Matthew 4:13
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Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
in the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
. In the previous verse Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
returned to Galilee
Galilee
Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...
after hearing of the arrest of John the Baptist
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
. In this verse he leaves from Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
to Capernaum
Capernaum
Capernaum was a fishing village in the time of the Hasmoneans. Located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It had a population of about 1,500. Archaeological excavations have revealed two ancient synagogues built one over the other...
.
In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:
- And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt
- in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast,
- in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim:
The World English Bible
World English Bible
The World English Bible is a public domain translation of the Bible that is currently in draft form. Work on the World English Bible began in 1997 and was known as the American Standard Version 1997...
translates the passage as:
- Leaving Nazareth, he came and lived in
- Capernaum, which is by the sea, in
- the region of Zebulun and Naphtali,
For a collection of other versions see BibRef Matthew 4:13
It is presumed that Jesus returned to Nazareth since Matthew 2:23
Matthew 2:23
Matthew 2:23 is the twenty-third verse of the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. The young Jesus and the Holy Family have just returned from Egypt and in this verse are said to settle in Nazareth. This is the final verse of Matthew's infancy narrative...
described it as the town where he was raised. Matthew does not specify why Jesus leaves Nazareth, but it might be because of his rejection by the residents of that town as described in Luke 4
Luke 4
Luke 4 is the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It details Jesus's three temptations, his rejection at Nazareth, and the start of his mission.-Jesus's Three Temptations:...
. The original Greek of this verse has Nazareth spelt as "Nazara." The only other place this spelling occurs in the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
is in Luke 4:16. Hill notes that this has led scholars to believe that both Matthew and Luke were copying from another document, likely the hypothetical Q. Hill adds that this has also led some to believe that the entirety of the rejection scene was in Q but that the author of Matthew decided to leave it out.
At the time of Jesus, Capernaum
Capernaum
Capernaum was a fishing village in the time of the Hasmoneans. Located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It had a population of about 1,500. Archaeological excavations have revealed two ancient synagogues built one over the other...
was a sizeable town on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee
Sea of Galilee
The Sea of Galilee, also Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias , is the largest freshwater lake in Israel, and it is approximately in circumference, about long, and wide. The lake has a total area of , and a maximum depth of approximately 43 m...
, with a population of perhaps ten thousand. The description of the town's location comes straight from the quote from Isaiah
Isaiah
Isaiah ; Greek: ', Ēsaïās ; "Yahu is salvation") was a prophet in the 8th-century BC Kingdom of Judah.Jews and Christians consider the Book of Isaiah a part of their Biblical canon; he is the first listed of the neviim akharonim, the later prophets. Many of the New Testament teachings of Jesus...
that will be quoted in Matthew 4:15. Capernaum was located in Naphtali
Tribe of Naphtali
The Tribe of Naphtali was one of the Tribes of Israel.Following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes after about 1200 BCE, Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes...
, but it was near Zebulun
Tribe of Zebulun
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Zebulun was one of the Tribes of Israel....
. The town is mentioned nowhere in the Old Testament, but does feature in all four Gospels. Matthew is the only source that has Jesus actually living in the town. The other three have him only preaching and meeting his disciples there. This also seems to conflict with the other gospels and the rest of Matthew, especially Matthew 8:20, which portray Jesus as an itinerant preacher with no permanent home. France feels that the town was less a home and more a base of operations to which Jesus and the disciples would occasionally return. Gundry rejects this view. To him dwelt unambiguously means that Jesus set up house in the town. Gundry feels that the author of Matthew embellished the accounts of Jesus' visits to Capernaum to better fit the quote from Isaiah. Matthew 11:23 has Jesus speaking out against the town.
Matthew does not mention why Jesus chose Capernaum to relocate to. The town was prosperous due to its location on the large lake and also its position on the Via Maris
Via Maris
Via Maris is the modern name for an ancient trade route, dating from the early Bronze Age, linking Egypt with the northern empires of Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia — modern day Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria....
, the Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
trade route. France feels it was probably because the sizeable community offered more opportunities to preach. Albright and Mann support the theory that Jesus was already good friends with the disciples prior to recruiting them, and that Jesus specifically chose to move to Capernaum to be close to them.
Matthew here, and throughout the Gospel, refers to the local body of water as a sea. As it contains fresh water, by modern definitions it is more properly a lake
Lake
A lake is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land. Lakes are inland and not part of the ocean and therefore are distinct from lagoons, and are larger and deeper than ponds. Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams,...
. Luke refers to it as a lake, as does Josephus
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
, but Mark and John join Matthew in calling it a sea. As a result "Sea of Galilee" is still the standard modern name.