Luk 10:38-42 | JFB | STEP | 38. certain village —Bethany ( ), which Luke so speaks of, having no farther occasion to notice it. received him . . . her house —The house belonged to her, and she appears throughout to be the older sister.

Luke 10:38-42

38. certain village—Bethany (Joh 11:1), which Luke so speaks of, having no farther occasion to notice it.

received him . . . her house—The house belonged to her, and she appears throughout to be the older sister.

39. which also—"who for her part," in contrast with Martha.

sat—"seated herself." From the custom of sitting beneath an instructor, the phrase "sitting at one's feet" came to mean being a disciple of any one (Ac 22:3).

heard—rather, "kept listening" to His word.

40. cumbered—"distracted."

came to him—"presented herself before Him," as from another apartment, in which her sister had "left her to serve (or make preparation) alone."

carest thou not . . . my sister, &c.—"Lord, here am I with everything to do, and this sister of mine will not lay a hand to anything; thus I miss something from Thy lips, and Thou from our hands."

bid her, &c.—She presumes not to stop Christ's teaching by calling her sister away, and thus leaving Him without His one auditor, nor did she hope perhaps to succeed if she had tried.

41. Martha, Martha—emphatically redoubling upon the name.

careful and cumbered—the one word expressing the inward worrying anxiety that her preparations should be worthy of her Lord; the other, the outward bustle of those preparations.

many things—"much service" (Lu 10:40); too elaborate preparation, which so engrossed her attention that she missed her Lord's teaching.

42. one thing, &c.—The idea of "Short work and little of it suffices for Me" is not so much the lower sense of these weighty words, as supposed in them, as the basis of something far loftier than any precept on economy. Underneath that idea is couched another, as to the littleness both of elaborate preparation for the present life and of that life itself, compared with another.

chosen the good part—not in the general sense of Moses' choice (Heb 11:25), and Joshua's (Jos 24:15), and David's (Ps 119:30); that is, of good in opposition to bad; but, of two good ways of serving and pleasing the Lord, choosing the better. Wherein, then, was Mary's better than Martha's? Hear what follows.

not be taken away—Martha's choice would be taken from her, for her services would die with her; Mary's never, being spiritual and eternal. Both were true-hearted disciples, but the one was absorbed in the higher, the other in the lower of two ways of honoring their common Lord. Yet neither despised, or would willingly neglect, the other's occupation. The one represents the contemplative, the other the active style of the Christian character. A Church full of Marys would perhaps be as great an evil as a Church full of Marthas. Both are needed, each to be the complement of the other.