The Lord saw them on the point of challenging a display of his power, and anticipated the challenge with a refusal.

For the better understanding of his words, let me presume to paraphrase them:  ’I know you will apply to me the proverb, Physician, heal thyself, requiring me to prove what is said of me in Capernaum, by doing the same here; but there is another proverb, No prophet is accepted in his own country.  Unaccepted I do nothing wonderful.  In the great famine, Elijah was sent to no widow of the many in Israel, but to a Sidonian; and Elisha cured no leper of the many in Israel, but Naaman the Syrian.  There are those fit to see signs and wonders; they are not always the kin of the prophet.’

The Nazarenes heard with indignation.  Their wonder at his gracious words was changed to bitterest wrath.  The very beams of their ugly religion were party-spirit, exclusiveness, and pride in the fancied favour of God for them only of all the nations:  to hint at the possibility of a revelation of the glory of God to a stranger; far more, to hint that a stranger might be fitter to receive such a revelation than a Jew, was an offence reaching to the worst insult; and it was cast in their teeth by a common man of their own city!  ’Thou art but a well-known carpenter’s son, and dost thou teach us!  Darest thou imply a divine preference for Capernaum over Nazareth?’ In bad odour with the rest of their countrymen, they were the prouder of themselves.

The whole synagogue, observe, rose in a fury.  Such a fellow a prophet!  He was worse than the worst of Gentiles! he was a false Jew! a traitor to his God! a friend of the idol-worshipping Romans!  Away with him!  His townsmen led the van in his rejection by his own.  The men of Nazareth would have forestalled his crucifixion by them of Jerusalem.  What! a Sidonian woman fitter to receive the prophet than any Jewess! a heathen worthier to be kept alive by miracle in time of famine, than a worshipper of the true God! a leper of Damascus less displeasing to God than the lepers of his chosen race!  It was no longer condescending approval that shone in their eyes.  He a prophet!  They had seen through him!  Soon had they found him out!  The moment he perceived it useless to pose for a prophet with them, who had all along known the breed of him, he had turned to insult them!  He dared not attempt in his own city the deceptions with which, by the help of Satan, he had made such a grand show, and fooled the idiots of Capernaum!  He saw they knew him too well, were too wide-awake to be cozened by him, and to avoid their expected challenge, fell to reviling the holy nation.  Let him take the consequences!  To the brow of the hill with him!

How could there be any miracle for such!  They were well satisfied with themselves, and

            Nothing almost sees miracles
    But misery.