Luke 7:11-17

§ 38. THE RAISING FROM THE DEAD, THE SON OF THE WIDOW OF NAIN, Luke 7:11-17 .

(Given by Luke alone.)

The next day after the healing of the centurion’s servant, Jesus, with a number of his disciples, took an excursion to the village of Nain, situated in the great plain of Esdraelon, about five miles northward from the Lesser Hermon. As this was a distance of about twenty-five miles from Capernaum, the company of Jesus must either have, according to eastern custom, set out very early, or have arrived as eve was approaching.

Our Lord enters on the eastern side of the town, attended by his retinue of followers, attracted by his ministry and his miracles. As he approaches, his company is met by a procession with bearers sustaining a bier, carrying a corpse through the gate of the city of the living to the city of the dead. There was no close coffin; but the body of a young man lay stretched upon the bier, with his face, feet, and hands probably bare, wrapped in the habiliments of burial. The much people of the city indicated the respect entertained for the dead. There seems to be but a single mourner, and she had but a single son to mourn for.

“On the northern slope of the rugged and barren ridge of Little Hermon,” says Stanley, “immediately west of Endor, which lies in a farther recess of the same range, is the ruined village of Nain. No convent, no tradition marks the spot. But under these circumstances the name is sufficient to guarantee its authenticity. One entrance alone could it have had that which opens on the rough hillside in its downward slope to the plain. It must have been in this descent, as, according to Eastern custom, they ‘carried out the dead man,’ that ‘nigh to the gate’ of the village the bier was stopped, and the long procession of mourners stayed, and the young man delivered back to his mother. It is a spot which has no peculiarity of feature to fix it on the memory; its situation is like that of all villages on this plain; but, in the authenticity of its claims, and the narrow compass within which we have to look for the touching incident, it may rank among the most interesting points of the scenery of the Gospel narrative.” Palestine, p. 349.