Luke 10:40 Commentary and Bible Study

But Martha, perhaps as the head of the household, did not join her sister Mary. It is likely that what was being prepared for the guests who had arrived at her house was a large and somewhat elaborate meal. There is every reason to believe that she too, like here sister, loved the Lord Jesus, and would have like to have sat and listened to his word, but she felt responsible, and that sense of responsibility caused her to make the wrong decision. She put her duty of hospitality first, when the situation called for a different judgment to be made. In this brief account, Mary is commended and Martha is shown in a less favourable light, yet soon it will be Martha who meets Christ and expresses her tentative belief that he could even raise her brother from the dead.‘But Martha was cumbered with much serving.’ She was distracted. The word means to be pulled from all around in different directions. Her anxious thoughts were making her distraught, as she thought about first one thing and then another that needed to be done. Maybe she was suspicious about the reason Mary was not helping. Was it laziness, or was it lack of attention to duty, or simply inability to recognise the need of the guests? She probably brooded over what she saw as the unfairness of the situation for some time, before finally becoming so overwrought that she felt compelled to say something. ‘‘Bid her therefore that she help me.’ She cannot restrain herself any longer from complaining. She comes to Christ to send her sister to help prepare the meal. By implication, she blames the Lord Jesus too for not speaking to Mary, for not saying to Mary, ‘You had better go and help your sister in the kitchen.’ Perhaps Martha thought that she would like to be listening too, but there was work to be done.