r Lord_, treats this
first among the miracles of its class though without affirming its
chronological precedence; many other writers make it the second of the
three. The incentive to arrange the three miracles of this group in the
sequence indicated may, perhaps, be found in the desire to present them
in the increasing order of apparent greatness--the raising of the damsel
being an instance of recalling to life one who had but just died,
("hardly dead" as some wrongly describe her condition), the raising of
the young man of Nain being the restoration of one on the way to the
tomb, and the raising of Lazarus an instance of recalling to life one
who had lain four days in the sepulchre. We cannot consistently conceive
of these cases as offering grades of greater or lesser difficulty to the
power of Christ; in each case His word of authority was sufficient to
reunite the spirit and body of the dead person. Luke, the sole recorder
of the miracle at Nain, places the event before that of the raising of
the daughter of Jairus, with many incidents between. The great
preponderance of evidence is in favor of considering the three miracles
in the order followed herein, (1) the raising of the young man of Nain,
(2) that of the daughter of Jairus, and (3) that of Lazarus.

4. Tetrarch.--This title by derivation of the term and as originally
used was applied to the ruler of a fourth part, or one of four divisions
of a region that had formerly been one country. Later it came to be the
designation of any ruler or governor over a part of a divided country,
irrespective of the number or extent of the fractions. Herod Antipas is
distinctively called the tetrarch in Matt. 14:1; Luke 3:1, 19; 9:7; and
Acts 13:1; and is referred to as king in Matt. 14:9; Mark 6:14, 22, 25,
26.

5. Machaerus.--According to the historian Josephus (Antiquities xviii;
5:2), the prison to which John the Baptist was consigned by Herod
Antipas was the strong fortress Machaerus.

6. Christ an Offender to Many.--The concluding part of our Lord's
message to the imprisoned Baptist, in answer to the latter's inquiry,
was, "Blessed is he whosoever is not offended in me." In passing it may
be well to observe that whatever of reproof or rebuke these words may
connote, the lesson was given in the gentlest way and in the form most
easy to understand. As Deems has written, "Instead of saying 'Woe to him
who is offended in me,' He puts it in the softer way 'Blessed is he who