Luke 5:1-11

§ 26. CALL OF SIMON, ANDREW, JAMES, AND JOHN, PRECEDED BY THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES, Luke 5:1-11 .

Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20.

Connecting Luke’s statement with Matthew’s and Mark’s, we have the following complete narrative. Jesus, walking by the seaside of Gennesaret, is pressed by a crowd proceeding from Capernaum. He stops as he arrives at the boat of Simon Peter, which is drawn up and lying on the beach. Jesus directs Simon to put a little into the deep to get out of the reach of the crowd, and from the boat he preaches to the people on the shore. Closing his discourse he directs Peter to let out his net, and a draught of fishes is encircled, so large that the net is broken and the drawing so difficult that Simon and Andrew call upon the brothers in the other boat to fetch up and aid in bringing in the seine with its draught. They come, and their boat also being filled with a share of the fishes, return to their own station and take in the nets, which they proceed to mend. When the fishes are secured, conversation between Jesus and Peter takes place, in which the latter receives his call to the apostolate. Jesus then proceeds a few steps further around the cove, to the boat of James and John, and finding them mending their broken nets, gives them their call.

This method, we think, completely harmonizes the accounts, and supersedes any effort to make out the impossibility of reconciliation, and a consequent necessity of supposing two separate narratives. The simple fact that Matthew mentions the mending of the nets requires Luke’s account of the breaking of them. This is, in fact, one of those frequent unintentional coincidences which not only demonstrate that both agree, but that both are true.

This narrative is really, in point of time, to be inserted after Luke 5:32, in chapter 4. Leaving Nazareth, our Lord went to Capernaum, and perhaps abode in the house of Peter. The power of his preaching drew crowds, which pressed upon him as he was walking along the white beach which forms the margin of Lake Gennesaret.

Both Matthew and Mark simply relate the call of the two pairs of apostles, at the same place and occasion and in the same order as Luke; and Matthew gives our Lord’s striking utterance, “fishers of men,” of which the miracle given by Luke is the great occasion and illustration. That the first two evangelists omit the miracles is explained from the rapidity of that part of their narrative; and from the fact that the call of two pairs of leading apostles was an event far more important in Christian history than any one miracle.

As Jesus was now residing at Capernaum, it is probable (as the language of Matthew and Mark suggests) that he was in the habit of walking upon the broad beach of the lake. As the two pairs of brothers had resided in Bethsaida, it was probably in that direction, northward, that he was now perambulating.