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(Luk_13:34-35 parallel to Mat_23:37-39.)
Get thee out.—The question arises, whether these Pharisees actually spoke in the name of Herod, or whether they only made use of that name in order to expel the Saviour, by the scattering abroad of a false report. The latter view (Olshansen, Stier, Ebrard) appears at first sight not improbable, since such a piece of craft agrees very well with their character, as this is manifested everywhere, and it could hardly be assumed that Herod, who already previously and afterwards again (Luk_9:9; Luk_23:8) manifested so much curiosity in relation to Jesus, should this time have sent such a message to Him. And yet this difficulty, if it is closely considered, is not much more than a mere appearance. Self-contradiction belongs to the character of those whose conscience is ill at ease, and it is therefore psychologically very easily conceiváble that Herod, sometimes filled with desire and sometimes with fear, wished at the one time to remove our Lord from him, and at another time to attract Him to him. So had he also trembled before the shade of John the Baptist, although he did not in his heart believe in immortality or eternal life; and so might he just as well sometimes wish the Nazarene at his court, sometimes, again, beyond the boundaries of his province. But that he desired the latter just now, had its ground perhaps in the whisperings of the Pharisees and Sadducees, as well as in anger at the fact that the company of Jesus’ followers extended even to families of the court-party, Luk_8:3. And as now wickedness is most disposed to creep in crooked ways, and is ever of cowardly nature, it is quite agreeable to his disposition that he should use the Pharisees, who in turns flattered and feared him, as messengers to the Nazarene, against whom he did not venture to fight with open visor. These were underhandedly to threaten Him with possible dangers; perhaps, he may have thought, He will then voluntarily withdraw.—On this interpretation the answer of the Saviour is justified, and we do not see ourselves necessitated to discover by a forced interpretation in the ἀëþðçî the Pharisees themselves, and in this image the fact that the Saviour saw through the craft and the lie. On all these grounds, we believe that the message really proceeded from Herod, and that the answer was directed to this Tetrarch.
Luk_13:32. Tell that fox.—Intimating craft and slyness. Proofs of this significance (proofs superfluous, as the matter is self-evident), are found in Wetstein, a. o. Against the objection, that such an answer to Herod on the part of Jesus would have been hardly seemly, it must be remarked, that antiquity, in this respect, was not so excessively courtly as modern times; that the man who wasted the vineyard of the Lord (Son_2:15), fully deserved this name, and that surely no one in this respect deserved less to be spared than this tyrant, who had shortly before stained his hands with a prophet’s blood. Moreover, the Saviour has here yet more the man than the prince in mind (Lange), and the fear of drawing upon Himself the displeasure of such a man, did not in the least measure arise in Him, as appears from the message which He immediately adds. There is not therefore any need of assuming that this whole message of the Pharisees was only the consequence of an uncertain report, or of a cabal which these had formed with the courtiers of Herod (Riggenbach). In this very thing Herod already showed himself worthy of the name of “Fox,” that he availed himself for once of such go-betweens, who at all events wished the removal of the Lord as ardently as he.
Behold I cast out demons.—Intentionally the Saviour speaks not of His words but of His miraculous deeds; because these had most strongly excited the uneasiness of Herod (Luk_9:9). We have already seen before, that To-Day, To-Morrow, and the Third Day, are no proverbial intimation of a brief but ascertained period of time, but are the exact statement of the time which the Saviour needed for travel from Peræa to Bethany, in the immediate neighborhood of Jerusalem.— Ôåëåéïῦìáé , Present Middle, not in the sense of “I die,” which is in conflict as well with the connection as with the usus loquendi; but in the sense of “I accomplish.” Not My work in general, but this part of My work, the casting out of demons, &c. Not an instant earlier will He leave the domain of the Tetrarch, than the mission to be accomplished by Him is discharged. Herod might therefore have spared himself the trouble of such an embassy. “This is one of the deepest words in the mouth of Jesus, which opens a view into the innermost essence of His history.” Baumgarten.
Luk_13:33. Nevertheless I must.—“No obscure and apparently inaccurately reported utterance” (De Wette), but a very intelligible intimation that He has nothing to fear from Herod, as long as His day of life endures, and that He united the fullest repose in the present with the clearest consciousness of His impending departure. Very well does Meyer give the nexus of the thoughts: “Nevertheless (although I do not allow Myself to be disturbed in that three days’ activity by your devices), yet the necessity lies before Me that I to-day, to-morrow, and the next day, should follow your ðïñåýïõ ἐíôåῦèåí , since it is not admissible that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.”—That definite time therefore He still continues to work in Galilee, but at the same time, while He so works, proceeds towards Judæa; not because Herod chases Him away, but because He must follow a higher decree, since it would conflict with all rule that a prophet should be slain out of the capital, which, so to express it, possessed in this respect a sad monopoly. It appears at once that the three days in Luk_13:33 can denote no other space of time than in Luk_13:32.
It cannot be.—Holy irony united with deep melancholy. On the third day will the Saviour be at Jerusalem, which is destined afterwards to become the theatre of His bloody death. The view of Sepp (l. c. ii. p. 424), that the three days here were meant to be a symbolical intimation of the three years of the public life of the Lord, is arbitrariness itself, and in direct conflict with the connection. The common objection against this saying of the Saviour, that all the prophets nevertheless were not killed at Jerusalem,—among others John was not,—is best refuted by the remark that the latter had not fallen as a victim of the unbelief of the Jews, and that the Saviour here does not mean to give statistics, but a general rule. Besides this, it is less the local situation that is here in view, than the symbolical significance of Jerusalem as the capital of the Theocratic State. Every murder of a prophet committed by the Jews, proceeded mediately or immediately from the elders of the people, who had there their seat; as for example, the horrors of the reign of terror at the end of the last century, in the south of France, proceeded from Paris as the centre. As to the rest, the Pharisees themselves might now judge how insignificant in the eyes of the Lord, after such a äåῖ ordered by a higher hand, a casual and passing threat like that of Herod must be.
Luk_13:34. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.—Comp. Luk_23:37-39, Lange, ad loc. If we will not assume that this expression also was used twice by the Saviour (Stier), we have then to choose between its arrangement in Luke or in Matthew. The former is assumed by Olshausen, the other by De Wette, Ebrard, Lange, Meyer, and many others. The lamentation over Jerusalem is unquestionably much more plainly explicable at the end of the public life of Jesus, at His last leaving of the temple, than here, when He was yet far from Jerusalem. This lamentation appears to have been taken up by Luke in this place, only on account of its logical connection with Luk_13:32, and so far not incongruously.
Luk_13:35. Blessed is He that cometh.—The view (Wieseler, Paulus) that the Saviour here means the customary Easter greeting of the inhabitants of the city to the arriving pilgrims, and therefore, in other words, means to give notice that He would not be seen before this feast any more in the capital, appears to us unnaturalness itself, and to be only grounded on harmonistic predilections. Why should the Saviour have expressed Himself so indirectly, if He thereby would state nothing else than the term of His impending arrival in the capital? The true explication see in Lange, on the parallel passage.
2. In a striking manner, over against the craft and cowardice of the tyrant, does the undisturbed clearness of vision and the steady courage of the Son of man come into view; to this moment also in His history is the declaration Joh_11:9, applicable. Over against the fox, the Saviour appears in lamb-like patience, but also in lion-like courage.
3. These words of the Saviour belong to the prophecies of His suffering and dying, in the wider sense of the word. They show that He is plainly conscious to what an end His earthly course will come, where this end awaits Him, and by whom it was to be prepared for Him. Such a departure out of Herod’s province is certainly to be regarded as a victory. No one takes His life from Him; He alone has power to lay it down (Joh_10:18).
4. The heart-thrilling lamentation of the Saviour over Jerusalem, affords a powerful testimony against the fatalistic view, as if Jerusalem must have fallen at all events and absolutely. Either the tears of our Lord over His land and people are an illusive semblance, or we must on the strength of such expressions assume not only an abstract, but a very essential possibility that the chosen people, if it really had known the time of its visitation, would yet have been spared and preserved. “The might of the Almighty appears as powerlessness before the stiffneckedness of the creature, and has only tears to overcome it with. Whose heart will venture to answer here with a system of the head: Thy willing and drawing was now no truly earnest one, Thy lamentation was only a scoffing and sport, for Thy irresistible grace was not present to give them the will?” Stier.
5. Now as ever is the threat fulfilled upon Israel: “Ye shall no longer see Me.” Their senses are blinded, and the veil of the Talmud, which hangs over their eyes, is twice as heavy as the veil of Moses. But the last promise also: “until the time come,” &c., points to a happier future, which, e. g. Zechariah 12, Romans 11, and in other places of the Scripture, is yet more precisely designated.
Starke:—Zeisius:—Satan’s way in his children is to draw the saints from good partly through craft, partly through terror, but a Christian must take no account of this.—Osiander:—When therefore counsels are brought before us, we should measure them according to the word and our own vocation. If they are contrary thereto, despise them.—The business of true teachers requires that they should call things by their names: who shall take offence with them for that?—God’s work can no man, how mighty soever he be, hinder or set back.—In great cities great sins are committed.—Shame on thee, thou enemy, who often dost not venture to call by name thy real or supposed injurer, while Jesus did it!—Zeisius:—Not the loving God, but men’s own wickedness, has the fault of their temporal and eternal destruction.—Osiander:—The persecution of the Gospel is the principal one of the causes why cities, lands, &c., are laid desolate.—Quesnel:—What a fearful wilderness is in the heart when God departs from it; what a darkness when the eternal light no longer shines therein!—Bibl. Wirt.:—The greater the grace God shows to a people, the greater punishment follows if this grace is unthankfully repelled.
Nitzsch:—Pred. v. p. Luke 95: Christ at Jerusalem:—1. Calling love and obstinate repugnance; 2. deadly hatred and self-sacrificing faithfulness.—Tholuck:—Pred. i. p. Luke 173:—So many of them as are lost, are lost not through God, but through their own will (O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!):—1. What appears opposed to this declaration; 2. what confirms it; 3. to what it summons us.
Footnotes:
Luk_13:31.—After the Rec. ἡìἑñá , which appears to deserve the preference over the reading ὥñᾳ , accepted by Scholz and Griesbach, [Tischendorf, Cod. Sin.]
Luk_13:35.— Ἔñçìïò is omitted by a preponderating number of authorities, and is probably borrowed from Mat_23:38.