nor funerals in the earth, if there had been no sin. We must bear this state of things patiently. We cannot alter it. We may thank God that there is a remedy in the Gospel, and that this life is not all. But in the meantime, let us lay the blame at the right door. Let us lay the blame on sin.

How much we ought to hate sin! Instead of loving it, cleaving to it, dallying with it, excusing it, playing with it, we ought to hate it with a deadly hatred. Sin is the great murderer, and thief, and pestilence, and nuisance of this world. Let us make no peace with it. Let us wage a ceaseless warfare against it. It is “the abominable thing which God hateth.” Happy is he who is of one mind with God, and can say, I “abhor that which is evil.” (Rom 12:9.)

We learn, secondly, from these verses, how deep is the compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ’s heart. We see this beautifully brought out in His behavior at this funeral in Nain. He meets the mournful procession, accompanying the young man to his grave, and is moved with compassion at the sight. He waits not to be applied to for help. His help appears to have been neither asked for nor expected. He saw the weeping mother, and knew well what her feelings must have been, for He had been born of a woman Himself. At once He addressed her with words alike startling and touching: He “said unto her, Weep not.”-A few more seconds, and the meaning of His words became plain. The widow’s son was restored to her alive. Her darkness was turned into light, and her sorrow into joy.

Our Lord Jesus Christ never changes. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. His heart is still as compassionate as when He was upon earth. His sympathy with sufferers is still as strong. Let us bear this in mind, and take comfort in it. There is no friend or comforter who can be compared to Christ. In all our days of darkness, which must needs be many, let us first turn for consolation to Jesus the Son of God. He will never fail us, never disappoint us, never refuse to take interest in our sorrows. He lives, who made the widow’s heart sing for joy in the gate of Nain. He lives, to receive all laboring and heavy-laden ones, if they will only come to Him by faith. He lives, to heal the broken-hearted, and be a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. And He lives to do greater things than these one day. He lives to come again to His people, that they may weep no more at all, and that all tears may be wiped from their eyes.

We learn, lastly, from these verses, the almighty power of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can ask no proof of this more striking than the miracle which we are now considering. He gives back life to a dead man with a few words. He speaks to a cold corpse, and at once it becomes a living person. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the heart, the lungs, the brain, the senses, again resume their work and discharge their duty. “Young man,” He cried, “I say unto thee arise.” That voice was a voice mighty in operation. At once “he that was dead sat up and began to speak.”

Let us see in this mighty miracle a pledge of that solemn event, the general resurrection. That same Jesus who here raised one dead person, shall raise all mankind at the last day. “The hour cometh in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” (Joh 5:28-29.) When the trumpet sounds and Christ commands, there can be no refusal or escape. All must appear before His bar in their bodies. All shall be judged according to their works.

Let us see, furthermore, in this mighty miracle, a lively emblem of Christ’s power to quicken the dead in sins. In Him is life. He quickeneth whom He will. (Joh 5:21.) He can raise to a new life souls that now seem dead in worldliness and sin. He can say to hearts that now appear corrupt and lifeless, “Arise to repentance, and live in the service of God.” Let us never despair of any soul. Let us pray for our children, and faint not. Our young men and our young women may long seem traveling on the way to ruin. But let us pray on. Who can tell but He that met the funeral at the gates of Nain may yet meet our unconverted children, and say with almighty power, “Young man, arise.” With Christ nothing is impossible.

Let us leave the passage with a solemn recollection of those things which are yet to happen at the last day. We read that “there came a fear on all,” at Nain, when the young man was raised. What then shall be the feelings of mankind when all the dead are raised at once? The unconverted man may well fear that day. He is not prepared to meet God. But the true Christian has nothing to fear. He may lay him down and sleep peacefully in his grave. In Christ He is complete and safe, and when he rises again he shall see God’s face in peace.

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Notes-

v11.-[The day after.] It would appear from this expression, that the miracle recorded in these verses, was the first instance of our Lord raising a dead person to life. The daughter of Jairus was the second instance, and Lazarus the third. This order of the three miracles is disputed by some. But the internal evidence in favour of it, seems too strong to be put aside. Remembering this, we may understand the sensation that the miracle would create among all Jews who heard of it. No person had been raised from the dead, since the days of Elisha, a period of nine hundred years.

[A city called Nain.] This place is nowhere else mentioned in the Bible. It is a small town on the northern slope of the lesser Mount Hermon, of which the ruins and the name remain to the present day. Mr. Burgon says, that an ancient burying place is even now distinguishable at the lower part of the hill, not far from the ruins.

v12.-[A dead man carried out.] Let us note that the place of burial was outside the city. It is curious to observe how strongly almost all commentators dwell on this point, and urge the impropriety of the practice of burying the dead in church yards, and among the living.

[Much people was with her.] This expression should not be overlooked. It shows the publicity of the great miracle here recorded. It was wrought before many witnesses.

v13.-[When the Lord saw her He had compassion.] Poole’s remarks on this expression are worth reading: “None moved our Lord on behalf of the widow, neither do we read that she herself spake to Him. But our Saviour’s bowels were moved at the sight of her sorrows, and consideration of her loss. It is observable that our Saviour wrought His healing miracles: 1, sometimes at the motion and desire of the parties to be healed; 2, sometimes at the desire of others on their behalf; 3, sometimes of His own free motion, neither themselves nor others soliciting Him for any such mercies toward them.”-“The leper was healed (Luk 5:12) in reply to his own personal application; the centurion’s servant (Luk 7:3) in reply to the prayer of his master; and the widow’s son was raised without any one interceding on his behalf.”

v14.-[The bier.] The Greek word so translated, is only found here in the New Testament. It would not have been correct to translate it “coffin.” The practice of burying in coffins was apparently unknown among the Jews. In the case before us, the young man’s body probably laid on a sort of couch. In Bonar’s travels in Palestine, he describes a funeral which he saw, and says that the bier was like “a large cradle.”

[I say unto thee arise.] We should carefully note the wide difference between our Lord’s manner of working miracles, and the manner in which they were worked by His prophets and apostles. There is an authority and divine power about the miracles recorded in the Gospels, which we do not see in the history of the other miracles in the Bible. Euthymius remarks, “Of old time indeed the prophet Elijah raised again the son of the widow of Sarepta, but by humbling himself before God, and supplication to Him. (1Ki 17:20-21.) So also the prophet Elisha raised the son of the Shunammite woman, but only after having stretched himself out upon his body. (2Ki 4:34-35.) But Jesus only touching and commanding, at once raised the dead person.”

Burkitt remarks, “The Socinians here own that Christ raised this young man by a divine power, which God had communicated to Him, yet deny Him at the same time to be essentially God. But let them prove, if they can, that a divine power which is proper to God alone, ever was, or ever can, be communicated to a creature, without the communication of the divine nature. True, we find Peter commanding Tabitha to arise. (Act 9:40,) but we find all he did was by faith in Christ, and by prayer unto Christ. But Christ here raised the widow’s son without prayer, purely by His own power; which undeniably proves Him to be God.”

v15.-[Began to speak.] This fact is mentioned, in order to place it beyond doubt, that the young man was really restored to life. Where there is speech, there must he life.

Let it be observed, that we have no record given to us of anything that was ever said or thought by those who were miraculously raised from the dead. Their experience and knowledge are wisely withheld from us.

v16.-[There came a fear.] This expression, and the rest of the verse, as well as the verse following, appear to furnish strong proof that this was the first instance of a dead person being restored to life by our Lord, during His ministry on earth.

[God hath visited His people.] This expression should be compared with Luk 1:68, and Luk 1:78, and with many places in the Old Testament-such as Rth 1:6, 1Sa 2:21, Job 35:15, Jer 6:6. It appears to signify any remarkable divine interposition, either in the way of mercy or of judgment, and does not necessarily signify, in this place, a personal visitation. That “God was manifest in the flesh,” when Christ became man for us, is an undeniable truth of Scripture. But it cannot be proved that it is taught in this text.

v17.-[This rumour of Him went forth, &c.] Poole remarks, “The people here saw His divine power manifestly exerted; for the keys of the clouds, the womb, and the grave, are those keys which their teachers had taught them were kept in God’s hand alone.”

Fuente: Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels

Luk 7:11. Soon afterwards. The change of a single letter alters the sense the day after to soon afterwards, which is probably the correct reading.

Nain, Na-in. The name occurs nowhere else in Scripture. It was a town of Galilee, southeast of Nazareth, a few miles to the south of Mount Tabor, on the northern slope of the rugged and barren ridge of little Hermon (Stanley). The name signifies the lovely, but it is now a poor village, with the ruins of old buildings. The distance from Capernaum (supposing Tell-hm to be the site) is about twenty five miles. The distance is not so great as to forbid their reaching it the day after.

His disciples, in the wider sense.

A great multitude. This shows His influence, as the distance was so considerable. Luke would not introduce this multitude as witnesses of such a miracle, unless he were sure of the fact.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

There were three persons raised from death to life by the powerful word of Christ’s mouth; namely, Jairus’s daughter, mentioned by St. Matthew; Lazarus recorded by St. John; and here the widow’s son, only taken notice of by St. Luke.

The place where the miracle was wrought was the city of Nain; out of their cities, and not within them, the Jews were wont to bury their dead. Our Saviour at the gate of the city meets with the sad pomp of a funeral, a sorrowful widow attended with her mournful neighbors, following her only son to the grave.

Where note, 1. The doleful and distressed condition of the widow: there were many heart-piercing circumstances in her affliction.

1. It was the death of a son. To bury a child rends the heart of a parent; for what are children but the parent multiplied? But to lay a son in the grave, which continues the name and supports the family, is a sore affliction.

2. This was a young man in the strength and flower of his age, not carried from the cradle to the coffin. Had he died an infant, he had not been so much lamented; but then when the mother’s expectations were highest, and the endearments greatest, even in the flower of his age, he is cut off.

3. He was not only a son, but an only son; one in whom all his mother’s hopes and comforts were bound up. The death of one out of many, is much more tolerable than of all in one. The loss of that one admits of no consolation.

4. Still to heighten the affliction, it is added that she was a widow; she wanted the counsel and support of a loving yoke-fellow. Had the root been left entire, she might better have spared the branch; now both are cut down, and she has none left to comfort her in her comfortless state of widowhood. In this distressed conditon, Christ, the God of comfort, meets her, pities her, relieves her.

Observe, 2. Thee compassion of Christ towards this distressed widow: He saw her, and had compassion on her. Christ saw her, she did not speak to him; no tears, no prayers, can move Christ so much as our afflictions and his own compassion. Christ’s heart pitied her, his tongue said to her, Weep not; his feet went to the bier, his hand touched the coffin, and the power of his Godhead raised the dead.

But how strange does Christ’s counsel seem! To bid a woman not to weep for such a loss was to persuade her to be miserable, and not to feel it; to feel it, and not regard it; to regard it, and yet conceal and hide it. It is not the decent expression of our sorrow then which Christ condemns, but the undue excess and extravagance of it, which our Saviour blames.

And the lesson of instruction which we learn from hence is this, that Christians ought to moderate their sorrow for their dead relation, how many afflicting circumstances and aggravations soever do meet together in their death: here was a child, that child a son, that son an only son, that only son carried to the grave in the flower of his age; yet Christ says to the pensive mother, a sorrowful widow, Weep not.

Observe, 3. The power of Christ in raising the widow’s son to life. The Lord of Life arrests the sergeant Death, and rescues the prisoner out of his hand. Christ says not, in the name of God, young man, arise; but, I say unto thee, arise.

Christ had a power in himself, and of himself, to command the dead to arise; and the same powerful voice which raised this young man, shall in the last day raise up our dead bodies; for it is as easy for Omnipotency to say, let them be repaired, as to say at first, let them be made.

The Socinians here own, that Christ raised this young man by a divine power, which God had communicated to him; yet deny him at the same time to be essentially God. But let them prove if they can, that a divine power, which is proper to God alone, ever was, or ever can be, communicated to a creature, without the communication of the divine nature.

True, we find St. Peter, Act 9:40, commanding Tabitha to arise; but we find all he did was by faith in Christ, and by prayer unto Christ, Act 9:34.

Jesus Christ healeth thee, arise: but Christ here raised the widow’s son without prayer, purely by his own power; which undeniably proves him to be God.

Observe, 4. The reality of the miracle: he sits up, he begins to speak, and is delivered to his mother.

Death has no power to hold that man down, whom the Son of God bids rise up: Immediately he that was dead sat up; and the same power which raised one man, can raise a thousand, a million, a world; no power can raise one man but an almighty power, and that which is almighty can raise all men. It was not so much for the child’s sake as the mother’s sake, that the son was raised; it was an injury to the son, though a kindness to the mother, for he must twice pass through the gates of death, to others’ once; it returned him from rest to labor, from the peaceful harbor, back again to the tempestous ocean.

Observe, lastly, what effects this miracle had upon the multitude: seeing the divine power thus manifestly exerted, they are filled with astonishment and amazement: they look upon our Saviour with awful and admiring looks; They glorify and praise God for sending a great prophet amongst them, accounting it a great act of favor that God had in this wonderful manner visited his people; yet a prophet was the highest name they could find for him, whom they saw like themselves in shape, but above themselves in power: A great prophet is risen up amongst us, and God hath visited his people.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Luk 7:11-12. He went into a city called Nain A town situated about a mile or two south of Tabor, and near Endor. And many of his disciples went with him Among these, doubtless, were the twelve appointed to be apostles: for, it is not to be imagined that he would suffer the chosen witnesses of his miracles to be absent, when so great a miracle was to be performed as the raising a person from the dead, and to be performed so publicly, in the presence of all those who were attending the funeral.

There was a dead man carried out When Jesus and the multitude that attended him came to the gates of Nain, they met the corpse of a youth, whom much people of the city were carrying out to burial, accompanied by his afflicted mother bathed in tears. This woman, being a widow, had no prospect of any more children, wherefore, as he was her only son, the loss she sustained in him was very great. Hence the sympathy which she received from her relations and friends was singular. In testimony of their concern for her, a crowd of people, much greater than was usual on such occasions, attended her while she performed the last duty to her beloved son. This circumstance the evangelist takes notice of to show, that though there had been no persons present at the miracle but those who attended the funeral, it was illustrious on account of the number of the witnesses. Macknight.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

3. The Son of the Widow of Nain: Luk 7:11-17.

The following narrative is one of those which clearly reveal our Lord’s tenderness of heart, and the power which human grief exerted over Him. The historical reality of this fact has been objected to on the ground that it is only related by Luke. Criticism always reasons as if the evangelists were swayed by the same historical prepossessions as itself. The life of Jesus presented such a rich store of miraculous incidents, that no one ever dreamed of giving a complete record of them. Jesus alludes to miracles performed at Chorazin, none of which are related in our Gospels. With a single exception, we are equally ignorant of all that were wrought at Bethsaida. It is very remarkable that, amongst all the miracles which are indicated summarily in our Gospels (Luk 4:23; Luk 4:40-41, Luk 6:18-19 and parall., Luk 7:21, etc.; Joh 2:23; Joh 4:45; Joh 6:1; Joh 20:30; Joh 21:25), one or two only of each class are related in detail. It appears that the most striking example of each class was chosen, and that from the first no attempt was made to preserve any detailed account of the others. For edification, which was the sole aim of the popular preaching, this was sufficient. Ten cures of lepers would say no more to faith than one. But it might happen that some of the numerous miracles passed over by the tradition, came, through private sources of information, to the knowledge of one of our evangelists, and that he inserted them in his work. Thus, under the category of resurrections, the raising of Jairus’ daughter had taken the foremost place in the tradition,it is found in the three Syn.,whilst other facts of the kind, such as that before us, had been left in the background, without, however, being on that account denied.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

XLIV.

JESUS RAISES THE WIDOW’S SON.

(At Nain in Galilee.)

cLUKE VII. 11-17.

c11 And it came to pass soon afterwards [many ancient authorities read on the next day], that he went into a city called Nain; and his disciples went with him, and a great multitude. [We find that Jesus had been thronged with multitudes pretty continuously since the choosing of his twelve apostles. Nain lies on the northern slope of the mountain, which the Crusaders called Little Hermon, between twenty and twenty-five miles south of Capernaum, and about two miles west of Endor. At present it is a small place with about a dozen mud hovels, but still bears its old name, which the Arabs have modified into Nein. It is situated on a bench in the mountain about sixty feet above the plain.] 12 Now when he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, there was carried out one that was dead, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. [Places of sepulture were outside the towns, that ceremonial pollution must be avoided. To this rule there was an exception. The kings of Judah were buried in the city of David ( 2Ki 16:20, 2Ki 21:18, 2Ki 21:26). The Jews were careful to give public expression to their sympathy for those who were bereaved ( Joh 11:19). The death of an only child represented to them as to us the extreme of sorrow ( Jer 6:26, Zec 12:10, Amo 8:10). But in this case the sorrow was heightened by the fact that the mother was a widow, and hence evidently dependent upon her son for support. Her son had comforted her in her first loss of a husband, but now that her son was dead, there was none left to comfort.] 13 And when the Lord saw her [Some take this use of the phrase “the [275] Lord,” as an evidence of the late date at which Luke wrote his Gospel; but the point is not well taken, for John used it even before Jesus ascension– Joh 21:7], he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. [As the funeral procession came out of the gate, they met Jesus with his company coming in. Hence there were many witnesses to what followed. But the miracle in this instance was not wrought so much attest our Lord’s commission, or to show his power, as to do good. As Jesus had no other business in Nain but to do good, we may well believe that he went there for the express purpose of comforting this forlorn mother. Compare Joh 11:1-15. Good blessings may come to us when reason speaks and God’s wise judgment answers; but we get our best blessings when our afflictions cry unto him and his compassion replies.] 14 And he came nigh and touched the bier: and the bearers stood still. [The word here translated “bier” may mean a bier or coffin, and the authorities are about equally divided as to which it was. It was more likely a stretcher of boards, with the pallet or bed upon it, and the body of the young man wrapped in linen lying upon the bed. Coffins, which were common in Babylon and Egypt, were rarely used by the Jews, save in the burial of people of distinction; and, if we may trust the writing of the later rabbis, the burial of children. When they were used, the body was placed in them, and borne without any lid to the place of sepulture. We find no coffin in the burial of either Lazarus or Jesus. Jesus was, no doubt, known to many in Nain, and it is no wonder that those who bore the bier stood still when he touched it. Though we can not say that he had raised the dead prior to this, we can say that he had healed every kind of disease known among the people, and therefore his act would beget a reasonable expectancy that he might do something even here.] And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. [Here, as in the other instances where Jesus revived the dead, we find that he issues a personal call to the party whose remains are before him. It suggests the sublime thought that he has as full dominion and [276] authority over the unseen as over the seen; and that should he issue a general call, all the dead would revive again as obediently and immediately as did the single one to whom he now spoke ( Joh 5:28, Joh 5:29). The command of Jesus, moreover, is spoken with the ease and consciousness of authority known only to Divinity. Compare the dependent tone of Simon Peter– Act 3:6.] 15 And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. [Thus showing that not only life, but also health and strength, were restored.] And he gave him to his mother. [As the full fruitage of his compassion. The scene suggests that Christ will, with his own hands, restore kindred to kindred in the glorious morning of resurrection.] 16 And fear took hold on all [Because the power of God had been so signally manifested among them. They recognized the presence of God’s power and mercy, yet by no means apprehended the nearness of his very person]: and they glorified God, saying, A great prophet is arisen among us: and, God hath visited his people. [Expectation of the return of one of the prophets was at that time widely spread. See Luk 9:8, Luk 9:19. That they should esteem Jesus as no more than a prophet was no wonder, for as yet even his apostles had not confessed him as the Christ. In state and conduct Jesus appeared to them too humble to fulfill the popular ideas of Messiahship. But in wisdom and miracle he outshone all God’s former messengers. The “visiting” of God refers to the long absence of the more strikingly miraculous powers of God as exercised through the prophets. None had raised the dead since the days of Elisha.] 17 And this report went forth concerning him in the whole of Judaea, and all the region round about. [This great miracle caused the fame of Jesus to fill all Juda as well as Galilee. It seems, from what next follows, to have reached John the Baptist in his prison on the east of the Dead Sea.] [277]

[FFG 275-277]

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

RAISING THE WIDOWS SON

Luk 7:11-17. And it came to pass consecutively, He was going into a city called Nain, and many disciples of His, and a great multitude, were accompanying Him. And when He drew near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son to his mother, and she a widow; and a great multitude of the city were along with her. And the Lord seeing her, was moved with compassion toward her, and said to her, Weep not. And having come to them, He touched the bier; and those carrying it stood still. And He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise; and the dead sat up, and began to speak; and He gave him to his mother. And fear took hold of all, and they glorified God, saying, A great Prophet has risen among us, and God has looked in mercy on His people. And that word concerning Him went out in all Judea and all the surrounding country. I visited the city of Nain during my recent tour. It stands on the northwestern slope of Mt. Ramoth-Gilead. Like other cities during the desolation of the country, its magnificence has long ago evanesced, leaving it nothing now but a filthy Arabic village amid the old ruins. A Latin church stands on the spot where it is certified that Jesus performed this stupendous miracle a suitable commemoration of this mighty work. We find that our Savior traveled all the way from Capernaum to Nain, about forty miles, on foot, returning immediately; thus giving Him a journey of eighty miles for this one benefaction, as the record shows that He made the round trip from Capernaum, and specifies this only item in His ministry meanwhile. Doubtless He preached to the multitudes by the way. How wonderful was the sympathy for that poor widow who was burying her only son, and with him all her support, hope, and happiness, so far as this world is concerned! I trow she was a godly woman, and Jesus heard her prayers and saw her tears, despite forty miles intervening. When He stops the corpse on its way to the tomb, momentous was the sensation, all hearts leaping with inquiry, What does this mean, stopping a corpse on its way to the tomb? Such a thing was never heard of. The people in the city are astonished to see the halt of the procession. Now that the panic- stricken pall-bearers have set down the bier in the middle of the road, all eyes centered on the Prophet of Galilee. He walks round, lifts the pall from the face of the dead, takes him by the hand, and speaks with the voice that makes the mountain tremble, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. All eyes are centered on the corpse, which, sure enough, rises up, sitting on the bier, sees his mother, throws his arms around her, standing in loving embrace. Now the multitudes see that there is no mistake about it, Samuel is actually alive again. O what a shout they raise, Glory to God in the highest! He has had mercy on Israel, and raised up a Prophet in her midst who has power to speak the dead to life! What an inexplicable surprise falls on the people of the city! Who ever heard a shout at a funeral? What, in all the world, is the matter? They see the procession all broken up, and the people running hither and thither, as if they were wild, leaping and throwing their hats into the air, and shouting uproariously. They climb to the flat roofs of their houses, and stretch their eyes to see what is the matter. Behold! by this time the whole crowd are moving hack toward the city, their stentorian voices reverberating against old Mt. Gilead, and rolling back like thunder peals across the Plain of Megiddo, arousing all the community. Behold! they see the young man dressed in his grave-clothes, by the side of his mother, heading the procession.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

Luk 7:11-17. The Son of the Widow of Nain (Lk. only). This incident is conditioned by the reply to the Baptists inquiry in Luk 7:22, the dead are raised up. It is more difficult than the story of Jairus daughter, and represents the intermediate step between that incident and the raising of Lazarus (John 11). There is no mention of faith on anyones part. Loisy rather fancifully sees in it a symbol of Jesus work in saving Israel. The widow represents the daughter of Zion (Jerusalem) losing her only son (Israel) and miraculously regaining him through Jesus. May we trace the influence of 1Ki 17:17-24 and 2Ki 4:33-37? Shunem was within half an hour of Nain, a little town, eight miles S.W. from Nazareth, on a hill overlooking the valley of Esdraelon. Lk. may have known a tradition that Jesus had wrought a great wonder there. It is only here that he attributes the motive of compassion to Jesus.

17. the whole of Juda: Luk 4:44*.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

Verse 11

A city called Nain. Villages of very inconsiderable size were, in those days, walled in, and called cities.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

7:11 {2} And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called {a} Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.

(2) Christ openly affirms his power over death.

(a) Nain is the name of a town in Galilee which was situated on the other side of the Kishon, which runs into the sea of Galilee.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

2. The raising of a widow’s Song of Solomon 7:11-17

This miracle lifted the popular appreciation of Jesus’ authority to new heights. Luke also continued to stress Jesus’ compassion for people, in this case a widow whose son had died, by including this incident in his Gospel. The importance of faith in Jesus is not strong in this pericope. However the motif of the joy that Jesus brings recurs. The incident also sets the stage for Jesus’ interview by John the Baptist’s disciples that follows (Luk 7:18-23).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Jesus may have gone directly from Capernaum (Luk 7:1-11) to Nain ("the pleasant"). Nain was only about 20 miles southwest of that town. It lay on the northern slope of the Hill of Moreh that stood at the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley. It was 6 miles south and a little east of Nazareth and is easily visible across the valley from Nazareth. The Hill of Moreh is a significant site because on its south side stood Shunem where Elisha raised the son of the Shunammite woman (2Ki 4:18-37). Luke distinguished two groups of people who accompanied Jesus, namely, His disciples and a large multitude of presumably non-disciples.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)