Mark 14:67 Commentary and Bible Study

John had presumably gone to speak to somebody else to find out what was going on. There was a fireplace in that open courtyard, and Peter was with a group of servants of the high priest there, warming himself, and then the problems started. The girl who let him in, possibly, came off duty, or she told somebody else: ‘I think that man is one of the party of Jesus of Nazareth.’ She must have looked closely at him, and Peter must have noticed her stare, because the Gospels record the intensity of it. Mark uses a word which means she fixed her gaze on him or looked attentively at him, and Luke uses another word which indicates she stared earnestly at him. Immediately his courage started to ebb away and she said, ‘And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth.’ She challenged him. A maid! Just think of the culture of those days. Men were everything! Women were regarded as feeble things. Women meant nothing, unless they were very, very rich. It was the Christian Gospel that gave women their due respect and station and position and place in life, but in the culture of the Jews of that time, women were irrelevant. So here is this hardy fisherman and he can stand up to anything, and yet he is going to be brought down by a woman! By a young woman, by the lowliest of maids in the household.