Jacob the stone mason (son)

• Jacob the stone mason (son)

123:1.4Je­sus’ en­tire fourth year was a pe­riod of nor­mal phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and of un­usual men­tal ac­tiv­ity. Mean­time he had formed a very close at­tach­ment for a neigh­bor boy about his own age named Ja­cob. Je­sus and Ja­cob were al­ways happy in their play, and they grew up to be great friends and loyal com­pan­ions.

• Jacob the stone mason (son)

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.

128:2.2This year Si­mon grad­u­ated from school and be­gan work with Je­sus’ old boy­hood play­mate and ever-ready de­fender, Ja­cob the stone ma­son. As a re­sult of sev­eral fam­ily con­fer­ences it was de­cided that it was un­wise for all the boys to take up car­pen­try. It was thought that by di­ver­si­fy­ing their trades they would be pre­pared to take con­tracts for putting up en­tire build­ings. Again, they had not all kept busy since three of them had been work­ing as full-time car­pen­ters.

128:5.8And now things be­gan to hap­pen—mar­riage was in the air. James’s suc­cess in gain­ing Je­sus’ as­sent to his mar­riage em­bold­ened Miriam to ap­proach her brother-fa­ther with her plans. Ja­cob, the younger stone ma­son, one­time self-ap­pointed cham­pion of Je­sus, now busi­ness as­so­ciate of James and Joseph, had long sought to gain Miriam’s hand in mar­riage. Af­ter Miriam had laid her plans be­fore Je­sus, he di­rected that Ja­cob should come to him mak­ing for­mal re­quest for her and prom­ised his bless­ing for the mar­riage just as soon as she felt that Martha was com­pe­tent to as­sume her du­ties as el­dest daugh­ter.

133:1.5But Ga­nid was not fully sat­is­fied. Many times they talked over these mat­ters, and Je­sus told him some of his boy­hood ex­pe­ri­ences and also about Ja­cob the stone ma­son’s son. On learn­ing how Ja­cob ap­pointed him­self to de­fend Je­sus, Ga­nid said: “Oh, I be­gin to see! In the first place very sel­dom would any nor­mal hu­man be­ing want to at­tack such a kindly per­son as you, and even if any­one should be so un­think­ing as to do such a thing, there is pretty sure to be near at hand some other mor­tal who will fly to your as­sis­tance, even as you al­ways go to the res­cue of any per­son you ob­serve to be in dis­tress. In my heart, Teacher, I agree with you, but in my head I still think that if I had been Ja­cob, I would have en­joyed pun­ish­ing those rude fel­lows who pre­sumed to at­tack you just be­cause they thought you would not de­fend your­self. I pre­sume you are fairly safe in your jour­ney through life since you spend much of your time help­ing oth­ers and min­is­ter­ing to your fel­lows in dis­tress—well, most likely there’ll al­ways be some­one on hand to de­fend you.” And Je­sus replied: “That test has not yet come, Ga­nid, and when it does, we will have to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.” And that was about all the lad could get his teacher to say on this dif­fi­cult sub­ject of self-de­fense and non­re­sis­tance. On an­other oc­ca­sion he did draw from Je­sus the opin­ion that or­ga­nized so­ci­ety had ev­ery right to em­ploy force in the ex­e­cu­tion of its just man­dates.

128:7.10In Novem­ber a dou­ble wed­ding oc­curred. James and Esta, and Miriam and Ja­cob were mar­ried. It was truly a joy­ous oc­ca­sion. Even Mary was once more happy ex­cept ev­ery now and then when she re­al­ized that Je­sus was prepar­ing to go away. She suf­fered un­der the bur­den of a great un­cer­tainty: If Je­sus would only sit down and talk it all over freely with her as he had done when he was a boy, but he was con­sis­tently un­com­mu­nica­tive; he was pro­foundly silent about the fu­ture.

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.