Luke 5:10

10. Sons of Zebedee The children and wife of Zebedee often occur; but it is in this transaction alone that we catch a glimpse of Zebedee himself.

Matthew 4:21. As all the evangelists concur in silently leaving him out, Blunt concludes that he died shortly after, and notes this as one of those “undesigned coincidences” that show that truth is the basis of the Gospel histories. He also acutely conjectures that either James or John was the apostle who desired to be permitted to go and bury his father, namely, Zebedee.

Julian the Apostate endeavoured to turn the simile of fishing against Christianity; inasmuch as fish were caught from their living element for death. But for the very purpose of avoiding this cavil, or rather from the very intention of a good symbolical meaning, our Lord uses not the word αγρευειν , which signifies simply to capture; but the word ζωγρειν , which signifies to take alive, being compounded of the words alive and capture. So in the Latin, the word servus, signifying servant or slave, is from servare, to preserve, because slaves were generally prisoners of war saved from death for servitude. The same word is used by Paul, 2 Timothy 2:26: Taken captive by him at his will. Whatever may be the destiny, therefore, of the literal fish, the souls they symbolize are captured by the spiritual fishermen into the service of the giver of life.