Simon (father of Lazarus)

• father of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus

124:6.9On the east­ern slopes of Oli­vet they paused for rest in the bor­ders of a lit­tle vil­lage called Beth­any. The hos­pitable vil­lagers poured forth to min­is­ter to the pil­grims, and it hap­pened that Joseph and his fam­ily had stopped near the house of one Si­mon, who had three chil­dren about the same age as Je­sus—Mary, Martha, and Laz­a­rus. They in­vited the Naz­a­reth fam­ily in for re­fresh­ment, and a life­long friend­ship sprang up be­tween the two fam­i­lies. Many times af­ter­ward, in his event­ful life, Je­sus stopped in this home.

• invited 5 Nazareth families for Passover

125:2.1Five Naz­a­reth fam­i­lies were guests of, or as­so­ciates with, the fam­ily of Si­mon of Beth­any in the cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over, Si­mon hav­ing pur­chased the paschal lamb for the com­pany. It was the slaugh­ter of these lambs in such enor­mous num­bers that had so af­fected Je­sus on his tem­ple visit. It had been the plan to eat the Pass­over with Mary’s rel­a­tives, but Je­sus per­suaded his par­ents to ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion to go to Beth­any.

125:2.2That night they as­sem­bled for the Pass­over rites, eat­ing the roasted flesh with un­leav­ened bread and bit­ter herbs. Je­sus, be­ing a new son of the covenant, was asked to re­count the ori­gin of the Pass­over, and this he well did, but he some­what dis­con­certed his par­ents by the in­clu­sion of nu­mer­ous re­marks mildly re­flect­ing the im­pres­sions made on his youth­ful but thought­ful mind by the things which he had so re­cently seen and heard. This was the be­gin­ning of the seven-day cer­e­monies of the feast of the Pass­over.

• watched young Jesus in temple

125:5.1Je­sus’ third day with the scribes and teach­ers in the tem­ple wit­nessed the gath­er­ing of many spec­ta­tors who, hav­ing heard of this youth from Gal­i­lee, came to en­joy the ex­pe­ri­ence of see­ing a lad con­fuse the wise men of the law. Si­mon also came down from Beth­any to see what the boy was up to. Through­out this day Joseph and Mary con­tin­ued their anx­ious search for Je­sus, even go­ing sev­eral times into the tem­ple but never think­ing to scru­ti­nize the sev­eral dis­cus­sion groups, al­though they once came al­most within hear­ing dis­tance of his fas­ci­nat­ing voice.

• watched young Jesus in temple

125:5.8And all the day through, those who lis­tened mar­veled at these ques­tions, and none was more as­ton­ished than Si­mon. For more than four hours this Naz­a­reth youth plied these Jew­ish teach­ers with thought-pro­vok­ing and heart-search­ing ques­tions. He made few com­ments on the re­marks of his el­ders. He con­veyed his teach­ing by the ques­tions he would ask. By the deft and sub­tle phras­ing of a ques­tion he would at one and the same time chal­lenge their teach­ing and sug­gest his own. In the man­ner of his ask­ing a ques­tion there was an ap­peal­ing com­bi­na­tion of sagac­ity and hu­mor which en­deared him even to those who more or less re­sented his youth­ful­ness. He was al­ways em­i­nently fair and con­sid­er­ate in the ask­ing of these pen­e­trat­ing ques­tions. On this event­ful af­ter­noon in the tem­ple he ex­hib­ited that same re­luc­tance to take un­fair ad­van­tage of an op­po­nent which char­ac­ter­ized his en­tire sub­se­quent pub­lic min­istry. As a youth, and later on as a man, he seemed to be ut­terly free from all ego­is­tic de­sire to win an ar­gu­ment merely to ex­pe­ri­ence log­i­cal tri­umph over his fel­lows, be­ing in­ter­ested su­premely in just one thing: to pro­claim ev­er­last­ing truth and thus ef­fect a fuller rev­e­la­tion of the eter­nal God.

125:5.9When the day was over, Si­mon and Je­sus wended their way back to Beth­any. For most of the dis­tance both the man and the boy were silent. Again Je­sus paused on the brow of Oli­vet, but as he viewed the city and its tem­ple, he did not weep; he only bowed his head in silent de­vo­tion.

• died by A.D. 12

127:3.4Je­sus took James to Beth­any for the Pass­over sup­per. Si­mon had been laid to rest with his fa­thers, and Je­sus pre­sided over this house­hold as the head of the Pass­over fam­ily, hav­ing brought the paschal lamb from the tem­ple.

• leading resident of Bethany

168:0.4Many friends from near-by ham­lets and oth­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem came over to com­fort the sor­row-stricken sis­ters. Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters were the chil­dren of a well-to-do and hon­or­able Jew, one who had been the lead­ing res­i­dent of the lit­tle vil­lage of Beth­any. And not­with­stand­ing that all three had long been ar­dent fol­low­ers of Je­sus, they were highly re­spected by all who knew them. They had in­her­ited ex­ten­sive vine­yards and olive or­chards in this vicin­ity, and that they were wealthy was fur­ther at­tested by the fact that they could af­ford a pri­vate burial tomb on their own premises. Both of their par­ents had al­ready been laid away in this tomb.