CRITICAL NOTES
Luke 13:31. The same day.—A better reading is, “In that very hour” (R.V.). Pharisees, saying, etc.—We are certainly led to understand that these Pharisees had been sent by Herod to induce Jesus to leave his territory. If the intimation of Herod’s desire were a mere invention of the Pharisees it would be difficult to understand the epithet Christ applied to him. Probably Herod had no real desire of the kind; he had become sufficiently unpopular by the murder of the Baptist, and had no inducement to add to his guilt by further violence against Jesus. Besides, when Jesus was afterwards in his power be abstained from injuring him. But the excitement connected with Christ, and Herod’s own superstitious fears, would doubtless make him anxious for the Saviour to leave the country. His cunning is shown by his endeavouring to secure this end in an underhand way, and by his using his enemies, the Pharisees, as his tools in the matter. Will kill thee.—Rather, “would fain kill thee” (R.V.); i.e., “will” is not a mark of the future tense, but the verb “to desire.”
Luke 13:32. That fox.—An emblem of cunning and mischief. This is the only recorded example of Christ’s speaking of any one in terms of sheer contempt. The rest of the verse has been the subject of great discussion. What are the three days specified? and what is meant by “being perfected”? Some have taken the time specified as referring to present labours (“to-day”), to future labours (“to-morrow”), and to His final sufferings at Jerusalem (“the third day I shall be perfected”). It is difficult, however, to understand the days in any other than a literal sense. The meaning would, therefore, be that Jesus would still remain for three days in Herod’s terrritories, and would still engage in those mighty works that had excited his apprehensions, and carry through His plan to the very end. The only serious objection to this interpretation is that the words “I shall be perfected” would seem to suggest more than merely bringing to an end the miracles of healing in the district of Peræa; but no other meaning is possible if the days specified are to be taken as literal days.
Luke 13:33. I must walk.—Rather, “I must go on My way” (R.V.), the word used by the Pharisees in Luke 13:31 (“depart”). Christ is on His way out of the territory of Herod, but He is not urged by the fear of that king’s malignity; He is not afraid of death, for He is going to meet death in Jerusalem. It cannot be, etc.—There is terrible irony in these words. Christ speaks of His life as being safe until He arrives in Jerusalem. It is almost a moral impossibility, His words imply, for a prophet to perish except in that city, which had monopolised the slaughter of the prophets. The death of John the Baptist was an exception to the rule.
Luke 13:34. O Jerusalem! etc.—Rather, “which killeth … stoneth … sent unto her” (R.V.). How often.—Reference is here made to visits of Jesus to Jerusalem and of labours there which St. Luke and the other Synoptists do not record. As a hen.—It has been said that the figure of the eagle in Deuteronomy 32:11-12 is emblematical of the spirit of the Old Testament, and this in the present passage of the spirit of the New Testament. The contrast between “I would” and “ye would not” is very startling: the power of man to resist and defeat the merciful purposes of God.
Luke 13:35. Desolate.—The best MSS. omit the word, but it or some such term is needed to complete the sense. In the R.V. it is inserted in italics. The Divine Glory had departed from the house (cf. Ezekiel 10:18; Ezekiel 11:23). Ye shall not see Me.—Judicial blindness, the veil remaining still upon the heart of the Jewish people. Until the time, etc.—The words quoted were actually used on Christ’s triumphal entrance into Jerusalem a short time after this, but we cannot think that the prophecy was in any sense then fulfilled. It is more probable that a mistaken understanding of these words led to their being employed on that occasion. Christ here speaks of a second coming in the far-distant future and associates it with the penitence and faith of the Jewish nation, which will then receive Him as the Blessed One.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Luke 13:31-35
Courage and Compassion.—There could be no doubt of the hypocritical character of the concern which these Pharisees manifested for the safety of Jesus, or of the enmity of the prince whose designs were now disclosed to our Lord. Yet he was not intimidated by the news conveyed to Him, nor did He break off His beneficent labours to save Himself by flight. His reply was animated by a calm dignity and an heroic courage. “So far from being interrupted in My ministry by any tidings you bring, be they false or true, by your wish or by Herod’s wish, to be rid of My presence at once, I shall proceed on My way. I shall do as before I have done. I shall put forth My powers, casting out devils, healing sick for the present, for the future; and only at a remoter period will My life and course reach their appointed end.” Nor was it that He refused to believe that a violent end was in store for Him. He knew that He should die in that city to which He was now journeying, and His heart was filled with grief—not at the thought of His own sufferings and death, but at the thought of all the miseries which rejection of Him would draw down upon her—miseries against which He would fain have protected her. This union of unshaken courage with infinite tenderness is very wonderful and affecting, and make the lamentation which He uttered over Jerusalem one of the most pathetic passages which history contains. These words of Christ are full of instruction and warning.
I. We, too, need to be on our guard against the craft and malice of enemies.—We are exposed to the wiles of one who but seeks to allure and to drive us from following the path of duty, and whose subtilty and malice we cannot by our own strength overcome. Our own hearts are only too apt to betray us, by becoming allies of our enemies, and by trying to persuade us to avoid the risks which fidelity to God seems to involve. Our true safety lies in our having that wisdom which will enable us to discern the snare of the enemy, under whatever guise it may be concealed, and in our committing our souls to God in well-doing as unto a faithful Creator.
II. The serenity and courage of Christ should be an example to us.—He was not to be deterred from the path of duty by the menaces of enemies or by the solicitations of weak friends. He continued to prosecute His work faithfully and boldly, notwithstanding every threat and danger. Let us, then, persevere in the path of duty, and believe that God will restrain the wrath of men, and bring us safely through every danger, until our appointed time arrives. The place, time, and manner of our death are in God’s hand, and, like those of Christ, are determined. It is good, too, that, like Him, we should regard the period of our life here as short, that we may be diligent in doing the work that lies before us; and that we should regard death, not as interrupting, but as completing, our course.
III. The expostulation with those who had resisted His invitations is full of significance for us.—It implies very real and great dangers to which we are exposed. He would not have spoken in such solemn tones of the protection He would have afforded to those who now rejected Him, if dangers of the most terrible kind did not threaten them. The judgments of God upon the doomed city, the penalties of a broken law, the punishment due to those who have wilfully rejected the salvation brought near to them—are all in His mind’s eye as He speaks these words. And the same dangers of being cut off in sin and being overwhelmed in sudden and hopeless ruin still hang over those who are impenitent. His words distinctly imply, also, that all who betake themselves to His protection are safe, and that He is ready to receive even the worst of those who have despised and rejected Him, if only they will betake themselves to Him in humility and penitence. In many ways He warns us of our danger—in the expostulations of conscience, in the invitations of the gospel, and in the events of life, which are all governed by His providence, and which daily illustrate the wrath of God against sin, and the blessedness of obedience to Him. He points out, too, in this utterance, the true reason of rejection of salvation: “Ye would not.” However we may deceive ourselves, aversion of heart is the secret of refusal to accept Christ as a Saviour. “Ye will not come unto Me, that ye might have life.” And, finally, He warns His hearers of a time when He will return, clothed with Divine power and authority, to judge the world, and when all must meet Him face to face. Only those who receive Him will then welcome Him, and say, “Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luke 13:31-35
Luke 13:31-35. The Saviour and His Adversaries.
I. We may learn from this passage the craft and malice of the enemies of the gospel and of our salvation.
II. The example of Christ should teach and encourage us not to be deterred from the path of duty by any threatenings of enemies or misgivings of weak friends.
III. It teaches that Christ was, indeed, perfected by His sufferings—perfected as a Saviour for us.
IV. He here appears as expostulating with those who have hitherto resisted His invitations.
Luke 13:31-32. “Herod will kill thee.”—Our Lord not merely gave an answer to the Pharisees, which would have been enough if their word of alarm had been a mere audacious lie, devised by themselves, but charged them to take back His reply to Herod—“that fox,” that creature of cunning and deceit. As for the menace to His life, Jesus despised it. He was going up to Jerusalem, knowing that He would be killed. But Herod could not kill Him. The Prophet could not die but at Jerusalem. The metaphor here was meant to express that the Lord Jesus saw through and despised the cunning wiles of the Tetrarch. The man was a selfish intriguer, neither good nor strong, but cunning, subservient—a jackal to the imperial lion at Rome. The epithet is certainly a startling one. It must have sounded to the Pharisees like the crack of a whip. But there is no need to apologise for it, as though it were unworthy of Him who was meek and lowly in heart, and as if it had fallen from His lips incautiously. It was calmly spoken. It expressed a just feeling of scorn for a tricky and crafty character. There is a contempt that is noble, as well as a contempt that is ignoble. Noble scorn may dwell in the heart along with tender compassion and fervent love. That man cannot be the disciple of Christ who breathes intrigue and practises deceit. Those who please Him are men of simple faith and honest purpose. Without these a man is liable to be described by the Lord’s withering epithet, “that fox.”—Fraser.
“Depart hence.”—It was in the interest of the Pharisees to see Jesus depart into Judæa, where he would fall under the power of the Sanhedrim. And it also suited Herod best for Jesus to quit his territories; for, on the one hand, the excitement which His presence caused among the people was bound to disturb him; and, on the other hand, he was certainly unwilling to burden his conscience by adding another murder to that of the Baptist. Jesus, however, knew the Pharisees too well to believe that they were interested in His welfare, and recognised in the message they brought a plot in which Herod was chief conspirator. His reply contains a severe but merited rebuke: “Not daring to show the teeth of the lion, thou hast recourse to the tricks of the fox.”—Godet.
Luke 13:32-35. “I do cures to-day and to-morrow.”—The words may be paraphrased as follows: “I have to exercise My blessed office for a certain time. For this time, however, I must walk and work, and no power can touch Me (Mine hour is not yet come); but in Jerusalem it will come, and then will ye gain power over Me. Your victory, however, will be your ruin, and Him whom ye shall have rejected, ye shall never more behold till the day of His final return.”
A Revelation of the Saviour’s Heart.
I. Jesus displays His perfect knowledge of what is in man as He unveils the cunning and hypocrisy of His enemies.
II. He manifests a holy serenity in carrying on His beneficent labours, though he is conscious that a cruel death awaits Him in the near future.
III.
He laments over the miseries which His enemies are preparing for themselves by their rejection of Him.
IV.
He anticipates with joy the last and most glorious scene of all, when Israel will repent of her unbelief, and receive Him as her Saviour and Lord.
Luke 13:32-33. “Go ye, and tell.”—Christ’s reply is addressed—
1. To Herod. Be reassured: My activity, which consists in ministering to the suffering, is drawing to an end: three days only remain—but those three days, no one, not even thou, mayest cut short.
2. To the Pharisees. They, too, may reassure themselves: their victim will not escape them; He is on the way to the city which has ever been the murderess of the prophets.
Luke 13:32. “That fox.”—Distinguished by craftiness, and malice, and cowardice. Herod probably did not wish to kill Jesus, but to get Him out of His territory. To threaten thus without really purposing to carry out the threat, and to use Pharisees, his opponents, to report the threat, is the cunning of “that fox.”
The Message to Herod.—“Tell him from Me that My times are set in the eternal counsel of God, and when My prefixed time is accomplished for My labours and sufferings I shall, in spite of all the opposition of earth and hell, be perfected and enjoy My full glory.”—Hall.
Respect for Rulers.—There is no need to seek to clear our Saviour from the appearance of having violated the law which forbade speaking evil of the ruler of the people (Exodus 22:11-28). The prophets all along had no hesitation in severely reproving kings and princes. Thus Elijah tells Ahab that it was he that troubled Israel, and Isaiah calls the rulers of the Jews “rulers of Sodom and princes of Gomorrah.” Much more might He who had sent the prophets use like freedom in rebuking sin.
Lamb-like Patience, Lion-like Courage.—Over against the fox, the Saviour appears in lamb-like patience, but also in lion-like courage.—Van Oosterzee.
Luke 13:33. “The third day I shall be perfected.”
I. Christ’s clear vision of the successive steps of His work yet remaining.
II. His calm and deliberate purpose to go through with His work, unmoved by the menaces of His enemies.
III. His consciousness of the rapid march of events—of His death now not far off.
“I must walk,” i.e., “depart” (as in Luke 13:31), or “go on my journey.” Christ was, indeed, journeying out of Herod’s territory, but not because of Herod’s threat. So far from being scared away by fear of death, He knew that in the city to which He journeyed He would meet certain death.
“It cannot be.”—There would be a certain moral unfitness, a violation of custom, in the murder of a prophet anywhere but in Jerusalem. The words are instinct with a terrible irony.
John the Baptist had indeed been an exception to the rule; he had not been slain in Jerusalem. But that city could scarcely allow its monopoly to be again infringed upon, and that within so short a space of time.
Luke 13:34-35. The Lamentation of Love.—We have here a typical exhibition of grace:
1. Indiscriminate grace.
2. Inviting grace.
3. Ineffectual grace.
Luke 13:34. “Them that are sent.”—Not treating the ambassadors of God as clothed with that inviolable sanctity which protects from injury the ambassadors of an earthly sovereign.
“As a hen.”—The similitude condescendingly employed by our Saviour is one of the homeliest possible, but inexpressibly felicitous and significant. It graphically represents the Saviour’s intense and tender solicitude and desire. How lofty, too, the self-consciousness which it bespeaks! The whole of the Jews belonged to Him as His brood. He could cover and protect them all. He could do, too, without them, although He longed after them; but they could not do without Him.—Morison.
Protection Withdrawn.—Like a bird of prey which hovers in the air above its victim, the enemy threatens the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Jesus, who had, up to this, been sheltering them under His wings, as a hen her chickens, withdraws; they remain exposed and are reduced to defend themselves. Such is the representation of matters given here.—Godet.
The Hen and Chickens.—Christ’s word carries such intrinsic dignity that we do not need to fear the familiarity of the metaphor. The words express Christ’s feeling for the people of Jerusalem in view of their city’s hastening doom. Coming after words of stern warning, this saying reveals a most pathetic sorrow. Remember how complete was His knowledge of the sin of Jerusalem. He recalled its past blood-guiltiness. He foresaw its coming treatment of Himself and His apostles. Yet He lamented over it, and His compassion yearned to rescue its people from destruction. His repeated visits, at personal risk, had been fruitless. They would not come to Him that they might have life. To this day the relations subsisting between Jesus Christ and the Jewish nation at large throughout the world may be expressed in His own words, “I would, but ye would not.”
I. The illustration employed implies that the danger was at hand.—Perdition is imminent. Christ is a present Helper to those who come to Him.
II. How simple the way of salvation!—How sure and perfect the defence! Those who trust in the Saviour are completely covered by His righteousness and strength.
III. It is a grief to Christ to have His offer of salvation slighted.—No one knows as He does the awfulness of the doom from which He rescues His people, or their weakness and helplessness before the impending judgment.
IV. What joy of faith and restfulness of love are under the covert of Christ’s wings!—There His people dwell together in unity. Loved of the Saviour, they learn to love one another.—Fraser.
“And ye would not.”—The teaching of Scripture regarding the will includes the following points:—
I. Whether men are to be saved or lost hinges entirely upon their own will: “ye would not.”
II. The will of man is utterly indisposed and disabled from yielding to Christ (John 6:44).
III. When the will is effectually gained, and salvation thus obtained, it is in consequence of a Divine operation upon it (Philippians 2:13). How the fact of the Divine action is to be reconciled with our freedom is left unsolved, and perhaps will always remain so.
Eternal Blessings Lost only with Our Consent.—A man may lose the things of this life against his will; but, if he loses eternal blessings, he does so with his own consent.—Augustine.
Luke 13:35. “Your house”—i.e., the Temple: but their house now, not the Lord’s.
“Desolate.”—Deserted of its Divine Inhabitant—a spiritual ruin to be followed by material ruin.
“Your house is left.”—By these words Jesus frees Himself from the charge laid upon Him by His Father—viz., the salvation of His people. He is in exactly the same circumstances as the Divine Shepherd represented in the picture which Zechariah draws of the last attempt which Jehovah makes to save the flock appointed to the slaughter (Zechariah 11:10-14).
“Until the time.”—Until that day, the subject of all prophecy, when the repentant people shall turn with true and loyal hosannas and blessings to greet “Him whom they have pierced” (Deuteronomy 4:30-31; Hosea 3:4-5; Zechariah 12:10; Zechariah 14:8-11).