Luke 5:1

Luke 5:1-11. The Draught of Fishes. The Calling of four Disciples

1. pressed upon him St Mark (as is his wont) uses a stronger word to express the physical inconvenience, and adds that sometimes at any rate, it was with a view to touch Him and be healed (Luke 3:9-10).

to hear The more probable reading is not toubut kai, - andlistened to."

the lake of Gennesaret "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- gardensof 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 five miles long and twelve 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 Mejdelthe 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 15000 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 breadcrumbs 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.