Come and study Holy Scriptures with us as Father Stephen DeYoung teaches verse by verse on the podcast,

The Whole Council of God. Father Stephen is a former Protestant pastor and Bible teacher in the

Reformed Church, but now an Orthodox priest serving at St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Charleston,

West Virginia.

Bethany was near Jerusalem about two miles away,

and many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother.

So, again, you notice, we mentioned this very early on.

I don't know if I've mentioned it that much since,

but St. John, because he's writing in Ephesus, in Asia Minor,

in what's now Turkey, when he writes,

he has to explain where these places are or were in Judea, because most of the people he's writing to don't know

where Bethany is.

So the other gospels also mention Bethany and Jesus spending time there, but the other three

don't tell you where that is because they just sort of assume you know.

You know, it's right there by Jerusalem.

But St. John doesn't assume that.

He says, oh, by the way, Bethany's just two miles from Jerusalem.

So he fills us in.

And he says not just, remember when it says Jews, the word there is actually Judeans.

So the idea is not only the people of Bethany, but people from the surrounding villages.

There's a pretty big crowd in Bethany now there to support Mary and Martha and their grief and to mourn with them.

Now Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him, but Mary was sitting in the house.

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