THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW - Chapter 4 - Verse 13

Verse 13. Leaving Nazareth. Because his townsmen cast him out, and rejected him. See Lu 4:14-30.

Came and dwelt in Capernaum. This was a city on the north-west corner of the sea of Tiberias. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament, but is repeatedly in the Gospels. Though it was once a city of renown, and the metropolis of all Galilee, the site it occupied is now uncertain. When Mr. Fisk, an American missionary, travelled in Syria in 1823, he found twenty or thirty uninhabited Arab huts, occupying what are supposed to be the ruins of the once exalted city of Capernaum.

In this place, and its neighbourhood, Jesus spent no small part of the three years of his public ministry. It is hence called his own city, Mt 9:1. Here he healed the nobleman's son, (Joh 4:47) Peter's wife's mother, (Mt 8:14) the centurion's servant, (Mt 8:5) and the ruler's daughter, (Mt 9:28-25.)

Upon the sea coast. The sea of Tiberius.

In the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim. These were two tribes of the children of Israel which were located in this part of the land of Canaan, and constituted, in the time of Christ, a part of Galilee. Comp. Ge 49:13; Jos 19:10,32.

The word borders here means boundaries. Jesus came and dwelt in the boundaries or regions of Zebulun and Naphtali.