These questions answer the questions of Mark 6:2, and they answer them the wrong way. The first question reduces Jesus to His trade and His relatives. The second adds that His sisters still live among them, so there seemed nothing special about Him. Gill says of Mary that she was "a poor woman of their town, and perhaps now a widow, since no mention is made of Joseph." One explanation he offers for their offense is that "they could by no means think of him as the Messiah, who made so contemptible a figure." Barnes, on Matthew's account, adds that people resent wisdom in someone they consider their equal: "People always look with envy on those of their own rank who advance pretentions to uncommon wisdom or superior power."

Mark records the result first: "And they were offended at him" (Mark 6:3). Jesus answered with a proverb: "A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house" (Mark 6:4). Their unbelief had consequences: "he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them" (Mark 6:5). "He marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching" (Mark 6:6).

The word "carpenter" is tekton, which Thayer defines as "a worker in wood, a carpenter." It appears only here and in Matthew 13:55, where the people call Him "the carpenter's son." Barnes says Mark's wording is "a strong, perhaps decisive proof that he had himself worked at the business." Gill notes that a trade was no disgrace among the Jews, "with whom it was usual for their greatest doctors and Rabbins to be of some trade."

Commentators differ on who the brothers were. Barnes writes, "The fair interpretation of this passage is, that these were the sons and daughters of Joseph and Mary." Gill holds that they were near relatives, "the sons of Alphaeus or Cleophas." Either way, the townspeople's point is the same: they knew His family, so they thought they knew Him. "Offended" translates skandalizo, which Thayer explains as putting a stumbling block in someone's way, "upon which another may trip and fall."

The people stumbled over the ordinary. They could not believe that God's wisdom and power would come through a carpenter whose family they knew. Yet that is how God chose to come. Barnes notes, "A useful employment is always honorable." The questions in this verse were meant to bring Jesus down, but they actually describe the humility of His coming.

Earlier in Mark, even "his friends" said, "He is beside himself" (Mark 3:21), and Jesus named a wider family: "whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother" (Mark 3:35). Unbelief closed doors in Nazareth. Matthew Henry writes, "By unbelief and contempt of Christ men stop the current of his favours to them." He could do no mighty work there, Henry explains, "because people would not make application to him, nor sue for his favours." Still, Jesus did not stop working. He healed a few and went on to teach elsewhere (Mark 6:5-6).