Word Pictures in the New Testament - David Cox

Word Pictures in the NT [Mark: Chapter 6].
sculpture. It is certain that Jesus worked in wood. Justin Martyr
speaks of ploughs, yokes, et cetera, made by Jesus. He may also
have worked in stone and may even have helped build some of the
stone synagogues in Galilee like that in Capernaum. But in
Nazareth the people knew him, his family (no mention of Joseph),
and his trade and discounted all that they now saw with their own
eyes and heard with their own ears. This word carpenter "throws
the only flash which falls on the continuous tenor of the first
thirty years from infancy to manhood, of the life of Christ"
(Farrar). That is an exaggeration for we have Lu 2:41-50 and
"as his custom was" (Lu 4:16), to go no further. But we are
grateful for Mark's realistic use of \tekt•n\ here. {And they
were offended in him} (\kai eskandalizonto en aut•i\). So exactly
Mt 13:56, {were made to stumble in him}, trapped like game by
the \skandalon\ because they could not explain him, having been
so recently one of them. "The Nazarenes found their stumbling
block in the person or circumstances of Jesus. He became--\petra
skandalou\ (1Pe 2:7,8; Ro 9:33) to those who disbelieved"
(Swete). Both Mark and Mt 13:57, which see, preserve the retort
of Jesus with the quotation of the current proverb about a
prophet's lack of honour in his own country. Joh 4:44 quoted it
from Jesus on his return to Galilee long before this. It is to be
noted that Jesus here makes a definite claim to being a prophet
(\proph•t•s\, forspeaker for God), a seer. He was much more than
this as he had already claimed to be Messiah (Joh 4:26; Lu
4:21), the Son of man with power of God (Mr 1:10; Mt 9:6; Lu
5:24), the Son of God (Joh 5:22). They stumble at Jesus today
as the townspeople of Nazareth did. {In his own house} (\en t•i
oiki•i autou\). Also in Mt 13:57. This was the saddest part of
it all, that his own brothers in his own home disbelieved his
Messianic claims (Joh 7:5). This puzzle was the greatest of
all.
6:6 {And he marvelled because of their unbelief} (\kai ethaumasen
dia t•n apistian aut•n\). Aorist tense, but Westcott and Hort put
the imperfect in the margin. Jesus had divine knowledge and
accurate insight into the human heart, but he had human
limitations in certain things that are not clear to us. He
marvelled at the faith of the Roman centurion where one would not
expect faith (Mt 8:10; Lu 7:9). Here he marvels at the lack of
faith where he had a right to expect it, not merely among the
Jews, but in his own home town, among his kinspeople, even in his
own home. One may excuse Mary, the mother of Jesus, from this
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