Nain (Luke 7:11-17) : "Fear gripped them all..."

A family in Nein that greeted me with "salaam alaikum"s and showed me love as I was walking up the hill toward the old church. We all sat down on their patio and visited for a while. They gave me a cup of cold water to drink and Arabic coffee and filled up my water bottle with cold water.

Good People

Mt. Tabor

I sat by the old church and read the stories about Elijah and Elisha both raising mothers' sons from the dead (1Kings 17, 2Kings 4). This was the view down into the Yezreel Plain/Valley with Mt. Tabor standing out in the landscape as I sat by the church and read the stories of Elijah, Elisha, and Jesus raising the dead, actually sitting in the location of Luke 7:11-17. Elijah also raised a widow's only son from the dead, exactly parallel to the miracle that Jesus performed here in Nain, also raising a widow's only son from the dead. Elisha raised a mother's son from the dead also, but she had a husband. However, near Nain is Mt. Moreh. Nain is positioned on the northern side of Mt. Moreh. On the southern side of Mt. Moreh is the location of Shunem. Shunem is the village where Elisha raised the woman's son from the dead. So, the site of Elisha's miracle is very near Nain. All of this considered, there is little doubt that some in the crowd remembered the stories of Elijah and Elisha when Jesus raised the widow's son in Nain. This might be partly what they were thinking about when they exclaimed after Jesus' miracle, "A great prophet has arisen among us!" Elijah and Elisha were considered 2 of the greatest prophets Israel had ever known. And also, this and other parallel miracles of Jesus almost certainly explain why Jesus' disciples told Him that some of the crowds believed Him to be Elijah come back, as He conversed with them in the area of Caesarea Phillipi (Matthew 16) about who people considered Him to be and then who His disciples believed Him to be. As we know, Peter immediately declared, "You are the Messiah (the Anointed One, the Christ), the Son of the living GOD!"

I walked down this road to Nain from the highway, where the public bus dropped me off. "Nain" is called "Nein" today (Arabic) and is a small, completely Arab village, mostly or completely Muslim I think.