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Ver. 23,24. This speech of our Saviour is much of the same import with the other. The scope and sense of it is the same, to let the Capernaites know that the hardness of their heart was greater in contempt of the gospel, confirmed by so many miraculous operations, and their guilt greater, than the guilt of Sodom, long since destroyed by fire and brimstone, Gen_19:1-38, for though they were guilty of prodigious sinning, yet they had not such means to convince, reclaim, and reform them. God had not sent his Son amongst them, nor given them such testimonies of that act of grace as he had given these, by vouchsafing to confirm the doctrine of his Son by miracles; and therefore they must expect that God, in the day of judgment, should deal more severely with them than with the filthy and impure Sodomites. Our Saviour here speaketh not as an all knowing God, but as the Son of man to the sons of men, who speak upon probabilities and rational conjectures. If we should say that Christ spake this as an all knowing God, all that can be inferred is this, that an external reformation may be a lengthening out of persons’ tranquillity. In the mean time God was just to both in not giving them such means, they sinning notoriously against the light of nature, which they had, and the light of Lot’s holy example, whose righteous soul they vexed with their filthy conversation and unrighteous deeds, 2Pe_2:7,8; and he was also just in destroying of them. Capernaum is here said to have been
exalted to heaven, either with respect to their trading and outward prosperity, or with respect to the means of grace they enjoyed in hearing Christ’s sermons and seeing his miracles. The casting down to hell, seems to be meant of a temporal destruction, the word adhv not signifying the place of the damned, but the state of the dead; but Mat_11:24 must be understood of eternal condemnation, which shall be
in the day of judgment.