Luke 4:38

εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν Σίμωνος. St Mark, nearly connected with St Peter, says more accurately “the house of Simon and Andrew” (Luke 1:29). This is the first mention of Peter in St Luke, but the name was too well known in the Christian Church to need further explanation. Peter and Andrew were of Bethsaida (John 1:44; John 12:21), a little fishing village, as its name (House of Fish) imports, now Ain et Tabijah or ‘the Spring of the Figtree,’ where, alone on the Sea of Galilee, there is a little strip of bright hard sand. St Luke does not mention this Bethsaida, though he mentions another at the northern end of the Lake (Luke 9:10). It was so near Capernaum that our Lord may have walked thither, or possibly Simon’s mother-in-law may have had a house at Capernaum. It is a remarkable indication of the little cloud of misunderstanding that seems to have risen between Jesus and those of His own house (Matthew 13:57; John 4:44), that though they were then living at Capernaum (Matthew 9:1; Matthew 17:24)—having perhaps been driven there by the hostility of the Nazarenes—their home was not His home.

πενθερὰ δὲ τοῦ Σίμωνος. “St Peter, the Apostle of Christ, who was himself a married man.” Marriage Service. St Peter’s wife seems afterwards to have travelled with him (1 Corinthians 9:5). Her (most improbable) traditional name was Concordia or Perpetua (Grabe, Spicil. Patr. I. 330).

ἦν συνεχομένη. ‘Was severely distressed.’ The analytic imperfect implies that the fever was chronic, and the verb that it was severe (Matthew 4:24).

πυρετῷ μεγάλῳ. St Luke, being a physician, uses the technical medical distinction of the ancients, which divided fevers into ‘great’ and ‘little’ (Galen, De diff. febr. 1). For other medical and psychological touches see Luke 5:12; Luke 6:6; Luke 22:50-51; Acts 3:6-8; Acts 4:22; Acts 9:33, &c.

ἠρώτησαν αὐτόν. Not, as elsewhere, the imperfect (John 4:47), but the aorist, implying that they only had to ask Him once. St Mark confirms this when he says (Luke 1:30), ‘immediately they speak to Him about her.’