Nobody Had to Ask
"Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.” Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother."
— Luke 7:11-15
Nain was a small village in Galilee, and Scripture names it nowhere else. In that climate the body was usually buried the same day. Burial grounds lay outside where people lived, so the procession was moving away from home. Under the law, contact with a corpse left a person unclean for seven days. Anyone who handled the body took that on knowingly. He closed the distance instead of keeping it. Property in that culture passed from a father to his sons, never to his wife. A woman who buried her last child lost her income, her protection and her old age. Everyone walking beside her understood what she was now facing. The word behind his reaction comes from the term for the inner organs. It names a physical turn in the gut, not a kind thought. Nobody asks him for anything, and he stops anyway.