Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! — It is singular enough that no miracles are recorded in the Gospels as wrought at either of these cities. The latter was indeed nigh unto the scene of the feeding of the five thousand, but that comes later on in the Gospel narrative. The former is only known to us through this passage and the parallel words of Luke 10:12-16. We may at least infer from the absence of any such record the genuineness of the words reported and the truthful aim of the Evangelists. The words were not an after-thought dove-tailed into the narrative. The narrative was not expanded or modified in order to explain the words. In St. Luke the “woes” are connected with the mission of the Seventy. They may well have been uttered, as has been said above, more than once.
The position of Chorazin is described by Jerome as being on the shore of the lake, about two miles from Capernaum.
The Bethsaida here spoken of was probably that on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. The name in Aramaic signifies “House of Fish;” and it was therefore, we may believe, on the shore, and not far from the two cities with which it is here grouped.
Tyre and Sidon. — The two cities are chosen as being, next to Sodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10:15, and Matthew 11:24), the great representative instances of the evil of the heathen world, and of the utter overthrow to which that evil was destined (Ezekiel 27:28). Over and above their immediate import the words are full of meaning as throwing light on the ultimate law of God’s dealings with the heathen world. Men are judged not only according to what they have done, but according to what they might or would have done under other circumstances and conditions of life. In other words, they are judged according to their opportunities. The whole teaching of St. Paul in Romans 2, all the wider hopes of later times as to the future of mankind, are but the development of the truth partly declared and partly suggested here.