Section 16
Return to Nazareth
Egypt & Nazareth
Matthew 2:19-23
Luke 2:39
19After Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 20saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the life of the child are dead.” 21So Joseph rose, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee
23and came and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled: “He will be called a Nazarene.”
39When Joseph and Mary had finished everything that was required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.
Notes
Nazareth
The bustling city which seems to swarm like a beehive of activity around the Basilica of the Annunciation does not seem to fit our mental image of the insignificant village in which Jesus grew up.
One look from those hillsides of the Nazareth Ridge will erase a lifetime’s worth of impressions from sermons about the isolation of Nazareth. Here you have a panoramic view of the northeastern part of the Jezreel Valley. These hillsides witnessed the battles of Deborah and Barak against Sisera and the Canaanites from Hazor (Judges 4 5), Elijah’s raising of the widow’s son from the dead at Shunem (2 Kings 4:32-35), and Jesus’ similar raising of the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:11-15).
Nazareth is next to, but not directly on, the most important road through Israel. This is hardly the “out of the way” place that many people expect to see. In Jesus’ day, Nazareth was a village nestled in the “bowl” created by the higher hills surrounding it. The village could never sustain a large population, as it had only one good spring and the soil was not very fertile. The spring trickles from a limestone crypt; it would have been here that Mary drew water for her family.