and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him.
Here, as before, we have our Lord Jesus busy at work in the synagogue first, and then by the sea side; to teach us that his presence should not be confined either to the one or to the other, but, wherever any are gathered together in his name, whether in the synagogue or any where else, there is he in the midst of them.
Commenting on Mark 3:1-12
And from Jerusalem,.... The metropolis of the country of Judea; and from Idumea, or Edom, as the Syriac version reads it; a country that lay on the south of Judea, formerly inhabited by the sons of Edom, but now by Jews; or at least the inhabitants of it were proselytes to the Jewish religion.
And from Jerusalem, and from Idumaea, and [from] beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him. (f) Which Josephus called stony or rocky.