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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 551. Martha and Mary
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Literature
Aitken, W. H. M. H., The Highway of Holiness, 141, 157.
Albertson, C. C., The Gospel According to Christ (1899), 91.
Brooke, S. A., The Kingship of Love (1903), 253.
Bushnell, H., Christ and His Salvation, 39.
Campbell, W. M., Foot-Prints of Christ (1889), 201.
Candlish, R. S., Scripture Characters (1872), 217.
Chadwick, W. E., Christ and Everyday Life (1910), 144.
Edersheim, A., The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. (1887) 146, 312, 322, 358.
Fürst, A., True Nobility of Character (1884), 15.
Harris, J. R., Aaron's Breastplate (1908), 51.
Horne, C. S., The Relationships of Life, 31.
Keble, J., Sermons for the Christian Year: Miscellaneous (1880), 289.
Leathes, A. S., The Kingdom Within (1910), 76.
Lockyer, T. F., The Inspirations of the Christian Life (1894), 226.
Matheson, G., Words by the Wayside (1896), 6.
Meyer, F. B., in The Life and Work of the Redeemer (1901), 130.
Morris, A. J., The Open Secret (1869), 74.
Morrison, G., The House of God (1875), 159.
Moule, H. C. G., From Sunday to Sunday (1903), 171.
Purchase, E. J., The Pathway of the Tempted (1905), 172.
Rigg, J. H., Scenes and Studies in the Ministry of Our Lord (1901), 133, 156.
Rowlands, D., in Women of the Bible: Rebekah to Priscilla (1904), 153.
Russell, A., The Light that Lighteth every Man (1889), 225.
Stimson, H. A., The New Things of God (1908), 141.
Thompson, J. R., Burden Bearing (1905), 135.
Trumbull, H. C., Our Misunderstood Bible (1907), 217.
Watson, J., The Life of the Master (1902), 307.
The Gospels show us our Lord in public-in the Temple of Jerusalem, in the high priest's palace, in Pilate's judgment-hall, on the green hill outside the gate, or on that other hill where He delivered His sermon, or in the meadow where He fed five thousand, or in the synagogue of Capernaum, or on the lake where the eager people crowded the shore. We see Him as a Prophet, Reformer, Teacher, Martyr, as the Messiah and Redeemer. But the same Gospels lift the veil from Jesus' private life, so that we know some of the houses where He found a home in the hard years of His ministry, and some of the friends who comforted His heart. There was one house in Cana where there would ever be a welcome for Him, because on the chief day of life He had turned the water of marriage joy into wine; another in Capernaum, because there He had changed sorrow into gladness, and given a young girl back to her father from the gates of death. He had stayed in John's modest lodging at Jerusalem, as well as used the “Upper Room” of a wealthier friend. There was a room in a publican's house in Capernaum which was sacred because Jesus had feasted there and sealed as in a sacrament the salvation of Levi; and Zacchæus, to the last day of his life, saw the Master crossing his threshold that night He slept in Jericho. The family of St. Peter could have told many things of Jesus-a fifth gospel of what He said and did at His ease. But the home of the Gospels dearest to the Christian heart is that of Bethany, where the Master found a refuge from labour and persecution, and constant sympathy with Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus.
We meet with that most interesting of all New Testament households, the Bethany family, on three occasions in the course of the gospel history. Twice the sisters are brought together on the scene; in the third case the younger alone appears. This statement goes on the assumption that the Mary and Martha of St. Luke are the same two sisters whom St. John brings before us in his account of the raising of Lazarus; it also rests on that Evangelist's identification of the woman anointing Jesus with the costly spikenard, whose name is not given in the two Synoptic accounts of the incident-Matthew and Mark-with Mary of Bethany.
The connexion of the three incidents with the same family is not so absolutely certain as is commonly supposed; at least there have been careful readers to whom it has appeared more than doubtful. St. Luke, it may be observed, gives us only the earlier incident,-that in which Mary sits at the feet of Jesus while Martha is cumbered with much serving, an incident which we meet with in his Gospel alone,-this evangelist neither mentioning the raising of Lazarus, which is not referred to by any of the synoptists, nor giving the anointing in the last week at Jerusalem, which the other two Synoptic Gospels record. In introducing his story he does not fix the locality at Bethany; he simply says that “as they went on their way” Jesus “entered into a certain village,” not naming the place, apparently for the reason that he does not know where it is. But since he inserts the incident in the course of his account of a tour in Galilee, the impression left on the mind of an unprejudiced reader would naturally be that the unknown village was situated somewhere in that district. Hence harmonists have suggested that the family had been living at the earlier period in Galilee, and had subsequently moved to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, while, on the other hand, there have not been wanting critics who have pounced on the seeming discrepancy as an evidence of the untrustworthiness of the Fourth Gospel, the author of which, they have suggested, has arbitrarily transported Mary and Martha from the north country to Bethany. But surely it is enough to suppose that St. Luke inserts his incident where it occurs in his Gospel, with its vague indication of locality, because there was nothing in the source from which he derived it to determine where it occurred. It may be remarked that immediately before this he gives the parable of the Good Samaritan, the scene of which is laid in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, and which therefore would be most appropriately spoken by our Lord in that locality. May it be that both of these paragraphs come from some fragmentary notes of one of Christ's visits to Jerusalem which failed to state the locality to which they belonged?
There is not only the fact of the names being the same, and Martha is by no means so common a name as Mary. The distinctive traits of character which come out with startling vividness in the Third Gospel are repeatedly suggested by more delicate hints in the Fourth, raising the probability practically to a certainty that we have the same pair of sisters introduced to us in each case.1 [Note: W. F. Adeney.]