Luke 2:51

The law of Moses commanded every man in Israel to appear before the LORD three times a year, at the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks and the feast of tabernacles (Deuteronomy 16:16, Exodus 23:14–17). Passover, or Pesach, was one of these three great pilgrim feasts, with Pentecost and Tabernacles. Only the men were strictly required to go, but devout families often travelled together, and Luke tells us that Jesus’ parents went “every year”. Nazareth in Galilee lies roughly seventy to eighty miles from Jerusalem, several days’ walk each way, so the journey cost them planning, time and money every time they made it. Luke’s verb, poreúomai, is the ordinary word for travelling or making one’s way, and with “every year” it describes a settled habit of obedience.

Luke calls Mary and Joseph Jesus’ goneús, his “parents”, a word built on the same base as gínomai, “to become” or “to be born”, for those who bring a child into the world and raise him. Luke has already told us that Jesus is the Son of God, and he still names Mary and Joseph together as the parents who brought him up in a devout Jewish home.

The word páscha, which comes from Aramaic, covers the whole of the festival: the meal, the day, the feast and the sacrifices that belonged to it. Passover remembered the night the LORD brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt, when the blood of a lamb marked the houses of his people (Exodus 12). The law also made it a feast for teaching children. When they asked, “What mean ye by this service?”, their parents were to answer, “It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt” (Exodus 12:26–27). Mary and Joseph’s yearly journey was this same handing on of faith from one generation to the next.

Luke says the family “went up” to Jerusalem. The city stands in the hills, so travellers always climbed to reach it, and going up to the holy city for worship carried a weight of its own. They went “after the custom of the feast”, and the word for custom, éthos, means an established habit or practice. Their journey was the expected practice of devout families, shared with the whole community of Israel.

Paul says that God sent forth his Son, “made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Here we see that in practice, as the Son of God grows up in a household that keeps the law, among the customs of his own people. He later said that he came to fulfil the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17), and his life carried Israel’s story forward to the fulfilment of its promises.

Luke dates the visit precisely: “when he was twelve years old”. His verb, gínomai, means to become or come to be, and it fits a boy who had reached that age through the real years of a human childhood. The number itself, dṓdeka, is a weighty one in Scripture, with the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles, but here it marks a stage of life.

In Jewish custom twelve was the threshold of religious maturity, the age at which a boy began to take more personal responsibility for keeping the commandments of the law. Later Judaism set this at thirteen and marked it with the bar mitzvah, when a boy becomes a “son of the commandment”, and that ceremony took its formal shape after Jesus’ day. The idea of a boy coming of age under the law was already there, though, and Jesus came to the temple at that threshold. A visit to Jerusalem and its temple at such an age was a formative time in a boy’s life.

Luke has just told us that “the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). He ends this account with a sentence very like it in verse 52, and the scene in the temple, set between the two, shows that wisdom at work. It is the only event the Gospels record from the years between Jesus’ infancy and the start of his ministry.

When the family “had fulfilled the days”, they had stayed for the whole feast, which with the days of unleavened bread ran for seven days. The verb teleióō means to complete or bring to its end, so everything the feast required of them had been done before they set out for home.

Then “the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem”. The verb hypoménō means to stay behind or remain, and it can also mean to endure or hold firm. Luke reports only that he stayed, and he leaves the reason for the boy’s own words in the temple. “Joseph and his mother knew not of it” pairs ginṓskō, the common verb for knowing, with the negative ou, so they were wholly unaware.

Pilgrims travelled to the feasts in large companies of relatives, friends and neighbours, for safety and companionship on the road. Luke’s word for such a company, synodía, joins syn, “with”, and hodos, “way”, and means fellow travellers on a journey, a caravan. In a group like that, a twelve-year-old nearing manhood could move freely from one family to another, and his parents went on “supposing him to have been in the company”. The verb nomízō comes from nomos, “law” or “custom”, and means to reckon a thing by what is usual. Their assumption was a reasonable one in that setting.

“A day’s journey” meant walking from dawn to dusk, perhaps fifteen to thirty miles. Most likely it was when the company stopped for the night and families gathered that Jesus was missed. They looked first “among their kinsfolk and acquaintance”, that is, among their relatives (syngenḗs) and the people they knew well (gnōstós, “well known”, from ginōskō, “to know”). The search reached beyond their own family to everyone they knew in the company.

“And when they found him not” joins heurískō, “to find”, to the negative mḗ, and then they “turned back again to Jerusalem”. The verb hypostréphō means to turn back or return, and here it meant giving up the road home and walking the whole day’s distance again. They went “seeking him”, and zētéō is the word for an earnest and persistent search. Mary uses the same verb in verse 48 when she says “thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing”. Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims at the feast, which made finding one boy there a daunting task.

“After three days they found him in the temple.” The word for temple here, hierón, means the whole sacred precinct, with its courts and porticoes, as distinct from the naos, the sanctuary itself. The outer courts were where teachers of the law gathered to teach and discuss, so this was the natural place for such a conversation, at the very centre of Israel’s worship and learning.

The KJV’s “doctors” translates didáskalos, from the verb “to teach”, which means teachers or masters. These were the scribes and experts in the law of Moses and its traditions, the most learned men of the nation. A devout boy listening to them in the temple courts was an ordinary sight. What astonished everyone was this boy’s understanding.

Jesus was “sitting in the midst” of them, “both hearing them, and asking them questions”. The verb for hearing, akoúō, covers listening attentively and understanding what is heard, and the verb for asking, eperōtáō, means to inquire or question. He listened and he questioned, as a learner does, and the questions themselves showed how deeply he understood.

It is hard to read of a son lost for three days and found in his Father’s house without thinking of the three days before the resurrection. Luke leaves that connection unspoken, so it is best held lightly.

“When they saw him, they were amazed.” The verb ekplḗssō means to be struck with astonishment, and their amazement was relief and awe at once. Their lost son was safe, and he was holding his own among the teachers of Israel.

Mary speaks for both of them. She begins tenderly with “Son”, and her question is direct: “why hast thou thus dealt with us?” It is a mother’s bewildered hurt, with a gentle reproach in it, because his absence had cost them so much. “Behold” (idoú) calls him to look at what it has meant for them, and “thy father and I” shows that Joseph, as the father of the household, shared the search and the fear. Her last word, “sorrowing”, translates odynáō, a verb for being in pain or anguish. For three days they had searched (zētéō again) in real distress.

When Mary says “thy father”, she means Joseph. Jesus’ answer turns on that word, for in the next breath he speaks of “my Father”, and he means God.

These are the first words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, and they are two questions: “How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” He is gently surprised that they searched at all, since to him the place to find him was plain.

“Wist” is the old English for “knew”, and it translates eídō, a verb that means to see and so to know. His question implies that his parents, after all that had been revealed to them about him, had good reason to know where he would be. “Must” translates deî, “it is necessary”, the language of a binding obligation. Jesus stayed because there was something he had to do, a necessity that came from who he is and what he came to do.

“My Father’s” is patḗr, “father”, with moû, “my”. This is the earliest recorded time Jesus calls God his Father, and he speaks of God as his own Father in a way that belongs to him alone. Mary had said “thy father”, meaning Joseph, and Jesus gently and plainly names who his Father is.

The Greek behind “about my Father’s business” is en tois tou patros mou, literally “in the things of my Father”. The phrase can mean his Father’s house or his Father’s affairs, and faithful translations render it both ways. The KJV has “about my Father’s business”, and many modern versions have “in my Father’s house”. Both are true of this moment, because he was in the temple, his Father’s house, and he was about his Father’s work. The words reach beyond the temple to the whole of his mission, to reveal the Father, to do his will and to accomplish the work of redemption.

He spoke the same way all his life. “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work,” he told his disciples (John 4:34). “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do” (John 5:19). “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John 6:38). Hebrews gives his words as he comes into the world: “Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7). The obedience he spoke of at twelve he carried through to the cross, where he said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14) came to declare the Father (John 1:18), and at twelve he already knows it.

The temple remained his Father’s house in his eyes. When he drove out the traders he said, “make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise” (John 2:16), and in Matthew he says, “My house shall be called the house of prayer” (Matthew 21:12–13). He also spoke of the temple of his body, which would be destroyed and raised up in three days (John 2:19–21), so that he himself became the place where God dwells among his people.

“And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.” The verb syníēmi means to put together, to grasp with the mind. They heard every word, and only later could they put it together with what they knew of him. The “saying” is rhēma, a particular spoken word, here the words of verse 49 about his Father. “Spake” is laléō, to talk or utter words.

This can be surprising, since Mary had heard the angel’s message (Luke 1:26–38), Joseph had been told in a dream (Matthew 1:18–25), and both had heard the shepherds, Simeon and Anna. They knew he was the promised Son. What his Sonship meant, and how his mission would unfold, came to them gradually, as it did to everyone around him. The LORD says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8–9). The disciples, too, “understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him” when he foretold his death (Mark 9:32), and later “this saying was hid from them” (Luke 18:34). Their puzzlement was a first sign of how hard his own people would find him to understand, for John says, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:10–11). Full understanding came after his death and resurrection, when the Holy Spirit taught his followers all things and brought his words to their remembrance (John 14:26), and guided them into all truth (John 16:13).

“He went down with them, and came to Nazareth.” From the hills of Judea the road to Galilee goes down, and the boy who had astonished the teachers of Israel went back to an ordinary home in a small town. Nazareth was obscure enough that Nathanael asked, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46).

There he “was subject unto them”. The verb hypotássō means to place under, and it describes a willing submission to rightful authority. The one who had just called God his Father freely put himself under the care and direction of Mary and Joseph. In doing so he kept the commandment, “Honour thy father and thy mother” (Exodus 20:12), as one “made under the law” (Galatians 4:4). His submission was humility and strength in one, and it began the obedience that ran through his whole life.

Paul describes where that obedience led. Christ “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant”, and “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:5–8, 2:7–8). Hebrews says, “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8), and Jesus said that “the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Luke’s next glimpse of Jesus comes when he begins his ministry at about thirty years of age (Luke 3:23), some eighteen years later. Those hidden years in Nazareth, spent growing up, learning a trade as young men of his day did, and taking his place in family and town, were part of God’s plan and timing as surely as the years of ministry.

“And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” The verb for increased, prokóptō, pictures driving or cutting one’s way forward, and so means to advance or make progress. It describes steady, continuing growth.

Luke names four ways he grew. In wisdom, sophia, he grew in practical understanding and discernment, in knowing how to apply truth, and this deepened with the years. Wisdom in Israel was rooted in God’s law, for “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). In stature, hēlikía, he grew in body. The word can mean age as well as height, and here it refers mainly to his growth from a boy into a man, with a body as truly human as ours. In favour, cháris, the word often translated grace, he grew in God’s approval and delight, and in the goodwill and respect of the people of Nazareth, who watched him grow up among them.

The verse echoes what Scripture says of the boy Samuel: “And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the LORD, and also with men” (1 Samuel 2:26). Proverbs promises the same favour to those who hold to mercy and truth: “So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man” (Proverbs 3:3–4). The Father’s favour on his Son was spoken aloud at his baptism, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22), and again on the mountain, “This is my beloved Son: hear him” (Luke 9:35).

Jesus grew up in a home where the worship of God was a yearly, costly habit, and where parents brought their children to the feasts and explained them. Faith is still handed on that way, through steady worship together and through parents who answer their children’s questions about the things of God.

Mary and Joseph travelled a whole day assuming Jesus was somewhere in the company. It is easy for us, too, to take his presence for granted amid busy days and even amid religious routine. When they realised he was missing, they turned back and searched until they found him. The LORD promises, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13), and Jesus says, “seek, and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7). The psalmist prays, “With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments” (Psalm 119:10). Behind all our seeking is his own. The parables of Luke 15 tell of a shepherd and a woman who search until they find what was lost (Luke 15:8–10), and Jesus says, “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

When God’s ways are beyond you, you can do what Mary did: keep his word, ponder it, and wait for him to make it plain. The hidden years in Nazareth also give worth to quiet seasons. Most of the earthly life of the Son of God was spent in an ordinary town, obeying his parents and growing, and through those years he grew in favour with God and man.