John 2:12

12. Down to Capernaum Down, because Cana was on the high table land and Capernaum on the low sea coast. For a full account of Capernaum see note on Matthew 4:13, and map.

Brethren See note on Matthew 13:55. It seems a truly family party; Jesus’s natural relatives and his spiritual. The natural family may have accompanied him to Capernaum with the desire to be with him until his departure to his public life at the approaching Passover. The Passover caravans passed through that then most populous maritime town.

There were three well known routes by which the caravans could go from Lake Gennesaret to Jerusalem. The FIRST was the great thoroughfare from Damascus to Egypt, which, passing near the lake, and leaving it two or three miles W.S.W. of Nain, proceeded south through Samaria by the Shechem valley. See note on John 4:2. The SECOND proceeded along the lake and the river Jordan, southwardly, to Scythopolis, or Beisan, and thence, by the ancient Egypt route, to Ginea; and so onward by the Jerusalem and Galilee road, through to Shechem. THIRD, the most usual route, though now but little explored, from the south end of the lake, on the east side of Jordan, to avoid Samaria, through Peraea, and across the Jordan at Bethabara, through Jericho to Jerusalem. Leaving his relatives, and taking his disciples, (see John 2:17,) we may suppose our Lord to have taken this last route.