Luke 4:38-39 has Jesus heal Peter's mother-in-law before Peter is called to discipleship in Luke 5:10-11. Matthew 4:18-19 reverses this — Peter is called at the lakeside first, and only later (Matthew 8:14-15) does Jesus heal his mother-in-law. The two evangelists put the same two events in opposite order.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
38He rose up from the synagogue, and entered into Simon’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a great fever, and they begged him for her.39He stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her. Immediately she rose up and served them.
10and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid. From now on you will be catching people alive.”11When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything, and followed him.
18Walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers: Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.19He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers for men.”
14When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever.15He touched her hand, and the fever left her. She got up and served him.
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement— a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is an ordering contradiction where even the harmonizer typically concedes the Synoptics are not aiming at strict chronology — and must then accept the consequences of that concession.
Luke 4:38-39 has Jesus leave the Capernaum synagogue and enter *tēn oikian Simōnos*, "the house of Simon," where he heals Simon's mother-in-law of a fever (the language *epestas epanō autēs epetimēsen tō pyretō*, "standing over her he rebuked the fever," assimilates the healing to an exorcism). Crucially, this Simon has not yet been introduced in Luke's narrative; the definite article presumes a figure the reader is expected to recognize. Only afterward, in Luke 5:1-11, does Luke narrate the miraculous catch of fish and the call, climaxing in Peter's confession *exelthe ap' emou, hoti anēr hamartōlos eimi, kyrie* — "depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord" — which reads as a first revelation of Jesus's identity, not a recommitment. In Luke the healing precedes the call by a full chapter.
Matthew reverses the sequence. Matthew 4:18-22 places the lakeside call as the inaugural act of the Galilean ministry; the Sermon on the Mount (chs. 5-7) and a cycle of miracles intervene; then Matthew 8:14-15 has Jesus enter *tēn oikian Petrou*, "Peter's house," and heal the mother-in-law. Call first, healing later. Mark 1:16-31 sits between them: Peter is called (1:16-18), and on the same Sabbath Jesus heals the mother-in-law (1:29-31). Mark agrees with Matthew on order but compresses the events into a single day, against Matthew's multi-chapter gap.
The standard harmonization, defended by R. T. France (NICNT Matthew) and Darrell Bock (BECNT Luke), is that Luke arranges topically rather than chronologically. Luke gathers the Capernaum miracles of 4:31-44 into a thematic unit establishing Jesus's authority before backing up to narrate Peter's call in 5:1-11; the unintroduced "Simon" of 4:38 is then a literary anticipation, a name the reader will only fully meet a chapter later. This is the familiar and largely correct observation that Synoptic sequence is governed by theological and rhetorical design, not by the clock.
The difficulty is that the harmonization vindicates Luke's literary freedom at the cost of the historical reliability of the ordering it is invoked to defend. If Luke deliberately rearranged the material, then Luke and Matthew do not jointly preserve a recoverable historical sequence; one or both have moved the pieces. Fitzmyer (*Anchor Bible* 28), Bovon (Hermeneia), and Marshall (NIGTC) hold that Luke knew Mark's tight Sabbath cluster (call, then same-day healing) and rearranged it, pulling the Capernaum healings forward so that Peter has already witnessed Jesus's power before the dramatic call by the lake — which also smooths the psychological oddity in Mark and Matthew of fishermen abandoning everything for a stranger. The unintroduced "Simon" of Luke 4:38 is itself a fingerprint of this redaction: Luke transposed a healing that in his source stood after the call, leaving a character referenced before he is named.
Matthew, for his part, dismantled Mark's Sabbath unit from the other end, detaching the mother-in-law healing and relocating it into his thematically arranged miracle collection in chapters 8-9, several chapters after the call. So the divergence is not a single rearrangement but two independent redactions of Mark pulling in opposite directions. The Markan order — call immediately followed by same-day healing — is plausibly the earliest, but even it is shaped by Mark's compressed "day in Capernaum" framework and cannot be taken as a neutral transcript.
Where the critical reading lands: genuine contradiction in sequence. Luke places the healing before the call; Matthew (with Mark) places it after. The topical-arrangement harmonization correctly explains why the orders differ, but in doing so it concedes that the evangelists were not reporting a fixed chronology — which is precisely the point at issue.
Sources for this reading
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 28; Doubleday, 1981) pp. 549-553, 559-568on Luke's reordering of the Capernaum material
François Bovon, Luke 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1-9:50, trans. Christine M. Thomas (Hermeneia; Fortress, 2002) pp. 158-165, 166-172on the redaction of Luke 4-5Luke 4-5
Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 27; Doubleday, 2000) pp. 192-202on Mark's 'day in Capernaum.'
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 2 (ICC; T&T Clark, 1991) pp. 30-39on the placement of the mother-in-law healing
Darrell L. Bock, Luke 1:1-9:50 (BECNT; Baker, 1994) pp. 432-444on Luke's topical arrangement
I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1978) pp. 192-204on the ordering of healing and call
R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT; Eerdmans, 2007) pp. 317-321on non-chronological Synoptic arrangement
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is an ordering contradiction where even the harmonizer typically concedes the Synoptics are not aiming at strict chronology — and must then accept the consequences of that concession.
Luke 4:38-39 has Jesus leave the Capernaum synagogue and enter *tēn oikian Simōnos*, "the house of Simon," where he heals Simon's mother-in-law of a fever (the language *epestas epanō autēs epetimēsen tō pyretō*, "standing over her he rebuked the fever," assimilates the healing to an exorcism). Crucially, this Simon has not yet been introduced in Luke's narrative; the definite article presumes a figure the reader is expected to recognize. Only afterward, in Luke 5:1-11, does Luke narrate the miraculous catch of fish and the call, climaxing in Peter's confession *exelthe ap' emou, hoti anēr hamartōlos eimi, kyrie* — "depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord" — which reads as a first revelation of Jesus's identity, not a recommitment. In Luke the healing precedes the call by a full chapter.
Matthew reverses the sequence. Matthew 4:18-22 places the lakeside call as the inaugural act of the Galilean ministry; the Sermon on the Mount (chs. 5-7) and a cycle of miracles intervene; then Matthew 8:14-15 has Jesus enter *tēn oikian Petrou*, "Peter's house," and heal the mother-in-law. Call first, healing later. Mark 1:16-31 sits between them: Peter is called (1:16-18), and on the same Sabbath Jesus heals the mother-in-law (1:29-31). Mark agrees with Matthew on order but compresses the events into a single day, against Matthew's multi-chapter gap.
The standard harmonization, defended by R. T. France (NICNT Matthew) and Darrell Bock (BECNT Luke), is that Luke arranges topically rather than chronologically. Luke gathers the Capernaum miracles of 4:31-44 into a thematic unit establishing Jesus's authority before backing up to narrate Peter's call in 5:1-11; the unintroduced "Simon" of 4:38 is then a literary anticipation, a name the reader will only fully meet a chapter later. This is the familiar and largely correct observation that Synoptic sequence is governed by theological and rhetorical design, not by the clock.
The difficulty is that the harmonization vindicates Luke's literary freedom at the cost of the historical reliability of the ordering it is invoked to defend. If Luke deliberately rearranged the material, then Luke and Matthew do not jointly preserve a recoverable historical sequence; one or both have moved the pieces. Fitzmyer (*Anchor Bible* 28), Bovon (Hermeneia), and Marshall (NIGTC) hold that Luke knew Mark's tight Sabbath cluster (call, then same-day healing) and rearranged it, pulling the Capernaum healings forward so that Peter has already witnessed Jesus's power before the dramatic call by the lake — which also smooths the psychological oddity in Mark and Matthew of fishermen abandoning everything for a stranger. The unintroduced "Simon" of Luke 4:38 is itself a fingerprint of this redaction: Luke transposed a healing that in his source stood after the call, leaving a character referenced before he is named.
Matthew, for his part, dismantled Mark's Sabbath unit from the other end, detaching the mother-in-law healing and relocating it into his thematically arranged miracle collection in chapters 8-9, several chapters after the call. So the divergence is not a single rearrangement but two independent redactions of Mark pulling in opposite directions. The Markan order — call immediately followed by same-day healing — is plausibly the earliest, but even it is shaped by Mark's compressed "day in Capernaum" framework and cannot be taken as a neutral transcript.
Where the critical reading lands: genuine contradiction in sequence. Luke places the healing before the call; Matthew (with Mark) places it after. The topical-arrangement harmonization correctly explains why the orders differ, but in doing so it concedes that the evangelists were not reporting a fixed chronology — which is precisely the point at issue.
Sources for this reading