Matthew 4:21-22
They left the ship and their father
Mending nets with Zebedee when the call comes. Mark adds that they left their father in the boat with the hired servants, which tells you it was a business rather than subsistence.
People of the Bible
James son of Zebedee
One of the three taken up the mountain, and the first of the twelve to be killed for it.
Also called One of the sons of thunder
James works the family fishing business with his brother John and their father, and they leave the boat and the hired servants the day they are called. He is in the inner three at every closed door: the raising of Jairus’ daughter, the transfiguration, and Gethsemane. He and his brother are surnamed Boanerges, sons of thunder, and the two scenes that earn it are both bad ones. He is not quoted often, and he is the first apostle to die.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of James son of Zebedee
- 01
- 02
Luke 9:51-56
Shall we call down fire
A Samaritan village will not receive him. The brothers propose the Elijah solution and are turned and rebuked, which is the surname earning itself.
- 03
Mark 10:35-45
Grant that we may sit
They ask for the two best seats and the other ten are indignant. The reply is about a cup and a baptism, and then the sentence about the Son of man coming to serve and give his life a ransom.
- 04
Matthew 17:1-8
Up the high mountain
One of three taken up after six days. His face shone as the sun, Moses and Elijah appear, and a bright cloud overshadows them with a voice out of it.
Why it matters
His whole ministry is inside the gospels and his death gets one verse in Acts: Herod killed James the brother of John with the sword. That is all. The request he and his brother make, to sit on the right and the left, is answered with a question about a cup they do not understand, and the answer is that they will indeed drink it. For James that came true first, and Acts records it without any comment at all.
14 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11; John 1:35-51
Leave the Nets
