Luke 2:39 — Community Reflections

LUKE 2:39 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.”

When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth — the return to Nazareth completes the Jerusalem sequence. Luke compresses what Matthew's account expands (the flight to Egypt and return). The everything required by the Law of the Lord is the summary evaluation of the temple visit: full Torah compliance by the family of the one who has come to fulfill the law.

Church Fathers on Luke 2:39

Luke has omitted in this place what he knew to have been sufficiently set forth by Matthew, that the Lord after this, for fear that He should be discovered and put to death by Herod, was carried by His parents into Egypt, and at Herod’s death, having at length returned to Galilee, came to dwell in His own city Nazareth. For the Evangelists individually are wont to omit certain things which they either know to have been, or in the Spirit foresee will be, related by others, so…
Bede · 8th century

Bethlehem was indeed their city, their paternal city, Nazareth the place of their abode.
Theophylact · 11th century

Perhaps it may strike you as strange that Matthew should say that His parents went with the young Child into Galilee because they were unwilling to go to Judea for fear of Archelaus, when they seem to have gone into Galilee rather because their city was Nazareth in Galilee, as Luke in this place explains it. But we must consider, that when the Angel said in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, Rise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel, it was at…
Augustine · 4th century

Read all 12 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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