Jesus’ Early Manhood

128:6.1This year be­gan with the Naz­a­reth fam­ily all in good health and wit­nessed the fin­ish­ing of the reg­u­lar school­ing of all the chil­dren with the ex­cep­tion of cer­tain work which Martha must do for Ruth.

128:6.2Je­sus was one of the most ro­bust and re­fined spec­i­mens of man­hood to ap­pear on earth since the days of Adam. His phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment was su­perb. His mind was ac­tive, keen, and pen­e­trat­ing—com­pared with the av­er­age men­tal­ity of his con­tem­po­raries, it had de­vel­oped gi­gan­tic pro­por­tions—and his spirit was in­deed hu­manly di­vine.

128:6.3The fam­ily fi­nances were in the best con­di­tion since the dis­ap­pear­ance of Joseph’s es­tate. The fi­nal pay­ments had been made on the car­a­van re­pair shop; they owed no man and for the first time in years had some funds ahead. This be­ing true, and since he had taken his other broth­ers to Je­ru­sa­lem for their first Pass­over cer­e­monies, Je­sus de­cided to ac­com­pany Jude (who had just grad­u­ated from the syn­a­gogue school) on his first visit to the tem­ple.

128:6.4They went up to Je­ru­sa­lem and re­turned by the same route, the Jor­dan val­ley, as Je­sus feared trou­ble if he took his young brother through Samaria. Al­ready at Naz­a­reth Jude had got into slight trou­ble sev­eral times be­cause of his hasty dis­po­si­tion, cou­pled with his strong pa­tri­otic sen­ti­ments.

128:6.5They ar­rived at Je­ru­sa­lem in due time and were on their way for a first visit to the tem­ple, the very sight of which had stirred and thrilled Jude to the very depths of his soul, when they chanced to meet Laz­a­rus of Beth­any. While Je­sus talked with Laz­a­rus and sought to ar­range for their joint cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over, Jude started up real trou­ble for them all. Close at hand stood a Ro­man guard who made some im­proper re­marks re­gard­ing a Jew­ish girl who was pass­ing. Jude flushed with fiery in­dig­na­tion and was not slow in ex­press­ing his re­sent­ment of such an im­pro­pri­ety di­rectly to and within hear­ing of the sol­dier. Now the Ro­man le­gion­naires were very sen­si­tive to any­thing bor­der­ing on Jew­ish dis­re­spect; so the guard promptly placed Jude un­der ar­rest. This was too much for the young pa­triot, and be­fore Je­sus could cau­tion him by a warn­ing glance, he had de­liv­ered him­self of a vol­u­ble de­nun­ci­a­tion of pent-up anti-Ro­man feel­ings, all of which only made a bad mat­ter worse. Jude, with Je­sus by his side, was taken at once to the mil­i­tary prison.

128:6.6Je­sus en­deav­ored to ob­tain ei­ther an im­me­di­ate hear­ing for Jude or else his re­lease in time for the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion that evening, but he failed in these at­tempts. Since the next day was a “holy con­vo­ca­tion” in Je­ru­sa­lem, even the Ro­mans would not pre­sume to hear charges against a Jew. Ac­cord­ingly, Jude re­mained in con­fine­ment un­til the morn­ing of the sec­ond day af­ter his ar­rest, and Je­sus stayed at the prison with him. They were not pres­ent in the tem­ple at the cer­e­mony of re­ceiv­ing the sons of the law into the full cit­i­zen­ship of Is­rael. Jude did not pass through this for­mal cer­e­mony for sev­eral years, un­til he was next in Je­ru­sa­lem at a Pass­over and in con­nec­tion with his pro­pa­ganda work in be­half of the Zealots, the pa­tri­otic or­ga­ni­za­tion to which he be­longed and in which he was very ac­tive.

128:6.7The morn­ing fol­low­ing their sec­ond day in prison Je­sus ap­peared be­fore the mil­i­tary mag­is­trate in be­half of Jude. By mak­ing apolo­gies for his brother’s youth and by a fur­ther ex­plana­tory but ju­di­cious state­ment with ref­er­ence to the provoca­tive na­ture of the episode which had led up to the ar­rest of his brother, Je­sus so han­dled the case that the mag­is­trate ex­pressed the opin­ion that the young Jew might have had some pos­si­ble ex­cuse for his vi­o­lent out­burst. Af­ter warn­ing Jude not to al­low him­self again to be guilty of such rash­ness, he said to Je­sus in dis­miss­ing them: “You had bet­ter keep your eye on the lad; he’s li­able to make a lot of trou­ble for all of you.” And the Ro­man judge spoke the truth. Jude did make con­sid­er­able trou­ble for Je­sus, and al­ways was the trou­ble of this same na­ture—clashes with the civil au­thor­i­ties be­cause of his thought­less and un­wise pa­tri­otic out­bursts.

128:6.8Je­sus and Jude walked over to Beth­any for the night, ex­plain­ing why they had failed to keep their ap­point­ment for the Pass­over sup­per, and set out for Naz­a­reth the fol­low­ing day. Je­sus did not tell the fam­ily about his young brother’s ar­rest at Je­ru­sa­lem, but he had a long talk with Jude about this episode some three weeks af­ter their re­turn. Af­ter this talk with Je­sus Jude him­self told the fam­ily. He never for­got the pa­tience and for­bear­ance his brother-fa­ther man­i­fested through­out the whole of this try­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

128:6.9This was the last Pass­over Je­sus at­tended with any mem­ber of his own fam­ily. In­creas­ingly the Son of Man was to be­come sep­a­rated from close as­so­ci­a­tion with his own flesh and blood.

128:6.10This year his sea­sons of deep med­i­ta­tion were of­ten bro­ken into by Ruth and her play­mates. And al­ways was Je­sus ready to post­pone the con­tem­pla­tion of his fu­ture work for the world and the uni­verse that he might share in the child­ish joy and youth­ful glad­ness of these young­sters, who never tired of lis­ten­ing to Je­sus re­late the ex­pe­ri­ences of his var­i­ous trips to Je­ru­sa­lem. They also greatly en­joyed his sto­ries about an­i­mals and na­ture.

128:6.11The chil­dren were al­ways wel­come at the re­pair shop. Je­sus pro­vided sand, blocks, and stones by the side of the shop, and be­vies of young­sters flocked there to amuse them­selves. When they tired of their play, the more in­trepid ones would peek into the shop, and if its keeper were not busy, they would make bold to go in and say, “Un­cle Joshua, come out and tell us a big story.” Then they would lead him out by tug­ging at his hands un­til he was seated on the fa­vorite rock by the cor­ner of the shop, with the chil­dren on the ground in a semi­cir­cle be­fore him. And how the lit­tle folks did en­joy their Un­cle Joshua. They were learn­ing to laugh, and to laugh heart­ily. It was cus­tom­ary for one or two of the small­est of the chil­dren to climb upon his knees and sit there, look­ing up in won­der­ment at his ex­pres­sive fea­tures as he told his sto­ries. The chil­dren loved Je­sus, and Je­sus loved the chil­dren.

128:6.12It was dif­fi­cult for his friends to com­pre­hend the range of his in­tel­lec­tual ac­tiv­i­ties, how he could so sud­denly and so com­pletely swing from the pro­found dis­cus­sion of pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, or re­li­gion to the light­hearted and joy­ous play­ful­ness of these tots of from five to ten years of age. As his own broth­ers and sis­ters grew up, as he gained more leisure, and be­fore the grand­chil­dren ar­rived, he paid a great deal of at­ten­tion to these lit­tle ones. But he did not live on earth long enough to en­joy the grand­chil­dren very much.