1 And there were in Capernaum many disciples of John the Baptist,1 and two of them were Andrew and his brother Simon.
2 And they took Jesus to their house,2 and there he found that the mother of Simon’s wife was sick of a fever.
3 And Jesus stood over her, took her hand, and prayed to the Lord,
4 And the fever left her and she arose.3
5 And on the sabbath day Jesus went to the synagogue and began to preach to the people there,
6 Saying, O children of Israel, fear the day of the Lord when your father Abraham will be no wise able to save you,
7 Say not therefore within yourself, We have Abraham to our father: for, as John said to you, God is able of stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
8 Neither is salvation by the law of Moses alone, but by faith in the One True Living God,
9 Who is my Creator and your Creator, my Lord and your Lord; so serve Him and Him alone. This is the way that is straight.4
10 As Jesus was speaking these words, there was a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out,
11 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us?
12 And Jesus said unto the spirit, By the permission of the One True Living God, I command thee to come out of him.
13 And when the spirit had torn him and cried with a loud voice, it came out of him.
14 And the people there were amazed,5 but some were offended because of what he said about Abraham and the Law of Moses, even though he had said nothing against them.
15 But those who admired him took his fame into every place of the country round about.
16 And at even, when the sun was set, people brought unto him all that were diseased and that were possessed with demons.
17 And a multitude gathered together at the door of the house of Andrew and Simon.
18 And he laid his hands on every one of those that were diseased and those that were possessed with demons, and as many as God willed were healed.6
19 And one morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
20 And Simon and Andrew and other people followed after him.
21 And when they had found him, they said unto him, All men seek thee.
22 And he said unto them, Let us go in the next towns, that I may preach there, also; for therefore came I away.
23 And he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee and cast out devils.7
24 And the scribes and the rulers of the synagogue began to be offended by him because of what he preached and because the people admired him for the healings.
The Qur’anic text
The passages of the Qur’an that this chapter follows. All the passages are gathered on The Qur’an on Jesus.
The Mission and Miracles of Jesus
3:48 And God will teach him the book and wisdom, the Torah and the Gospel,
3:49 and make him a messenger to the Children of Israel to proclaim, I have come to you with a sign from your Lord: I will make for you a bird from clay, breathe into it, and it will become a ˹real˺ bird—by God’s Will. I will heal the blind and the leper and raise the dead to life—by God’s Will. And I will prophesize what you eat and store in your houses. Surely in this is a sign for you if you ˹truly˺ believe.
3:50 And I will confirm the Torah revealed before me and legalize some of what had been forbidden to you. I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, so be mindful of God and obey me.
3:51 Surely God is my Lord and your Lord. So worship Him ˹alone˺. This is the Straight Path.’”
The Truth About Jesus
43:63 When Jesus came with clear proofs, he declared, “I have come to you with wisdom, and to clarify to you some of what you differ about. So fear God, and obey me.
43:64 Surely God ˹alone˺ is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him ˹alone˺. This is the Straight Path.”
43:65 Yet their ˹various˺ groups have differed among themselves ˹about him˺, so woe to the wrongdoers when they face the torment of a painful Day!
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Notes
- That the area of Galilee in which Jesus now moved had many disciples of John is shown by Matt. 11:2-12 and Luke 7:18-30 (see especially Luke 7:28-29). The incident reported in these Gospel passages also shows that John and Jesus did not lose touch with each other and suggest that there was some understanding between them as to what role Jesus was to play in the Baptist movement during John’s imprisonment. ↩
- Mark 1:29; Matt. 8:14; Luke 4:38; John 1:35, 40, 41. ↩
- Mark 1:29-31; Matt. 8:14-15; Luke 4:38-39. While Jesus did not perform any miracles in Nazareth because of the unbelief of the people there (Matt. 13:58), in the more receptive Capernaum, he performed many miracles, most of them healing miracles. This is because a miracle is as much a product of the faith of the miracle worker as of his subjects and viewers. Simon’s mother-in-law no doubt revered the man who was fit to carry on John’s mission and believed that his prayers would be answered. This helped her recovery and also enhanced Jesus’ confidence in himself and prepared him for the incident described in subsequent verses. ↩
- The Gospels don’t say what Jesus preached in the synagogue at Capernaum, but I have taken the opportunity to introduce the essential elements of his teaching. For v. 9, see Qur’an 3:51. (From other parts of the Qur’an, it is clear that the message of “Tauheed” in this verse not only expresses the essence of Jesus’ revelatory work but also of all true prophets.) In the canonical Gospels, too, Jesus is heard saying to Israel that the greatest commandment is that “the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul” (Mark 12:29-30 and parallels). But, of course, since the children of Israel knew this commandment at the verbal level, Jesus’ teachings do not contain frequent statements of it. The explicit concern of his teachings rather is to fight those attitudes that obstructed the way to Tauheed. These were the Jewish fixation on the past traditions and the law and their religious racialism. John had already spoken against the latter obstruction to the spiritual transformation (metanoia) that he wanted to effect among his people (Matt. 3.9; Luke 3.8). Jesus seems to have followed his teacher in his disapproval of looking for salvation in genetic connections (cf. John 8:31-40). But it is the Jews’ obsession with their traditions and the law that is the main object of Jesus’ attack. This is not to say that he was against these traditions but only that he disapproved of the Jews’ attitude toward them—their rigidity and extremism, and their disregard of the spirit and purpose behind the laws and traditions. ↩
- Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:33-37. Matthew and John omit the incident. Mark and Luke present it before the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, probably in order to initiate Jesus’ public ministry with a more public and dramatic demonstration of his spiritual powers. ↩
- Mark 1:32-34; Matt. 8:14-17, Luke 4:38-40. The earliest Gospel implies clearly that not all the sick touched by Jesus were healed. From the Islamic point of view, this causes no difficulties since Islam regards supernatural powers of the prophets as proceeding from God in accordance with His will and not as necessarily invested in them permanently. ↩
- Mark 1:35-39; Luke 4:42-44. The Gospels suggest that this incident took place the next morning, but this is probably due to the tendency in the Gospel tradition not to allow too much time between various events, so that Jesus does not appear spending some eventless days and leading a less extraordinary life. What we should probably think is that Jesus stayed in Capernaum for some weeks and after some time saw that the number of people who came to him for cures reduced. Only from within a certain convenient distance can people be expected to bring their sick, and within that area the field would be exhausted after a while, especially because the reports of his successful healings must have partly been countered by those of unsuccessful ones. (It may well be that the Gospel sentence “All men seek thee” is meant to cover the drastic reduction in the “crowds” coming to Jesus with their sick to be healed.) Moreover, Jesus had not set out to be a thaumaturge; he, like John, wanted to effect a spiritual transformation among his people. With considerations such as these, he retired to a lonely place in early-morning hours and meditated his future course of action. He decided that he should go to other places, and preach there also. ↩