22-14. The Raising of the Widow's Son

14. The Raising of the Widow’s Son

Luk 7:11-16 The “city called Nain” is not mentioned elsewhere in Scripture. It lay upon the southern border of Galilee, and on the road to Jerusalem, whither our Lord was probably now going to keep the second passover of his open ministry. Stanley points out its exact position, and even the spot where this great miracle must have been wrought: “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 is sufficient to guarantee its authenticity. One entrance alone it could have had—that which opens on the rough hill-side 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.” “Now when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, ^[1] the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and much people of the city was with her.” That the Lord should thus meet the funeral at “the gate of the city,” while it belonged no doubt to the wonder-works of God’s grace, being one of those marvellous coincidences which, seeming accidental, are yet deep laid in the councils of his wisdom and of his love, is at the same time a natural circumstance, to be explained by the fact that the Jews did not suffer the interring of their dead in towns, but buried them without the walls. There was much in the circumstances of this sad procession to arouse even their. compassion who were touched with no such lively sense of human sorrows as belonged to our compassionate Lord; and it was this which had brought that “much people” to accompany the bier. Indeed, it would be hard to make the picture of desolation more complete, than in two strokes the Evangelist has done, whose whole narrative here, apart from its deeper interest, is a master-work for its perfect beauty. The bitterness of the mourning for an only son had passed into a proverb; thus Jer 6:26 : “Make thee mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation;” Zec 12:10 : “They shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son;” and Amo 8:10 : “I will make it as the mourning of an only son. “And not otherwise the desolation of a widow (Ruth 1:20-21; 1Ti 5:5; Job 24:3).

“And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.” How different this “Weep not” from the idle “Weep not,” which so often proceeds from the lips of earthly comforters, who, even while they speak the words, give no reason why the mourner should cease from weeping. But. He who has come down from heaven that one day He may make good that word, “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Rev 21:4), shows now some effectual glimpses and presages of his power, wiping away, though as yet it may not be for ever, the tears from the weeping eyes of that desolate mother. Yet, as Olshausen has observed, it would be an error to suppose that compassion for the mother was the determining motive for this mighty spiritual act on the part of Christ: for, in that case, had the joy of the mother been the only object which He had in view, the young man who was raised would have been used merely as a means, which yet no man can ever be. That joy of the mother was indeed the nearest consequence of the act, but not the final cause;—that, though at present hidden, was, no doubt, the spiritual awakening of the young man for a higher life, through which, indeed, alone the joy of the mother became a true and an abiding joy.

“And He came and touched the bier”—an intimation rightly interpreted by those to whom it was addressed; “and they that bare him stood still.” Then follows the word of power, and spoken, as ever, in his own name: “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise; —I, that am the Resurrection and the Life, quickening the dead, and calling those things which be not, as though they were.” And that word was heard, for “he that was dead sat up, and began to speak.” Christ rouses from the bier as easily as another would rouse from the bed,^[2]—different in this even from his own messengers and ministers in the Old Covenant; for they, only with prayer and effort (1Ki 17:20-22; cf. Acts 9:40), or after a long and patient exercise of love (2Ki 4:34), won back his prey from the jaws of death; and this, because there dwelt not the fulness of power in them, who were but as servants in the house of another, not as a Son in his own.^[3] So, too, in heathen legend, she was only “rescued from Death by force,” and after a fierce conflict “whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave.”^[4]

“And He delivered him to his mother” (cf. 1Ki 17:23; 2Ki 4:36). So shall He once, when his great “Arise” shall have awakened not one, but all the dead, deliver all those that have fallen asleep in Him, to their beloved for personal recognition and for a special fellowship of joy, amid the universal gladness which shall then fill all hearts. We have the promise and pledge of this in the three raisings from the dead which prefigure that coming resurrection. “And there came a fear on all” (cf. Mark 1:27; Mark 5:15; Luk 5:9), “and they glorified God” (Mark 2:12), “saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us, and that God hath visited his people.” This could be no ordinary prophet, they concluded rightly, since none but the very greatest of the olden times, an Elijah or an Elisha, had revived the dead. They praised God, that with the raising up of so great a prophet He had brought the long and dreary period to a close, during which they had had no prophet more, till now it might have almost seemed that there should never again be any “open vision,” that the last of the prophets had arrived.^[5]

Footnotes

[1] Ἐξεκομίζετο. The technical word is ἐκϕέρειν, and the carrying out, ἐκϕορά

[2] Augustine (Serm. xcviii. 2): Nemo tam facile excitat in lecto, quam facile Christus in sepulcro.

[3] See what has been said already, p, 35. Massillon, in his sermon, Sur la Divinite de Jesus-Christ, has these eloquent words: Elie ressuscite des morts, il est vrai; mais il est oblige de se coucher plusieurs fois sur le corps de l’enfant qu’il ressuscite: il souffle, il se rétrecit, il s’agite: on voit bien qu’il invoque une puissance etrangere: qu’il rappelle de l’empire de la mort une âme qui n’est pas soumise â sa voix: et qu’il n’est pas lui-même le maître de la mort et de la vie. Jesus-Christ ressuscite les morts comme il fait les actions les plus communes; il parle en maître à ceux qui dorment d’un sommeil éternel; et l’on sent bien qu’il est le Dieu des morts comme des vivans, jamais plus tranquille que lorsqu’il opere les plus grandes choses.

[4] See the Alcestis of Euripides, 849-861.

[5] Philostratus (Vita Apollonii, iv. 45) ascribes a miracle to Apollonius, which is evidently framed in imitation and rivalry of this (on this rivalry see p. 65, and Baur, Apollonius und Christus, p. 40). Apollonius met one day in the streets of Rome a damsel earned out to burial, followed by her betrothed, and by a weeping company. He bade them set down the bier, saying he would stanch their tears; and having inquired her name, whispered something in her ear, and then taking her by the hand, he raised her up, and she began straightway to speak, and returned to her father’s house. Yet Philostratus does not relate this as probably having been more than an awakening from the deep swoon of an apparent death (ἀϕύπνισε τὴν κόρην τοῦ δοκοῦντος θανάτου), and suggests an explanation that reminds one of the modern ones of Paulus and his school,—that Apollonius perceived in her a spark of life which had escaped the notice of her physicians and attendants; but whether it was this, or that he did truly kindle in her anew the extinguished spark of life, he acknowledges it impossible for him, as it was for the bystanders, to say.