Jacob the stone mason (father)

124:2.4Per­haps his most un­usual and out­stand­ing trait was his un­will­ing­ness to fight for his rights. Since he was such a well-de­vel­oped lad for his age, it seemed strange to his playfel­lows that he was dis­in­clined to de­fend him­self even from in­jus­tice or when sub­jected to per­sonal abuse. As it hap­pened, he did not suf­fer much on ac­count of this trait be­cause of the friend­ship of Ja­cob, a neigh­bor boy, who was one year older. He was the son of the stone ma­son, a busi­ness as­so­ciate of Joseph. Ja­cob was a great ad­mirer of Je­sus and made it his busi­ness to see that no one was per­mit­ted to im­pose upon Je­sus be­cause of his aver­sion to phys­i­cal com­bat. Sev­eral times older and un­couth youths at­tacked Je­sus, re­ly­ing upon his re­puted docil­ity, but they al­ways suf­fered swift and cer­tain ret­ri­bu­tion at the hands of his self-ap­pointed cham­pion and ever-ready de­fender, Ja­cob the stone ma­son’s son.

126:3.1By the mid­dle of this fif­teenth year—and we are reck­on­ing time in ac­cor­dance with the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury cal­en­dar, not by the Jew­ish year—Je­sus had taken a firm grasp upon the man­age­ment of his fam­ily. Be­fore this year had passed, their sav­ings had about dis­ap­peared, and they were face to face with the ne­ces­sity of dis­pos­ing of one of the Naz­a­reth houses which Joseph and his neigh­bor Ja­cob owned in part­ner­ship.

128:7.12Miriam lived next door to Mary in the home of Ja­cob, Ja­cob the el­der hav­ing been laid to rest with his fa­thers. Martha took Miriam’s place in the home, and the new or­ga­ni­za­tion was work­ing smoothly be­fore the year ended.

123:6.9Be­cause of this dif­fer­ence of opin­ion be­tween Joseph and Mary, Na­hor re­quested per­mis­sion to lay the whole mat­ter be­fore Je­sus. Je­sus lis­tened at­ten­tively, talked with Joseph, Mary, and a neigh­bor, Ja­cob the stone ma­son, whose son was his fa­vorite play­mate, and then, two days later, re­ported that since there was such a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion among his par­ents and ad­vis­ers, and since he did not feel com­pe­tent to as­sume the re­spon­si­bil­ity for such a de­ci­sion, not feel­ing strongly one way or the other, in view of the whole sit­u­a­tion, he had fi­nally de­cided to “talk with my Fa­ther who is in heaven”; and while he was not per­fectly sure about the an­swer, he rather felt he should re­main at home “with my fa­ther and mother,” adding, “they who love me so much should be able to do more for me and guide me more safely than strangers who can only view my body and ob­serve my mind but can hardly truly know me.” They all mar­veled, and Na­hor went his way, back to Je­ru­sa­lem. And it was many years be­fore the sub­ject of Je­sus’ go­ing away from home again came up for con­sid­er­a­tion.