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Chapter XXIII.
JESUS RAISES FROM THE DEAD THE SON OF THE WIDOW OF NAIM.
[Luke 7, 11— 17 ]
NOW it came to pass after this that Jesus went into a city called Naim (Fig. 73) [1], and there went with Him His disciples and a great multitude. As He drew near the gates of the city, behold, a dead man was carried out[2], the only son of a widow. The poor mother[3], plunged in sorrow, walked after the bier, and a number of friends and relatives accompanied her.
- ↑ Naim was a town of some importance about twenty miles south of Capharnaum on the main road.
- ↑ Carried out. It was the custom among the Jews to bury the dead on the clay of their death. The body was carried to the grave on a bier, without a cover, the mourners following the bier.
- ↑ The poor mother. She walked behind the bier, bowed down with grief and weeping. Her husband had died many years before, and she had not married a second time, so as to be able to live entirely for her son — and now he, her only son, her hope and stay, on whom her whole heart was set, was tom from her by death, in the flower of his youth. The joy of her life was taken from her, and she would gladly have died also. But she was a faithful Israelite, and she knew that the time of the Messias had come. She hoped that she might behold Him before she died; and, next to her natural and maternal grief, the thought that pained her most about the loss of her son, was that now he could never hope to see the Messias. Perhaps she was trying to console herself with the thoughts of Him who was to come, when all at once the bearers of the dead body stood still, and a Voice, solemn, yet full of tenderness, said to her: “Weep not!”
