Mark6chapter 6

The word Mark uses for Jesus' trade, tekton, means a builder who worked in wood and stone — a general craftsman rather than a fine cabinetmaker. Nazareth was a small village, and the city of Sepphoris, being rebuilt on a large scale a few miles away in these decades, would have offered such men steady work.

The instructions for the mission are famously slightly different from Matthew's version: here they take a staff and wear sandals. The difference has been explained in various ways and is worth naming rather than smoothing over. Either way the point stands — travel light and depend on hospitality, which in that culture was an obligation a village owed a guest.

The banquet scene is thoroughly Greco-Roman: a ruler's birthday, his officers and the leading men of Galilee reclining, entertainment during the drinking, and a rash public oath the host cannot retract without losing face in front of everyone who matters. Josephus independently records that Antipas imprisoned and executed John, and places it at the fortress of Machaerus.

The feeding happens in spring — Mark notes the grass was green, which in that country it is only for a few weeks. He also says the people sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties, an orderly arrangement that would have reminded a Jewish observer of Israel camped in the wilderness.