Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary

Modern presuppositions about women’s domestic roles have often imagined Martha’s “preparations” to be related to food, placing her in the kitchen in this scene.

John Chrysostom (died 407) noted that some used the passage for condoning leading a life of leisure, eschewing all manual labor.

A rather humorous anecdote dating to the 4th century relates the story of an ascetic monk who refused to perform any labor.

Susan Rakoczy points out that this might have been an expression of Augustine’s own desire to spend more time in contemplation and prayer rather than being consumed with the busy work of a church leader and theologian.

Thomas Aquinas (died 1272) found virtue in both: “There are many arguments to support the position that the contemplative life is superior to the active, but that in some circumstances and in some particular respect, the active life has to be given preference because of the needs of the present life.” Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) has offered another interpretation of this story that identifies Martha as being the more spiritually advanced of the two sisters.

"[6] Eckhart sees Martha as having a higher level of perfection[7] because she knew that activity does not hinder the life of prayer and contemplation; rather what one does flows directly from one’s experience of God.

[5] Economist Henry Ergas sees this interpretation as "the uniquely Western sacralisation of hard work, thrift and aspiration".

[8] Catherine of Siena (died 1380), having spent several years in complete isolation and prayer and believing she had become the bride of Christ in a mystical marriage, had a vision that she must venture out to help the poor.

Resisting this, in another vision, the Lord told her she must “walk with two feet of love,” describing the unity of prayer and action.

One of the outcomes was emphasis on the importance of work as well as faith for salvation, contrasting with the Protestant elevation of “by faith alone.” The German theologian Friedrich Justus Knecht gives the typical interpretation of this passage, writing: "The story of the Good Samaritan gave us an example of the love of our neighbour.

Among these voices are women interpreters such as Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza,[10] Mary Rose D’Angelo,[11] and Barbara Reid.

[19] On the other hand, the unnamed place where Mary and Martha live in Luke 10:38–42 is labelled a 'village' (Greek: κώμη, kómè) in verse 10:38.

[20] Luke therefore linguistically connects the sinful woman to a city/town, and distinguishes the unnamed home of Mary and Martha as a village.

[22] However, Luke 10 appears to be set strictly in Galilee, and thus gives no geographic reason to identify the unnamed village of Martha and Mary with Bethany in Judea.

(...) There is nothing to indicate the place or the time: were it not for what we read in the Fourth Gospel it would surely never have occurred to any one to suppose that the sisters lived just outside Jerusalem.

[21] They posited that the Gospel of John deliberately mixed up several separate stories from the Synoptic Gospels, namely that of the Markan–Matthean anointing of Jesus (for his upcoming death) by an unnamed woman in Bethany (Mark 14 and Matthew 26), the Lukan Jesus' visit to Martha and Mary in an unnamed village (Luke 10), and the Lukan parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16).

[14] George Ogg (1971) proposed a different solution: the author of Luke had two sources for the same journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem.

However, it appears in some Ottonian manuscript cycles, including the one in the Pericopes of Henry II (c. 1002–1012), where it is given a hieratic architectural setting.

Individual works with articles include: A variant subject, without Christ, is exemplified by Caravaggio's Martha and Mary Magdalene.

In the novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the women servants of the dystopian society (doing the cooking and cleaning) are called "marthas".