Nevertheless I must walk. — Better, I must journey, or, I must go onward, the word being that used in Luke 9:51; Luke 9:53. The words indicate the intensity of conviction and of purpose as that expressed before. I cannot bring myself to accept the words that follow — “to-day and to-morrow...” — as meaning that there were but three days to pass before He should enter Jerusalem. It would not have been true in fact. It would have seemed obvious, had we not too abundant proof of men’s want of power to enter into the poetic forms of Eastern speech when they differ from our own, that the literal meaning here is altogether out of place, and that the same formula is used as in the preceding verse, with the same meaning — i.e., as conveying the thought of a short, undefined interval.
It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. — The word used here for “it cannot be,” occurs in this passage only of the New Testament, and has a peculiar half-ironical force — “It is not meet, it would be at variance with the fitness of things, it is morally impossible.” Jerusalem had made the slaughter of the prophets a special prerogative, a monopoly, as has been said, of which none might rob her.