Luke 5:1

καὶ�. אABL, Edd. ‘and heard’ for τοῦ�. ‘to hear.’

1. ἐπικεῖσθαι αὐτῷ. With this section compare Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20. St Mark (as is his wont) uses stronger words (ἐπιπίπτειν, θλίβειν) to express the physical inconvenience, and adds that sometimes at any rate, the multitude pressed on Jesus with a view to touch Him and be healed (Luke 3:9-10).

καὶ�. The more probable reading is not τοῦ but καἰ, ‘and listened to.’

τὴν λίμνην Γεννησαρέτ. “The most sacred sheet of water which this earth contains.” Stanley. St Luke alone, writing for the Greeks, accurately calls it a lake. The Galilaean and Jewish Evangelists unconsciously follow the Hebrew idiom which applies the name yam ‘sea,’ to every piece of water. Gennesareth is probably a corruption of the old Hebrew name Kinnereth, but the Rabbis derive it from ganne sarim, ‘gardens of princes.’ This same inland lake is generally called ‘the Sea of Galilee’ (Matthew 15:29, &c.). In the Old Testament it is called “the Sea of Chinneroth” (Joshua 12:3) from its harplike shape. St John calls it “the Sea of Tiberias;” because by the time he wrote Tiberias—which in our Lord’s time had only just been founded by Herod Antipas—had grown into a flourishing town. Gennesareth is a clear sweet lake about thirteen miles long and seven broad, with the Jordan flowing through it. Its fish produced a valuable revenue to those who lived on its shores. The plain of Gennesareth, which lies 500 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, is now known as El Ghuweir, ‘the little hollow.’ It is so completely a desolation, that the only inhabited places on the western shore of the Lake are the crumbling, dirty, earthquake-shaken town of Tiberias and the mud village of El Mejdel, the ancient Magdala. The burning and enervating heat is no longer tempered by cultivation and by trees. It is still however beautiful in spring, with flowering oleanders, and the soil is fruitful where it is not encumbered with ruins as at Khan Minyeh (Tarichaea) and Tell Hûm (Capernaum). In our Lord’s time it was, as Josephus calls it, “the best part of Galilee” (B. J. III. 10, § 7) containing many villages, of which the least had 15,000 inhabitants. Josephus becomes quite eloquent over the descriptions of its rich fruits nearly all the year, its grateful temperature, and its fertilising stream (Jos. B. J. III. 10, §§ 7, 8), so that, he says, one might call it ‘the ambition of nature.’ It belonged to the tribe of Naphtali (Deuteronomy 33:23) and the Rabbis said that of the “seven seas” of Canaan, it was the only one which God had reserved for Himself. In our Lord’s time it was covered with a gay and numerous fleet of 4000 vessels, from ships of war down to fishing boats; now it is often difficult to find a single crazy boat even at Tiberias, and the Arabs fish mainly by throwing poisoned bread-crumbs into the water near the shore. As four great roads communicated with the Lake it became a meeting-place for men of many nations—Jews, Galilaeans, Syrians, Phoenicians, Arabs, Greeks and Romans.