Mark 6:1 Commentary and Bible Study

‘He went out from thence [from Capernaum] and travelled to his own country’, which means Nazareth, where he was brought up, and where the passage shows they are familiar with all the members of his family by name. Now he had already made a return trip to Nazareth and you read about it in Luke 4. He had preached in the synagogue; really, he had announced himself as Messiah, and he had read a long passage from Isaiah 61, and preached from it. But they hated it, and they resented it, and they were furious with him, and the mob got hold of him and they frogmarched him to the end of a great cliff. Nazareth was built on a hill, and there a sharp slope at the edge of the town, or the village, and they went to thrust him over the edge where he would perish. They had wanted to kill him, but he just walked through the midst of them, and they couldn't take him. But now he goes back there. Even though they had tried to murder him the first time, he returns. What amazing patience the Lord has shown towards this world! How longsuffering is God towards us in the face of such extreme provocation! What happened on the revisit? It was a second opportunity for the people of Nazareth to turn to their Messiah. The first time: murderous rage; the second time? Well it seems to have changed into a kind of settled hostility. There was no attempt take his life this time, but there wasn't much change in their unbelief.