Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 10:38

"Now as they went on their way, he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house." — Luke 10:38 (ASV)

He entered into a certain village.—The identity of the two names that follow, and, we may add, of the characters connected with the names, leaves hardly any room for doubt that the village spoken of in this manner was Bethany. (See Note on Matthew 21:1.) St. Luke’s reason for not giving the name is probably connected with the remarkable reticence of the first three Gospels regarding the family of Lazarus.

St. Matthew (Matthew 26:7) and St. Mark (Mark 14:3) narrate the anointing, which we learn from John 12:3 was the act of Mary, but they suppress her name.

St. Luke gives, in this section, a characteristic anecdote of the two sisters but suppresses the name of the village where they lived. None of the first three Gospels name Lazarus, although there seems some reason to believe that the first two narrate an event in which he took a prominent part (see Note on Matthew 19:16), and that the third gives his name with a special reference to him (see Note on Luke 16:20). A probable explanation is that, on both spiritual and perhaps social grounds, reticence regarding the family of Bethany was generally maintained for a time among the disciples in Jerusalem, and that St. Luke, arriving at a later period and, as a physician, finding his way into the company of devout women, recorded one fact that seemed of special interest. (See Introduction, and Note on Luke 8:1.)

Martha.—The name does not appear in the Old Testament, and is Aramaic rather than Hebrew. It has a point of contact with secular history, as it was borne by the Syrian prophetess who accompanied the Roman general Marius in his Numidian campaigns. Its meaning, as the feminine of Maran (= Lord), and therefore equivalent to the Greek Kyria, suggests the possible identity of Lazarus’s sister with the elect Kyria (or elect Lady), to whom St. John addressed his second Epistle. (See Note on 2 John 1:1.)