The Life of Christ

Such a statement also cut across the Jewish belief regarding afterlife in general.

• In respect to Jesus’ prediction of the coming judgment, the Jews believed that in the day of the Lord, the Gentiles would be the ones sent to outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth — certainly not the sons of Abraham!

• Jesus simply inverts their cherished belief.

• In the next life, Gentiles will actually have a greater representation in heaven than those of Jewish origin.

SECTION 74

Lk. 7:11 And it came about soon afterwards, that He went to a city called Nain; and His disciples were going along with Him, accompanied by a large multitude.

The meaning of Nain is “pleasant,” which the Rabbis regarded as fulfilling the promise to Issachar: “he saw the land that it was pleasant” (Gen. 49:15).

• We particularly note that Jesus, coming from Capernaum, brought with Him a “large multitude.”

Lk. 7:12 Now as He approached the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a sizeable crowd from the city was with her.

Jesus approaches a typical funeral procession coming out of the city, which included “a sizable crowd from the city.”

• Along this simple country road, the “ large multitude ” meets a “sizable crowd.”

• Being a rather narrow road, which of the two shall give way to the other?

• Ancient Jewish tradition demanded no other gathering receive higher respect than the burying of the dead.

• The popular idea that the spirit of the dead hovered about the “unburied remains” must have intensified the question.

• This wasn’t just a “sizable crowd,” but in the common man’s thinking it was also a soul suspended between heaven and earth.

• In light of what happens next, this question of who has the right-away becomes academic.

Edersheim paints a picture of the typical Jewish funeral:

• “The blast of the death horn announces his death; in passionate grief the mother has rent her upper garment. The body of the deceased is now laid on the ground; hair and nails have been cut; the body is washed, anointed, and wrapped in the best the widow could afford. • Before the processional begins the mother is left to mourn. She would sit on the floor, and neither eat food nor drink wine. What scanty meal she would take must be without prayer in the house of a neighbor, or in another room with her back to the dead.

• Pious friends would offer their respects or busy themselves with the details of the funeral.

115