The Bible Says
Matthew 13:53-58 Meaning

The parallel gospel account of Matthew 13:53-58 is found in Mark 6:1-6. Luke 4:14-30 is possibly another parallel account of the same event described in Matthew 13:53-58.

Matthew 13:53-58 describes how when Jesus returned to His hometown and taught in the synagogue, the people were astonished yet offended by Him, and because of their unbelief, He performed only a few miracles there.

Following his firsthand account of Jesus's parables and explanations (Matthew 13:1-52), Matthew resumes his narrative.

When Jesus had finished these parables, He departed from there (v 53).

When Jesus had finished speaking these parables to His disciples and the crowds, He departed from the region around the Sea of Galilee.

He came to His hometown and began teaching them in their synagogue, (v 54a).

Jesus’s hometown was Nazareth (Matthew 2:23, Luke 4:16) Nazareth was located a few miles west of the Sea of Galilee. According to Mark, when Jesus came to His hometown this time His disciples went with Him (Mark 6:1). Nazareth was a small town.

While He was home, Jesus began teaching them in their synagogue.

Synagogues were the center of worship in each town. They were meeting places. Pharisees operated the synagogues. And they taught the people their interpretations of the Law of Moses (the tradition) and promoted Jewish culture.

Teachings in the synagogue would typically take place on the Sabbath. And Mark (Mark 6:2) and Luke (Luke 4:16) both point out that Jesus taught in Nazareth’s synagogue on the Sabbath. The likely reason Matthew omitted this detail was because his gospel’s Jewish audience would have automatically known this, while it had to be pointed out to Mark and Luke’s Gentile audiences.

Normally the local Pharisees assigned to a particular town taught in their synagogue. For Jesus to be able to teach in the synagogue, He would have to have been invited to do so by one or more of the leaders of that particular synagogue.

Jesus was a rabbi, (a venerated teacher of the Scriptures and Jewish law) and He had been invited to teach in synagogues before (Matthew 4:23), but this synagogue was special to Jesus. It was the synagogue where Jesus was formally taught the Law of Moses and the Prophets, and the history of Israel as a boy. Its leadership was likely composed of some of His boyhood instructors and some of its members consisted of relatives, friends, and neighbors.

Jesus’s notoriety had greatly increased since He left Nazareth to begin His Messianic ministry (when He “was about thirty years of age” - Luke 3:23). Now the famous rabbi had returned to His hometown and began to teach in their synagogue.

Luke’s chronological account of Jesus’s earthly life and ministry (Luke 1:3) may also have recorded this moment (Luke 4:14-30).

If Luke 4:14-30 is a parallel account of this moment, then this event occurred soon after Jesus’s public ministry began in Capernaum and the message that He delivered to the synagogue of His hometown came from the prophet Isaiah (Luke 4:17).

Jesus read only a part of two verses. These two verses were Isaiah 61:1-2. And this is what Luke records Jesus reading:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”
(Luke 4:18-19)

This prophecy from Isaiah speaks of the Lord’s anointed-the Messiah-and the liberation and restoration of Israel that He will proclaim.

It is notable that Jesus did not finish the verse and read what came next in Isaiah’s prophecy.

One reason this was notable was because according to the traditions of the Pharisees, whenever someone read or taught in the synagogues, they were not permitted to read less than three verses. Jesus read less than two full verses and “closed the book” and “gave it back to the attendant and sat down [to teach]” (Luke 14:20a).

This break in tradition (but not the Law of Moses) would have immediately caught the attention of everyone present. Luke describes the surprise of the audience when he writes:

“and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him.”
(Luke 14:20b)

Jesus’s decision to stop reading part way through the second verse was no accident. It was deliberate. He was making a profound point. His point becomes clearer by considering what came next in Isaiah’s prophecy, which Jesus did not read.

This is what came next in Isaiah’s prophecy:

“And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn
To grant those who mourn in Zion,
Giving them a garland instead of ashes,
The oil of gladness instead of mourning,
The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting.
So they will be called oaks of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.”
(Isaiah 61:2b-3)

Isaiah 61:1-2a (the verses Jesus read) describe how the Messiah would proclaim liberty to the captives of Israel.

Isaiah 61:2b-3 (the verses that Jesus did not read) describe how the Messiah would bring about the day of judgment and God’s vengeance upon Israel’s enemies (Isaiah 61:2b) and how the Messiah would “grant”-i.e. “bring about”-Israel’s redemption (Isaiah 61:3).

Jesus was the Messiah. But when He came to earth the first time, He did not come to do the things described in Isaiah 61:2b-3.

When Jesus came to earth the first time, He did not bring judgment upon God’s enemies but rather He came to bring them salvation from their sin and separation from God (John 3:17). Moreover, Jesus did not grant Israel political liberation from Roman oppression when He came to Israel the first time.

When Jesus returns to earth, He will bring judgment and God’s “vengeance” (Isaiah 61:2b) upon Israel’s enemies (2 Thessalonians 1:6-9, Revelation 19:11-20). And He will “grant” full restoration to God’s people when He comes to earth for the second time (2 Thessalonians 1:10, Revelation 11:15, 22:12).

The reason Jesus did not continue reading in Isaiah 61 was because He did not come to accomplish God’s vengeance or grant political liberation at that time. He came to proclaim liberation (Isaiah 61:1-2a) during His first advent, which is why Jesus read that portion of Isaiah’s prophecy.

This was made clear by what Jesus said to His listeners in His hometown synagogue once He stopped reading and closed the scroll.

“And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”
(Luke 4:21)

In other words, Jesus was proclaiming Himself to be the Messiah and that “Today” (Luke 4:21) was the literal day that the Messiah fulfilled Isaiah’s then 750-year-old prophecy that the Messiah would “proclaim the liberty to the captives” and “proclaim the favorable year of the LORD” (Isaiah 61:1-2a).

The prophecy of “this Scripture”-i.e. the scripture that Jesus read (Isaiah 61:1-2a) was fulfilled “today” (Luke 4:21). But the prophecies that Jesus did not read concerning what came next in Isaiah-(Isaiah 61:2b-3) were not part of “this Scripture” (Luke 4:21) and would be fulfilled at a later date when Jesus returned to earth.

Jesus was making several astonishing claims at once through what He chose to read and not read, and through the first remark He made when He finished reading Isaiah.

1. Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah.
2. He was claiming that this ancient Messianic prophecy was being fulfilled in their hearing today.
3. Through His intentional omission, Jesus was indicating that He had not come to fulfill all the Messianic prophecies today or at once, particularly the judgment prophecies and the prophecies where the Messiah would defeat Israel’s political enemies.

This was a lot for Jesus’s listeners to process. Matthew describes their astonished response to His teaching:

so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? (v 54b).

They began asking: Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?

These people knew Jesus as a boy and a teenager, and as a young man. But it seemed they hardly recognized the man who taught with such wisdom, understanding, and authority of the scriptures, and who also possessed the miraculous ability to heal and banish evil spirits. The people of Nazareth wanted to know where and how Jesus acquired this wisdom and these powers.

If Luke was writing of the same incident, he wrote of the listeners’ initial approval of Jesus:

“And all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips.”
(Luke 4:22a)

Some of Jesus’s listeners began to answer their own questions about where Jesus gained such wisdom and powers with negative questions-questions of incredulity:

“Is not this the carpenter’s son?” (v 55a).

The people of Nazareth knew Jesus like no one else. They were familiar with His profession and family. Their familiarity with Jesus’s family added to their incredulity of His claim to be the Messiah.

They were referring to Joseph, the husband of Mary, when they asked the rhetorical question: Is this not the carpenter’s son?

It is from verse 55 that we learn that Joseph was a carpenter. Similarly, Mark 6:3 is the only verse in the Bible that explicitly describes Jesus’s pre-Messianic profession as “carpenter.” Because fathers often passed down their trade to their sons, it is natural that as the carpenter’s son, Jesus would become a carpenter, Himself.

A carpenter would have been expected to know about construction work, not rabbinic wisdom.

The word translated carpenter is the Greek word τέκτων (tek-ton).

“Tekton” in its first-century context referred to a craftsman, builder, or artisan-someone skilled in construction work. It referred to someone who built with wood, but also with stone and other materials.

The predominantly Roman city of Sepphoris was in Galilee, near Nazareth. Sepphoris was a large urban center undergoing major construction during Jesus’s youth. It may have been that Jesus and Joseph helped with the construction of Sepphoris.

Jesus was raised by Joseph, the carpenter and the husband of Mary (Matthew 1:18-25, 2:13-14, 2:19-23, Luke 1:26, 2:4-6). The people of Nazareth were familiar with these facts.

But Joseph was not Jesus’s biological father; Joseph was His step-father. Jesus’s mother, Mary (v 55b) was a virgin when the Holy Spirit supernaturally caused her to conceive Jesus. Joseph was engaged to be married to Mary when this happened, but he married her anyway when an angel told him how Mary became pregnant and who the child she was carrying would be (Matthew 1:18-25). It is unclear how many of the people of Nazareth knew the Holy Spirit’s role in Jesus’s conception (or believed it).

But what is apparent from their rhetorical question is that they had observed how Joseph raised Jesus as though He were his own son.

After Jesus’s visit to the Jerusalem temple when He was about twelve years old (Luke 2:41-52), Joseph is only occasionally mentioned, but he is never depicted in the Gospel accounts. Joseph’s absence seems to indicate that Joseph had passed away some time before Jesus began His public ministry as the Messiah.

They also asked rhetorical questions about the rest of Jesus’s immediate family:

“Is not His mother called Mary,” (v 55b).

They knew Jesus’s mother, by name-Mary. Mary was also raised in Nazareth (Luke 1:26-27). After the death of Herod, Mary and her husband Joseph returned to Nazareth from Egypt when Jesus was a child (Matthew 2:22-23).

The expected answer to both these rhetorical questions is, “Yes. Jesus is the carpenter’s son and His mother is called Mary.”  The implication of both questions is that because of these familiar facts Jesus could not be the Messianic figure He claims to be.

The people of Nazareth drew similar conclusions from their rhetorical questions about Jesus’s siblings:

“And His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us?” (vv 55c-56a).

Jesus’s brothers were really His half-brothers. They had the same mother (Mary), but their biological father was Joseph. (Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit-Matthew 1:18, Luke 1:35).

Jesus’s listeners identify at least four of Jesus’s half-brothers in their skeptical question: James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. According to those in the synagogue, Jesus also apparently had half-sisters as well, but their names are not recorded.

In the opinion of His neighbors, such humble origins did not explain the greatness others ascribed to Jesus or the Messianic title He claimed for Himself (Luke 4:17-21). Their question remained unanswered:

“Where then did this man get all these things?” (v 56b).

The reason they were unable to answer their own question-“Where then did this man get all these things?”-was because they lacked faith. They could only see God if God acted according to their expectations, according to their own limited understanding of Him.  Because they imagined the Messiah as someone prestigious and important, they neglected to see that He was actually humble and in many respects one of them.

John very well could have been writing of Nazareth specifically when he wrote of the nation of Judah: “He [Jesus] came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11).

Luke’s similar (if not parallel) account of Jesus teaching in the synagogue of His hometown records that initially, “all were speaking well of Him and wondering at the gracious words from His lips” (Luke 4:22a). But as they began to consider His background, the familiarity that the people of Nazareth had with Jesus and His family appears to have turned their astonishment and wonder into doubt, and from doubt to offense.

And they took offense at Him (57a).

Even though they were astonished by His teaching, wisdom, and miraculous powers, they seemed unable to grasp that Jesus could be their Messiah. And what they could not comprehend, they took offense at.

Jesus lamented their lack of faith and offense by stating a principle:

But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household” (v 57b).

By stating this principle on this occasion, when He was being rejected by His hometown and apparently some from His own household, Jesus observed aloud how this principle played a factor in their rejection of Him as the Messiah.

Jesus’s remark speaks to the tragic irony that those most familiar with a prophet often fail to recognize his true significance. Rather than honoring him for the wisdom and authority he possesses, his own community dismisses the prophet because they cannot see past their assumptions and familiarity.

The prophet’s extraordinary calling is obscured by ordinary memories, and his divine mission is reduced in their eyes to commonality. The unwillingness of the prophet’s hometown community to believe him shows that honor often comes more readily from those who encounter a messenger fresh, without preconceived biases.

Jesus, of course, is not only a prophet. He is THE PROPHET. Moses foretold that the LORD would send Israel a prophet who would directly speak God’s words to the people (Deuteronomy 18:15, 18-19). This prophet was believed to be the Messiah. And Jesus was this Messianic prophet.

Jesus’s observation also demonstrated how He was doubted and without honor even among His own relatives and in His own household.

The Gospel of John specifically mentions that Jesus’s brothers rejected Him for a time,

“For not even His brothers were believing in Him.”
(John 7:5)

Perhaps the reason they did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah was rooted in the hardship Jesus’s family endured as they grew up. As mentioned above, Joseph likely passed away sometime during Jesus’s teenage years or twenties. Jesus had no less than six younger siblings (v 55-56). As a carpenter/construction worker/“tekton,” Joseph would have been a wage laborer with limited income. And once Joseph died, Jesus’s family would have likely faced financial hardship, if not poverty. If Joseph died when Jesus was a teenager, then Mary would have been left to raise six other younger children without a husband to support them.

It might have been that Jesus’s brothers dismissed His Messianic claims as an adult, because they did not believe that God would allow the family of the Messiah-the One who would bring prosperity to Israel (see Jesus’s reading of Isaiah in Luke 4:18-19)-to suffer the hardships of poverty or grief. They might have reasoned: “If the Messiah would bring good news to the poor, then why was our family poor if Jesus is really the Messiah?”

But at least two of Jesus’s half-brothers eventually came to believe in Him as the Messiah.

Soon after His resurrection from the dead, Jesus appeared to His half-brother, James (1 Corinthians 15:7). This seems to have had a major impact on James’s faith in Jesus. Jesus’s half-brother James would go on to lead the Christian church in Jerusalem, apparently serving as the lead elder (Acts 15:13, 21:18). He was also the author of the Epistle of James where he describes himself as “a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (James 1:1). According to Josephus, James was stoned to death and martyred for his faith.

Jesus’s half-brother Judas was also known as Jude, the author of the Epistle of Jude. Jude also described himself as “a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James” (Jude 1:1).

Luke’s similar (if not parallel) account of Jesus teaching in the synagogue of His hometown (Luke 4:16-29) appears to elaborate on the things Jesus said to His unbelieving neighbors.

In addition to saying “no prophet is welcome in his hometown” (Luke 4:24), Luke also records Jesus as saying that His listeners demanded public miracles to be done there in Nazareth to prove the truth of His claims (Luke 4:23). Jesus chastised them by citing examples of how the prophets Elijah and Elisha performed miracles for Gentiles back in their day because they could find no one faithful in Israel (Luke 4:25-27).

Luke records how the people of Nazareth became filled with so much rage that they attempted to execute Jesus by throwing Him from a cliff (Luke 4:28-29). But this did not happen. Jesus passed through their midst and went on His way (Luke 4:30).

Matthew ended his account of Jesus’s teaching in His hometown with the comment:

And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief (v 58).

Similarly, Mark observed: “And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He wondered at their unbelief” (Mark 6:5).

To be clear: God does not need our faith to do anything. God can do whatever He wants with or without our belief in Him. But God is pleased by our faith (Hebrews 11:6). And God often chooses to work on people’s behalf through their faith in Him.

Jesus only quietly did a few miracles when He was in His hometown for a few believing individuals, such as laying His hands on a few sick people and healing them (Mark 6:5).

It was both tragic and ironic that those who had the greatest opportunity to believe in Jesus were among those who believed in Him the least. Sadly, the incredulity of Jesus’s hometown caused Him to wonder at their unbelief.

Their unbelief and rejection of Him was likely incredibly painful and humiliating to Him. Being rejected by those close to us usually is agonizing. But the pain and humiliation Jesus endured in Nazareth was only a foretaste of the national rejection which He would soon suffer.