Luke Chapter 5 verse 1 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 1. - And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God. His fame as a great Teacher was evidently now firmly established. If it were known that he intended speaking in public, a crowd of listeners would gather quickly round him, whether in the synagogues, or by the lake-shore, or in the market-place. He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret. On this occasion, as he taught by the quiet lake waters, the throng was so great that he borrowed the fishing-boat of one of his friends, and, just pushing out from the shore, spoke to the multitude from the little craft as it rocked on the wavelets of the lake. Dean Stanley calls it "the most sacred sheet of water which the earth contains." The rabbinical derivation is interesting: "Gannesarim, garden of princes;" but it is more probable that Gennesaret is but a reproduction of the old Hebrew name Chinneroth (Joshua 12:3), so called from its harplike shape. It is a beautiful sheet of water, twelve or thirteen miles long and nearly seven broad at one portion of the lake. The Jordan flows through it. In our Lord's time it was surrounded by the richest and most populous district of the Holy Land; large and flourishing towns were built along its shores. Capernaum, as has been said, was the junction of the great roads leading from Syria and the far East to the Mediterranean on the west, and Jerusalem and Egypt on the south. The lake was famous for its fish, and was crowded with all descriptions of craft. The whole scene is now changed. Scarcely a rude boat is ever seen on the blue silent waters. Desolate ruins fringe the deserted shores, with here and there a crumbling mud village, inhabited by the poorest and least enterprising of peasants, so sadly changed is this beautiful and wealthy district, which the rabbis used to love to speak of as the one among the seven seas of Canaan which God had reserved for himself.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English ReadersV.(1-11) And it came to pass . . .--See Notes on Matthew 4:18-22. The narrative here has so many points in common with that in St. Matthew and St. Mark (Mark 1:16-20) that it has been supposed by most commentators to be a different report of the same facts. It is supposed to be all but incredible that the call to the four disciples, the promise that they should be "fishers of men," their leaving all and following their Master, could have been repeated after comparatively so short an interval. On the other hand, St. Luke places it after the healing of Simon's wife's mother; St. Mark and St. Matthew place what they relate before, and the miraculous draught of fishes and Peter's confession are singularly distinctive features. Their narrative, again, is unconnected with our Lord's preaching to the people, with which this opens. On the whole we cannot go farther than saying that there is a slight presumption against the hypothesis of identity. On the assumption of difference we may infer that while our Lord went by Himself to preach the gospel of the kingdom to "the other cities," the disciples returned, as they did after the Resurrection, to their old manner of life, and were now called again to their higher work.The lake of Gennesaret.--St. Luke is the only Evangelist who thus describes the Sea of Galilee. On the land of Gennesaret, see Note on Matthew 14:34.