Isaiah chapter 41 - Mark

The carpenter is one of the appellations frequently given to Jesus of Nazareth when stories are told of what His vocation might have been in the years prior to the time He would have begun His ministry. I use the word ‘stories’ because the word carpenter is certainly not used frequently in the actual scriptural accounts of Him. In fact, the word carpenter can be found in only one place in the New Testament; the Gospel of Mark. In book number forty-one of the Bible, here is what Mark wrote:

“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.” (Mark 6:3)

The word carpenter can be found in two places in the Old Testament, but both of them are in the book of Isaiah.

“The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house.”
(Isaiah 44:13)

“So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the sodering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved.” (Isaiah 41:7)

These then, are the only three places where the word carpenter occurs in the Bible. A parallel statement to that of Mark 6:3 can also be found in Matthew’s Gospel, but Matthew’s phrasing of the sentence uses a different form of the word than Mark uses.

“Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?” (Matthew 13:55)

We might be able to see here that the word carpenter (singular and not possessive) only shows up in two books of the entire Bible, Isaiah and the Gospel of Mark. Considering how many times Jesus is pictured as a young carpenter assisting Joseph in the shop, isn’t it interesting that the word carpenter is only found once in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Mark? Mark is the forty-first book of the Bible, and both of the Old Testament occurrences of the word carpenter are in the book of Isaiah, and one is in the forty-first chapter of Isaiah. The forty-first book of the Bible and the forty-first chapter of Isaiah are aligned and connected by the common usage of this one word; carpenter.