Jesus is Rejected at Nazareth^(A)

6 Jesus^[a] left that place and went back to his hometown,^[b] and his disciples followed him. ² When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were utterly amazed. “Where did this man get all these things?” they asked. “What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What great miracles are being done by his hands! ³ This is the builder,^[c] the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon, isn’t it? His sisters are here with us, aren’t they?” And they were offended by him.

⁴ Jesus had been telling them, “A prophet is without honor only in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own home.” ⁵ He couldn’t perform a miracle there except to lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. ⁶ He was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went around to the villages and continued teaching.

Jesus is Rejected at Nazareth^(A)

¹⁶ Then Jesus^[a] came to Nazareth, where he had been raised. As was his custom, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. When he stood up to read, ¹⁷ the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,

²⁰ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. While the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him, ²¹ he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled, as you’ve heard it read aloud.”^[e]

²² All the people began to speak well of him and to wonder at the gracious words that flowed from his mouth. They said, “This is Joseph’s son, isn’t it?”

²³ So he told them, “You will probably quote this proverb to me, ‘Doctor, heal yourself! Do everything here in your hometown that we hear you did in Capernaum.’”

²⁴ He added, “I tell all of you^[f] with certainty, a prophet is not accepted in his hometown. ²⁵ I’m telling you the truth—there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when it didn’t rain^[g] for three years and six months and there was a severe famine everywhere in the land. ²⁶ Yet Elijah wasn’t sent to a single one of those widows except to one at Zarephath in Sidon. ²⁷ There were also many lepers in Israel in the prophet Elisha’s time, yet not one of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸ All the people in the synagogue became furious when they heard this. ²⁹ They got up, forced Jesus^[h] out of the city, and led him to the edge of the hill on which their city was built, intending to throw him off. ³⁰ But he walked right through the middle of them and went away.