Martha (sister of Jesus)

• Martha (sister of Jesus)

126:4.9This Sab­bath af­ter­noon Je­sus climbed the Naz­a­reth hill with James and, when they re­turned home, wrote out the Ten Com­mand­ments in Greek on two smooth boards in char­coal. Sub­se­quently Martha col­ored and dec­o­rated these boards, and for long they hung on the wall over James’s small work­bench.

124:1.7Je­sus’ sec­ond sis­ter, Martha, was born Thurs­day night, Septem­ber 13. Three weeks af­ter the com­ing of Martha, Joseph, who was home for awhile, started the build­ing of an ad­di­tion to their house, a com­bined work­shop and bed­room. A small work­bench was built for Je­sus, and for the first time he pos­sessed tools of his own. At odd times for many years he worked at this bench and be­came highly ex­pert in the mak­ing of yokes.

128:3.1This year the fi­nan­cial pres­sure was slightly re­laxed as four were at work. Miriam earned con­sid­er­able by the sale of milk and but­ter; Martha had be­come an ex­pert weaver. The pur­chase price of the re­pair shop was over one third paid. The sit­u­a­tion was such that Je­sus stopped work for three weeks to take Si­mon to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over, and this was the longest pe­riod away from daily toil he had en­joyed since the death of his fa­ther.

124:4.3From this time on he be­came more suc­cess­ful in get­ting along with his broth­ers and sis­ters. He was in­creas­ingly tact­ful, al­ways com­pas­sion­ate and con­sid­er­ate of their wel­fare and hap­pi­ness, and en­joyed good re­la­tions with them up to the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. To be more ex­plicit: He got along with James, Miriam, and the two younger (as yet un­born) chil­dren, Amos and Ruth, most ex­cel­lently. He al­ways got along with Martha fairly well. What trou­ble he had at home largely arose out of fric­tion with Joseph and Jude, par­tic­u­larly the lat­ter.

127:4.8Miriam was a well-bal­anced and level-headed daugh­ter with a keen ap­pre­ci­a­tion of things no­ble and spir­i­tual. Martha was slow in thought and ac­tion but a very de­pend­able and ef­fi­cient child. Baby Ruth was the sun­shine of the home; though thought­less of speech, she was most sin­cere of heart. She just about wor­shiped her big brother and fa­ther. But they did not spoil her. She was a beau­ti­ful child but not quite so comely as Miriam, who was the belle of the fam­ily, if not of the city.

129:1.6All this year Je­sus sent money each month to James. He re­turned to Naz­a­reth in Oc­to­ber to at­tend Martha’s wed­ding, and he was not again in Naz­a­reth for over two years, when he re­turned shortly be­fore the dou­ble wed­ding of Si­mon and Jude.