And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.
And he answered and said unto them - using this Pharisaic interruption as but an opportunity for giving vent to His pent up feelings in the hearing of all around Him --
I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out, х kekraxontai (G2896), paulo-post fut. This rare tense is better supported here, we think, than the simple future, kraxousin (G2896), 'will cry out,' adopted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Alford, but not Lachmann]. In Habakkuk 2:11 we have nearly the same saying. But it was proverbial even among the Greeks and Romans, and Webster and Wilkinson quote a Greek couplet and a passage from Cicero precisely the same. Hitherto the Lord had discouraged all demonstrations in his favour; latterly He had begun an opposite course; on this one occasion He seems to yield His whole soul to the wide and deep acclaim with a mysterious satisfaction, regarding it as so necessary a part of the regal dignity in which as Messiah He for this last time entered the city, that if not offered by the vast multitude, it would have been wrung out of the stones rather than be city, that if not offered by the vast multitude, it would have been wrung out of the stones rather than be withheld!