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Luk 13:31. Ἡρώδης, Herod) The Pharisees, in saying this, did not say what was decidedly untrue: for Herod did earn the appellation, fox; and Simonius suspects that he was so called by many. But Herod was wishing that this worker of miracles, whom he suspected to be John, should be removed as far as possible from him [For which reason he the more frequently drove Him from place to place: Mat 4:12; Mat 14:1, comparing Luk 13:13.-Harm., p. 407]: and the same object was the aim of the Pharisees: hence both conspired together against Jesus. Again, on the other hand, Herod does not seem in serious earnest to have wished to kill Jesus; for if he was struck with fear after having killed John, ch. Luk 9:7-8, he could not but have been struck with more violent fear had he killed Jesus; but he tried to agitate Jesus (by alarming Him, and to thrust Him out of his country, under the pretext of his territorial right (comp. Amo 7:12, [where Amaziah uses the same policy towards the prophet]), and by means of threats derived from that plea, which the Pharisees reported to Him, as if in the way of friendly admonition, not in Herod’s words, but in their own words, and perhaps with exaggerations of their own invention. Therefore Jesus replies to both in accordance with the real state of the case, not being terrified by anything (in any respect). He calls Herod a fox, employing an epithet accurately characterizing him, on account of his cunning and hypocritical cowardice (comp. ch. Luk 9:7), inasmuch as he was throwing out threats which were but a feint, and declaring that He is not to be deterred by those threats from the performing of miracles: but, at the same time, He upbraids the persons who announced the tidings of Herod’s threats, as also the whole of Jerusalem, with their ungrateful and blood-thirty spirit: Luk 13:33-34. Herod was a fox, a persecutor on a comparatively small scale, compared with Jerusalem, the great persecutor (‘persecutrix’).-θέλει σε ἀποκτεῖναι, wishes to kill Thee) being irritated perhaps with the act of Pilate, mentioned Luk 13:1.