The works of the Reverend and learned John Lightfoot D. D., late Master of Katherine Hall in Cambridge such as were, and such as never before were printed : in two volumes : with the authors life and large and useful tables to each volume : also three maps : one of the temple drawn by the author himself, the others of Jervsalem and the Holy Land drawn according to the author's chorography, with a description collected out of his writings.

SECTION XVII.

LUKE Chap. IV. from Ver. 14. to Ver. 31.

MARK Chap. I. Ver. 14.

CHRIST Preaching in Nazaret Synagogue is in danger of his life.

THus is CHRIST come up to Galilee again from Jerusalem, and out of Judea where he had staid a good space. The Reader may observe here what a chasma [if I may so call it] there is in the story of Luke, who hath stepped from the story of Christs temp∣tation in the wilderness, to this his coming to Galilee, and hath laid nothing between, whereas there was a whole years history intercurrent; and so we observed such another Chap. 2. 39.

At his first coming up into Galilee in this voyage, he avoideth his own Town Naza∣reth, because he knew a Prophet hath no honour in his own Country, but now having gon up and down the country some space, and a renown being gone of him all over those parts, he cometh at last to see what entertainment he can find in his own Town. There he is admitted [as a member of that Synagogue] to be Maphtir, or publick reader of the second Lesson in the Prophets for that day. But preaching upon what he had read, and hinting the calling of the Gentiles, from the dealing of Elias and Elisha with some Heathens, and withall pinching close upon the wickedness of Nazaret by that compari∣son, he is in danger of his life, but delivers himself in some miraculous manner.

He preacheth thus in the Synagogue, in the authority and demonstration of a Prophet, and as he evidenced that authority elsewhere by his miracles, so doth he here in Nazaret, by reading of the Lesson in the Prophet, which being to be red in the original Hebrew, which Language was now lost among them and only attained to by study, he sheweth his Prophetical spirit in this skill in the language, having had no education to such a pur∣pose. The reader in the Law and Prophets both, had an Interpreter, that rendred what was read out of the Hebrew text into the vulgar language, and the Interpreter sometime took liberty to paraphrase upon the Text [as the Caldee Paraphrast had done, especially upon the Prophets,] and kept not always verbatim to it. The Jerusalem Gemarists give an instance of such a thing, in Sanhedr. fol. 20. col. 3. Joseph the Maonite interpreted in the Synagogue in Tiberias these words, Hear ye this all ye people, Why do not ye labour in the Law? have not I given the Sanhedrin to you for a gift? And hearken O house of Israel.

Why do you not give the Sanhedrin the gift I appointed you at Sinai? And hearken O house of the King, for the judgment is to you; I speak it to you, but the judgment is to the Priests: I will come and sit with them in judgment, and end and destroy them out of this world. So Christ in reading the Lesson out of the Prophet, becomes his own Interpreter and Para∣phrast both.