Healing Peter's Mother-in-Law #20

The healing of Peter’s mother-in-law is the account of Jesus curing a fever in the home of Simon Peter at Capernaum by taking the woman by the hand, after which she gets up and serves those in the house. It appears in Mark 1:29-31, Matthew 8:14-15, and Luke 4:38-39.

The Account

In Mark, Jesus left the synagogue and went with James and John to the house of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He went to her, took her by the hand, and lifted her up. The fever left her, and she began to serve them (Mark 1:29-31).

Matthew’s version is shorter and has Jesus enter Peter’s house, see her lying ill, and touch her hand, after which she gets up and serves (Matthew 8:14-15). Luke describes a “high fever” and says the household asked Jesus to help. He stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and she immediately rose and served them (Luke 4:38-39). Mark and Luke both go on to say that at sundown, people brought their sick to the door and Jesus healed many. Matthew connects the night’s healings with the words of Isaiah 53:4 about bearing our infirmities (Matthew 8:16-17).

Setting and Context

Mark and Luke place the event on the same Sabbath as the exorcism in the Capernaum synagogue. That explains why people waited until sundown, when the Sabbath ended, to bring the sick to the door. Matthew places it later, after the healing of the centurion’s servant. Capernaum was a fishing town on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and Peter’s house, in Mark’s account, seems to have become a base for Jesus’s Galilean ministry. Archaeologists have excavated a first-century house in Capernaum beneath a later church that Christians have traditionally identified as Peter’s, though the identification rests on tradition rather than proof.

The story is one of the few that reveal something of Peter’s family life. The mention of a mother-in-law shows that Peter was married, and Paul later confirms that Peter traveled with a believing wife (1 Corinthians 9:5).

What It Reveals

The healing is brief and unpretentious. It highlights the personal and domestic nature of much of Jesus’s ministry, and his willingness to touch the sick. Her response, to “serve,” is often read as the natural response to grace. The Greek word for serving, related to the word from which “deacon” comes, was also used for Jesus’s own ministry, and many readers see her as a model of discipleship. Some commentators have noted that the story precedes Peter’s own call in Luke, so that he has already witnessed Jesus’s power before he decides to follow him. In every version, the healing is a prelude to the larger scenes of healing at evening, in which the whole town gathers around Peter’s door.