MARK 3 7-8 JESUS BY GALILEE - CONTEXT

 JESUS WENT OUT TO THE LAKE WITH HIS DISCIPLES, AND A LARGE CROWD FOLLOWED HIM.  THEY CAM FROM ALL OVER GALILEE, JUDEA, 8 JERUSALEM IDUMEA FROM EAST OF THE JORDAN RIVER, AND EVN FROM AS FAR NORTH AS TYRE AND SIDON.  THE NEWS ABOUT HIS MIRACLES HAD  SPREAD FAR AND WIDE, AND VAST NUMBERS OF PEOPLE CAME TO SEE HIM.

 

CONTEXT.  This is immediately after Jesus teaching in an unspecified synagogue in Galilee an interior space where he healed an anonymous man's withered hand.  The Teachers of the Law watch him closely.

Jesus 'had withdrawn' NIV version to the Lake - is more suggestive of a need for privacy and this is an accurate translation from the Greek.  There is thus a need for perhaps prayer.  We are now in a specific geographical location, outside, rather than inside.  It is suggested that it is immediately after the healing but no time or day is given.  It is clearly not the Sabbath.  Mark details the cosmopolitan nature of the crowd by naming exact locations of where the inexact crowd comes from.  Each name has its biblical significance, for example in Matthew 4 Jesus warns Tyre and Sidon, where there was mostly a Phoenician population.   Jezebel came from the Sidon area, so there are dark echoes of the sinful history of the area.   The number of names listed shows how far Jesus' reputation had followed and how diverse the population was in this area, thus as Bible Hub suggests, more open to ideas than Judea which was more conservative.

Nevertheless there is no actual description of anyone of these places and only someone from the area, or someone who has had access to images of these areas (or has visited them) would be able to conjure up any significant image in the minds eye.  

As an example of what some may call a dry literary style, we can contrast the great poet Virgil and his personification of 'rumour' which is full of exquisite visual imagery, making the transmission of information visual.  Here Mark simply says that 'news' of Jesus had spread.  Within any spreading of news there will be exaggeration, wonder, criticism, inaccuracy.  

Great absence of detail, proper names and information could make this dry reading, if it were not for the fact that the tension has been mounted by the word 'enemies' in the previous verse.  This gives enough dramatic tension to enable the reader to continue.

Amen