For this reason also the wisdom of God has said, I will send to them prophets and apostles, and of these shall they kill and drive out by persecution,
The Lord is at a meal, and He has just told the religious teachers that their tomb-building for the murdered prophets shows whose children they are. He then quotes "the wisdom of God," which raises two questions: who is this Wisdom that speaks, and why is sending more messengers a proof of guilt instead of a cure for it?
The verse gives the words a speaker: wisdom. One commentator compares this with the way wisdom speaks in Proverbs.
"The wisdom of God," the Lord had said. This is the only place in the New Testament where wisdom speaks. The wording He used fits the moment. Wisdom speaks in the Old Testament (Prov. 8) to warn men, so that the simple should understand wisdom, and the fools might have an understanding heart. Wisdom speaks in the New Testament (Luke 11:49) to announce that warning fools is now hopeless, and that judgment is therefore certain.
But wisdom here is not just an idea. It says "I," and one commentator asks who that "I" is.
Some say we cannot apply abstract principles to Divine Persons, but Luke 11:49 clearly disproves this: "Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles.'" Here we have a divine Person speaking... God has made divine wisdom available to us in Christ, as we read, "And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God" (1 Cor. 1:30).
The verse opens with a "therefore" that points back to the tomb-building. What looked like reverence for dead prophets was the same instinct that had killed them.
What could be more praiseworthy than that they should honour the ancient sufferers and prophets by building their tombs? It was really the spirit of the world. First of all they proved that they were the successors of those who killed them — not the successors of the martyrs, but of their murderers... It was the love of the world that made the fathers kill them; and it was the love of the world that led their sons to build these tombs over them.
The verse names two kinds of messengers. One commentator ties both to the mission of the New Testament, not to Israel's past.
He judges the condition of the nation and the hypocrisy of its pretended righteousness... He announces the mission of the apostles and prophets of the New Testament. Rejecting them would fill up the measure of Israel's sin. It would be the final test for the hypocrites who built the tombs of the prophets their fathers had killed. God had been patient over all that blood. He kept sending testimonies to give the people light, and the blood was shed because of those testimonies. At last He would require it from the rebels.
Kelly asks why the saying is credited to God's wisdom and not to human insight.
It is expressly called the wisdom of God, because it is not what would appear to man... God would test them soon by sending prophets and apostles, some of whom they would kill, and some they would persecute, getting rid of them all in one way or another.
God knows the outcome before the messengers leave. He sends them anyway, and that does not soften the guilt of the people who reject them.
He knew that they would reject the prophets and messengers by whom He spoke to them, and offered them forgiveness and mercy if they would only repent. (See Ezek. 3:7-9.) Still, He sent them, rising early to send them again and again. Was their responsibility lessened by God's foreknowledge of the way they would treat the messengers of His mercy? Surely not.
The warning was not about some distant generation. It landed on the men in the room.
The Lord's words imply that what their fathers had done would be done again by the sons. The generation He spoke to were guilty not only of the blood of the former prophets, but of the Son of God Himself.
Kelly sees the same pattern in a day still to come. Knowing the history in advance makes the guilt worse, not lighter.
There will be a violent outbreak against the witnesses of Jesus. Their blood will be shed like water. This persecution is all the more guilty because men will have known about it beforehand. They will have admitted the guilt of those who did it, and yet they will fall into the same rut themselves. Sadly, unbelief is most of all blind to itself.
- Wisdom speaks. This is the only place in the New Testament where wisdom speaks. In Proverbs it spoke to warn the simple. Here it says that warning is now hopeless.
- Wisdom is a Person. The "I" who sends is a Person, not just a quality. Commentators point to Christ, who became wisdom from God to us.
- Wisdom sends. He sends prophets and apostles, the messengers of the New Testament. They are the final test for men who honour dead prophets and reject living ones.
- Wisdom foreknows. He knows their fate before they go, and He still sends them. His foreknowledge never lowers the guilt of those who reject His messengers.
- Wisdom is refused. Honouring the martyrs of a past age costs nothing. The real test is the messenger speaking now. Unbelief is blindest about itself.
that the blood of all the prophets which has been poured out from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation,
Jesus is at a Pharisee's table, and His last words to the religious experts stop rebuking and pass sentence: centuries of murdered messengers now count against this generation. That raises the hardest question here — how can one generation answer for blood spilled long before it was born?
The sentence follows a charge about tomb-building. The men who built those tombs thought it proved they were nothing like their fathers.
They built the tombs of the prophets. This sounded good and holy. What could look better than honouring the prophets and sufferers of old by building their tombs? It was really the spirit of the world. First, they proved whose successors they were — not the martyrs' but their murderers'. It seemed the opposite of what their fathers had done. Yet the same love of the world was at work. It killed the martyrs back then, and now it led men to build their tombs, to make religious capital out of this pious honour.
The verse before names the speaker as the wisdom of God. That title appears elsewhere in Scripture, but with a different purpose.
"The wisdom of God," the Lord had said. Here only in the New Testament is wisdom said to speak. The title fitted the moment. Wisdom speaks in the Old Testament (Proverbs 8) to warn men, so that the simple would understand wisdom and the foolish would gain an understanding heart. Wisdom speaks in the New Testament (Luke 11:49) to say that warning fools is now hopeless, and that the coming judgment is therefore certain.
The verse dates the account from the world's beginning. Scripture uses that same starting line elsewhere.
Scripture often mentions the "foundation of the world" as the far border-line of the past. Human history is counted "from" that point (Matthew 13:35; Matthew 25:34; Luke 11:50; Hebrews 4:3; Revelation 13:8).
The next verse fixes the two ends of the account — Abel and Zechariah. One writer notes how hard this sits with readers, and gives the reason behind it.
Then He announced a principle that most people find unacceptable. They either ignore it or fight it hard. That principle is that the blood of all the prophets of the past would be required of the present generation; to leave no doubt, He speaks of the blood of Abel, whom Cain killed, and down to Zechariah, who was killed while doing his priestly service for God (2 Chronicles 24:20-21). The reason is that this generation kept the same attitude of refusal towards the testimony of God. They soon proved it by murdering the Lord Jesus, and various apostles later.
God had let the account run for ages. What closed it was the end of every appeal. The reckoning falls on the nation as a whole, not in place of each person's own judgment.
All the blood which had been shed since the blood of righteous Abel had to be required of that generation. God had not required it before. He had enlightened them by His law, stirred them up by His prophets, warned them through discipline, and appealed to their whole moral being by sending His Son. The sins of the fathers should have warned the children to avoid the same offences. The children sinned after them, so they sinned in the light. But they persisted… This still leaves each of their fathers facing the consequences of his own sin at the judgment of the dead. But the nation — the system as a whole, the public object of God's government in the world — has been judged.
Commentators differ over how closely the word ties to the people alive at that time. One reading takes it as a moral description, not a date.
The true force is "this (Christ-rejecting, unbelieving) generation of Israel." It does not mean only the people alive then. It means all who bore the same moral fruits as those who refused the Messiah… Israel stood in the place of witness for God. So they suffered for despising His last testimony to them in Christ, and God required of them all the righteous blood shed from the beginning onwards. The same principle applies to Babylon in Revelation: "in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth."
The same principle can run again. Men who condemn past persecutors are not safe from copying them.
In the last days there will be a violent outbreak against the witnesses of Jesus. Their blood will be shed like water. The persecution will be all the more guilty because men will have known about it beforehand. They will have admitted the guilt of those who did it, and yet they will fall into the same rut themselves. Sadly, unbelief is most of all blind to itself.
- Pretence — They built tombs for dead prophets and fought the living ones. That marked them as successors of the murderers, not of the martyrs.
- Patience — God waited long. He gave the law, the prophets, His discipline, and at last His own Son.
- Wisdom — Wisdom speaks once in the New Testament. It does not warn now; it announces certain judgment.
- Reckoning — The account runs from the world's foundation, from Abel to Zechariah. It falls on the nation as God's public witness.
- Repetition — The same principle falls on Babylon, and guilt is heaviest where men knew the crime beforehand.
from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias, who perished between the altar and the house; yea, I say to you, it shall be required of this generation.
Here the Lord draws a line across the whole of Israel's history. It runs from the first murder in Genesis to a killing in the temple courts. Then He places the bill for all of it on the people standing in front of Him.
The two names are not a random pair. They mark the first and last pages of Israel's Bible, whose books stood in a different order from ours.
2 Chronicles is the last book in the Hebrew Bible. So this would have amounted to saying: the blood of all the martyrs in your history, from Genesis to 2 Chronicles, will be required of this generation. We would say, from Genesis to Revelation, without even settling the date of that last book. The martyrs from Genesis to Chronicles were all the martyrs killed by Jewish hatred of the truth. The Lord does not date their martyrdom by naming this one the last of the martyrs.
Commentators differ. Some take him as the priest killed by the king's order, recorded in 2 Chronicles 24.
This probably refers to Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, who was killed in this way by order of the king (2 Chronicles 24:20-22). In one of those places "son" may mean "grandson." The book of Chronicles closes the Hebrew Bible, so the murder of this righteous man may well be counted the last, as Abel's was the first.
Others take him as Zechariah the prophet. They point to what the place of the murder says about the killers.
In this case the martyr seems to have been doing actual priestly service. He was the grandson of Iddo, of the priestly family (Zechariah 1:1; Nehemiah 12:1-4), and they killed him between the temple and the altar. This shows the cold-blooded ruthlessness of his attackers. They had no regard for God's glory symbolised in the temple and the altar.
The charge sounds unfair until you see how much light that generation had received. God had been patient for centuries, and every fresh warning made the refusal of it heavier.
All the blood which had been shed since the blood of righteous Abel had to be required of that generation. God had not required it before. He had enlightened them by His law, stirred them up by His prophets, warned them by chastisements, and appealed to their whole moral being by sending His Son. The very sins of the fathers should have warned their children to avoid the same offences. Coming after those sins, the children's offences were committed in the light. But they persisted in them, and so heaped up wrath for the day of judgment.
They had built tombs for the murdered prophets, which looked like reverence. Behind both the killing and the monument stood the same motive.
They proved that they were the successors of those who killed them — not the successors of the martyrs, but of their murderers. It seemed the opposite of what their fathers had done. Yet it was the same love of the world. That love killed the martyrs in that day, and now led men to build their tombs to make religious capital out of this pious honour. They would gladly have the halo surrounding those men of God shine on themselves.
The Lord repeats the sentence rather than softening it. That opening word is not a filler.
It affirms firmly when a matter might seem to be in doubt. Or it repeats something as a certainty that cannot fail, as in Luke 11:51.
What made the certainty so plain was the direction that generation was already travelling.
That principle is that the blood of all the prophets of the past would be required of the present generation... The reason is simply that this generation He spoke to kept the same attitude of refusal towards the testimony of God, which they very soon proved in the murder of the Lord Jesus and of various apostles later.
This is not only about Israel. One generation can take on the guilt of the ones before it, and Christians are warned too.
In the sight of God, one generation inherits all the iniquity that the generations before it completed. That iniquity ought to warn their conscience... If Christians are not fully separated from Babylon, they inherit the iniquity of the earlier times. They join themselves with it, and their conscience learns nothing from it. When man has used up one principle, God sets another before him to work on his conscience. If he rejects that too, he is so much the more guilty.
- First blood. Abel opens the account — the first righteous man killed, and the start of a record God kept for centuries.
- Last blood. Zechariah closes it, because Chronicles ends the Hebrew Bible. Commentators differ over which Zechariah, but the sweep runs from Genesis to the last page.
- Light refused. God did not present the bill earlier. Law, prophets, chastisements and then His Son: each new light made the refusal a heavier sin.
- Same spirit. Building tombs for murdered prophets was no break with the murderers. The same love of the world drove both the killing and the monument.
- Bill presented. "Yes, I tell you" is not emphasis for its own sake. It marks a certainty that cannot fail. The principle still reaches every generation that inherits privilege and learns nothing from it.