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Updated: June 23, 2025
May we not hope that Christ, and Christ's Spirit, will visit us the while in these our daily callings, as he came to his disciples Peter and John, when following their business as fishers on the lake of Gennesareth? How can we get him to visit us? There is one answer by prayer and by watchfulness.
By some wonderful convulsion, or at any rate by some unusual freak of Nature, there is a channel opened out from Merom, which rapidly sinks below the sea level, and allows the stream to flow hastily, down and still down, from Merom to Gennesareth, and from Gennesareth to the Dead Sea, where the depression reaches its lowest point, and the land, rising into a ridge, separates the Jordan valley from the upper end of the Gulf of Akabah.
His centre of action, at this epoch of his life, was the little town of Capernaum, situated on the shore of the lake of Gennesareth. The name of Capernaum, containing the word caphar, "village," seems to designate a small town of the ancient character, in opposition to the great towns built according to the Roman method, like Tiberias.
He also advanced the village Bethsaids, situate at the lake of Gennesareth, unto the dignity of a city, both by the number of inhabitants it contained, and its other grandeur, and called it by the name of Julias, the same name with Caesar's daughter.
Monotheism takes away all aptitude for comprehending the Pagan religion; the Mussulman, thrown into polytheistic countries, seems to have no eyes. Jesus assuredly learned nothing in these journeys. He returned always to his well-beloved shore of Gennesareth. There was the centre of his thoughts; there he found faith and love.
The spirit of Jesus is not there, and, if the son of Zebedee has truly traced these pages, he had certainly, in writing them, quite forgotten the Lake of Gennesareth, and the charming discourses which he had heard upon its shores.
At the entrance of this plain, which is, properly speaking, the country of Gennesareth, there is the miserable village of Medjdel. At last, after a journey of forty minutes further, upon the arid declivity which extends from Ain-Tabiga to the mouth of the Jordan, we find a few huts and a collection of monumental ruins, called Tell-Houm.
Then the loiterings on the banks of the sacred Leontes, the journey back to Galilee, the momentary halt at Magdala, the sail past Bethsaïda, Capharnahum, Chorazin, the fording of the river, the trip to Cæsarea Philippi, the snow and gold of Hermon, the visit to Gennesareth, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and the return to Bethany.
They had taken their usual round through Cana, mounting a hillock from which the long mirror of Gennesareth could be seen, and passing on, always bearing to the right, under the shadow of Thabor until once more Esdraelon spread itself beneath like a grey-green carpet, a vast circle, twenty miles across, sprinkled sparsely with groups of huts, white walls and roofs, with Nain visible on the other side, Carmel heaving its long form far off on the right, and Nazareth nestling a mile or two away on the plateau on which they had halted.
'When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. LUKE v. 8. 'Now, when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him,... and did cast himself into the sea. JOHN xxi. 7. These two instances of the miraculous draught of fishes on the Lake of Gennesareth are obviously intended to be taken in conjunction.
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