One On One: 100 Days With Jesus--ADVENTPrøve

Nazareth: The Town Behind the Scenes

It’s an understatement to say Jesus grew up in a small country town. Nazareth, then home to no more than 300 people, felt like a first century “diner & gas truck stop.” The hometown God chose for His Son sat on a hill just north of the “freeway”—the trade route that moved an endless caravan of creaking wagons across the Middle East. A military outpost camped nearby. Jesus grew up with the rough and tumble people from all over the ancient world. 

No wonder Nathanael curled his lip when he first heard of “Jesus of Nazareth.” Can anything good come out of there? 

On any given day, Jesus spoke Aramaic with a Galilean accent, and Hebrew in the synagogue. He picked up Greek from neighbors and traders. Jesus could talk to virtually anyone in their heart language. 

Like other boys with their dads, Jesus learned Joseph’s trade, a tekton, often translated “carpenter.” Literally, a tekton is “a craftsman who builds” and since Israel’s towns were built of rock, Jesus likely worked not with wood, but with stone. He may have even helped build nearby Sepphoris, a city with modern streets, a theatre, and gymnasium, all under construction when Jesus lived in Nazareth. 

As towns go, Nazareth was about as ordinary as they come, but its origin has a telling little secret. Jews coming home from Babylon settled Nazareth about 100 years before Jesus lived there. They called it their family name, Natsar. The Natsoreans, meaning “branch,” linked themselves with the promise God gave to David, believing that Messiah, “the Branch,” would be born from their family. To other Jews in more cultured cities, the Natsoreans must have seemed silly in their assumed self-importance. 

Matthew says of Jesus, “He shall be called a Nazarene.” More likely he is saying a “Natsarene,” the secret hidden in the reversal of one letter, the difference between the Hebrew and Greek spelling. A Natsarene, meaning “the Branch,” fulfills Isaiah 11:1 that Jesus is a “branch from Jesse,” from David’s family—one more picture of Messiah fulfilled in Jesus. 

In the first century as it does today, life reveals itself day by day in all its normalcy. But behind the scenes, God’s mysteries unfolded in Nazareth—hiding the precious in the ordinary. One day, purposefully and in proper time, the world was let in on the secret of who Jesus is and what He came to do. 

Makes you wonder—what story is God writing in the details of your seemingly ordinary life? Time will tell. 

Tomorrow: One on one with Jesus—what would His mother say?