The same hour certain Pharisees came up, saying to him, Get out, and go hence, for Herod is desirous to kill thee.
Jesus is heading for Jerusalem when Pharisees stop Him with a warning: Herod wants Him dead. Was this kindness, a threat, or bait? And why did the Lord answer with a nickname instead of a change of route?
These same men had spent the day resisting Him. Their sudden concern for His safety fits nothing else we know about them.
The Pharisees were always troubled by His presence, and more than once they showed their wish to be rid of Him. Now they advised Him to leave Herod's territory, in case Herod should kill Him. They said it was for His safety. How unreal this was! They would have been only too glad if Herod had silenced the Lord, as he had silenced John the Baptist. But no one can do anything of that kind without God's permission. And it was not God's mind that the Lord should die anywhere but at Jerusalem.
Read as a threat rather than a tip-off, the words collapse under their own logic.
Verse 31 shows us that hypocrisy hates exposure. The Pharisees tried to intimidate the Lord. They demanded that He leave, or Herod would kill Him. Of course, if they had any confidence that Herod would kill Him for staying, they would certainly have preferred Him to stay!
Commentators differ on where the message started. One reading traces it back to Herod himself:
The Pharisees now come to the Lord with a suggestion that sounds friendly. But His answer shows that it came from Herod himself. "That fox" was only seeking in a roundabout way to get rid of One whom he feared as well as hated... He did not want to commit himself to a threat that he might have to carry out. But he was more than willing to let others do it.
The Lord's reply names Herod for what he is. The picture comes from Lamentations, where wild animals prowl over ruined Zion — an older translation calls them foxes. Herod had built his career on that ruin.
Then He calls him "a fox." The title fits him. Lamentations 5:18 says, "Because of the mountain of Zion which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it." Herod was one who had taken advantage of Zion's sorrow. Israel was dethroned. Her enemies had got the upper hand. Herod was the enemy's man, the ally and flatterer of Caesar, and he made his gains from her misery.
A second animal stands opposite the fox.
He exposes him as a fox and reveals Himself by the picture of the hen. This is the story of Israel. They refused the hen and made room for the fox.
The scheming behind the message did not fool Him. It did not stop His work either.
Where someone tries to interfere with the will of God, the truth of things never stays hidden. The cunning that worked to hinder the Lord's testimony for God was useless. He saw through it all... The gracious work He was doing showed man's folly in trying to hinder God. "Behold, I cast out demons." Not all the power or authority of the world could have done such deeds as these.
Contempt for the king and obedience to the Father meet in one answer.
Christ answers, "Go tell that fox." I shall do My Father's will until the moment comes, for I have come to show divine power. And when rejected here I shall be perfected in glory. Here divine contempt for the king who had turned from God met the most perfect human obedience!
Rulers and religious leaders were pulling the same way, and not only on this day.
The world's politics and its religion joined against Him, to rid the earth of His presence... Lords and priests together want to get rid of Him, want Him out of the world His own hands had made! ... Yes, the world, political and religious, cast their vote against Him, though He had done nothing but good among them. And He is no more wanted now than He was then.
- Motive — The warning was not care but pressure. The men who brought it would have been glad if Herod had silenced Him, as he silenced John the Baptist.
- Mask — The threat exposed the men who carried it. If they had truly feared Herod would strike, they would have wanted Him to stay.
- Name — "Fox" fits a ruler who made his gains from his nation's ruin. Opposite the fox stands the hen, the picture the Lord gives of Himself.
- Movement — He did not run and He did not rush. He pointed to the work in His hands, for no power on earth could change His Father's timing.
- Place — No one could touch Him without God's permission, and God had settled that He would die at Jerusalem and nowhere else.
And he said to them, Go, tell that fox, Behold, I cast out demons and accomplish cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third [day] I am perfected;
The Pharisees come to Jesus with news that Herod wants to kill Him. His reply raises a question far bigger than one ruler: can any human power stop the work God gave His Son to finish?
The title Jesus gives Herod is not a random insult. One writer traces it to Lamentations, where foxes prowl over ruined Zion (the ESV reads "jackals"), and reads Herod as a man who profited from his nation's collapse.
Jesus did not fear Herod. His words in Luke 13 show it. He calls him "a fox", and the title fits, as we read in Lamentations 5:18: "Because of the mountain of Zion which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it." Herod was a man who had taken advantage of Zion's sorrow. Israel was dethroned. Her enemies had the upper hand, and Herod — the creature of the enemy, the ally and flatterer of Caesar — made his gains out of her misery. He played the fox instead of mourning over the ruins of Israel: he made his own gain out of their poverty.
The Pharisees dress their message as concern for His safety. One writer reads it as the opposite — a way to move Him on without Herod shedding blood himself.
The Pharisees were always troubled by His presence, and more than once they showed they wanted to be rid of Him. So they advised Him — supposedly for His safety — to leave Herod's territory, in case Herod killed Him (Luke 13:31). How unreal this was! They would have been only too glad if Herod had silenced the Lord, as he had silenced John the Baptist… Herod was like a cunning fox, no doubt eager to be rid of the Lord. Yet he may not have wanted to shed innocent blood again, so he used the Pharisees to frighten the Lord out of his territory. Had he secretly decided to kill Him, he would surely have kept the plan to himself.
Jesus answers the ruler and the messengers at once. He does not fear Herod, and He does not need the Pharisees' advice.
He denounces this false shepherd who held the flock, but it is not Herod who will kill Him. He was perfectly safe, so that God's purposes — and the guilt of His beloved Jerusalem — might be fully accomplished. When the wrong was someone else's, the Pharisees could easily put on a show of interest and kindness. But the Lord passes it by. He judges Herod, and rests in the certainty of God's purposes. He did not fear the one; He did not need the other.
Instead of discussing the threat, Jesus points to what He is doing. The works themselves answer the plot.
The cunning that worked to hinder the Lord's testimony for God was useless. He saw through it all and did not hesitate to speak plainly. The Lord was the vessel of the power of God on earth. The gracious work He was doing showed man's folly in trying to hinder God. "Behold, I cast out demons." Not all the power or authority of the world could have done such deeds as these. This mattered more than anything else: He was here to do the will of God and finish His work.
Jesus answers with a timetable of three days. One writer explains why we should not read them as three literal days.
The two days speak of a testimony that would go on faithfully despite every objection. The third day plainly points to His being perfected in resurrection. He is clearly not speaking of three literal days in a row.
Nothing was lacking in Him. The word points to a position He entered after the cross — one that fits Him to serve those He saves.
He takes His place as the glorified Man, according to His own words: "the third day I shall be perfected" (Luke 13:32). Nothing could add to the perfection of His Person. But He passed through the sufferings of the days of His flesh, He finished the work of the cross, and God raised Him and glorified Him. So He is perfectly fitted to carry out His service for the many sons on their way to glory.
These writers quote an older translation, which reads "the third day I shall be perfected." The ESV renders the same words "the third day I finish my course."
- Threat. Herod is a fox — a man who made his own gain out of his nation's ruin, and who works by cunning rather than open action.
- Trap. The Pharisees' warning looked like concern. They would have been glad if Herod had silenced Him, as Herod silenced John the Baptist.
- Calm. He feared neither the ruler nor the advisers; He rested in God's purpose, which no plot could cut short.
- Work. His answer is not defence but activity — demons cast out, cures done. The power of God on earth was not Herod's to stop.
- Goal. Two days of testimony, then the third. It is not a calendar but a course, and it ends with Him glorified — the Man now fitted to serve those He brings to glory.
but I must needs walk to-day and to-morrow and the [day] following, for it must not be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.
The Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod means to kill Him, and He answers with a timetable no ruler can change. His reply sets the pace of His journey and its end point, and raises a question: why did one city, and not Galilee, have to be the place where He died?
Commentators read the Pharisees' advice as a pose, not care for His safety. They wanted Him silenced. His reply shows how little control they or Herod had.
They would have been only too glad if Herod the Tetrarch had silenced the Lord, as he had silenced John the Baptist. But no one can do anything of that kind without God's permission. And it was not God's will that the Lord should die anywhere but at Jerusalem.
The verb He chooses matters. He does not run away, and He does not stop. He keeps walking toward the city where the danger is greatest.
He continued His journey toward Jerusalem. Nothing would frighten Him away from this purpose. It was in Jerusalem, not in Herod's domain of Galilee, that He would die. But He would "walk," not run away. Human threats could not shake His measured, firm devotion to the will of God.
Verse 32 speaks of the Lord being made complete; older translations say "perfected." Here He speaks of a prophet "perishing." One death, described from two sides.
"Perfected" is the divine side. The Lord's ministry and life on earth would not be cut short or interrupted. It would be completed, right through to the end. The Lord Himself would be "completed" or "made perfect" in this sense: His work of atonement was part of His pathway, and He was to become the Saviour. "Perish" is the side of responsibility — of Herod, the Pharisees, and the whole nation. Many prophets had been killed. Jerusalem was famous as "the city that kills the prophets." Their guilt would reach its peak when they killed the greatest of the prophets, the Saviour Himself — so far as their responsibility went.
People sneered that no prophet comes out of Galilee. The true test was not where a prophet came from, but where he died.
It was not a question of Herod and Galilee, but of Jerusalem, the proud city of religious festivals. It was there that the prophet of God must fall. No prophet was to be killed anywhere but Jerusalem. That is its painful, fatal distinction: the honour of providing a grave for God's rejected and murdered witness. People might say, and they did say, that no prophet came out of Galilee. That was false. But this was true: if a prophet fell, he fell in Jerusalem.
Herod is dismissed with a word. The blame settles instead on the city that stood closest to God.
After all, Jerusalem is the guilty place. Let Herod, the Edomite king, do and say what he likes; it is "the holy city" that is guilty, because it was nearest to Him. The nearer I am to God, if I reject Him, the worse is the sin and the more dreadful the judgment.
The place of His death was not just a matter of hostile politics. Writers link it to a pattern God had already set in the sacrifices.
The Lord Himself says that "it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem" (Luke 13:33). His suffering "outside the gate" (Heb. 13:12) clearly fulfils the picture given in the law, where the sin offering was burned "outside the camp" (Ex. 29:14).
This verse leads into the lament that follows. The city that kills the prophets is still loved, and the story does not end at the grave it provides.
Meanwhile the Lord would carry on His work. The treachery of pretended friends and the cunning of Herod could not stop Him. There would be the today and tomorrow of testimony, until the third day of completion and perfecting in resurrection. But a prophet could not perish outside Jerusalem. So came the Lord's moving lament over the city He had long loved, and the shining out of the glory of His Person. After all was lost to her on the ground of responsibility, He would come in at the end, in His sovereign mercy, and be greeted as the "Blessed One who comes in the name of the Lord."
- Threat. The warning about Herod was a pretence. No one could touch Him without God's permission, and God had appointed only one place for His death: Jerusalem.
- Walk. He neither hid nor hurried. He walked at a steady pace toward the city, unmoved by threats.
- Perfected. From God's side the death completes His path; from man's side the same death is a murder, and the guilt is theirs.
- Place. Jerusalem's distinction was to bury God's rejected witnesses. The nearer a place stands to God, the worse its sin in rejecting Him.
- After. The sentence on the city ends in a lament, not a full stop. The One it killed will yet be greeted as the Blessed One who comes in the Lord's name.