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.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the [city] that kills the prophets and stones those that are sent unto her, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen her brood under her wings, and ye would not.
Herod wants Jesus dead, and Jesus knows it — yet He keeps walking toward Jerusalem. Who can say He longed to gather a whole nation under His wings, and how could a city refuse Him?
Jesus aims this lament at one city. God had come closest to people there, and there the hatred of His messengers had hardened into a habit. One writer shows Him walking straight into that hatred, then weeping for the people who would kill Him:
He knew where He was going. He went not to escape Herod, but to meet the hatred of man where it had always shown itself most — the place where God had drawn nearest to men through past generations. Jerusalem had a fanatical hatred of the prophets that would be jealous if any of them died elsewhere. Then, with a sob of anguish for His murderers, He turns where His heart draws Him.
"How often would I have gathered" is not the language of a messenger sent by God. It is the language of the One who sent them. Commentators see the deity of Christ shining out here, right in the middle of His humble path:
Notice how the divine person of the Lord comes out here. A prophet could not say this. Though Christ was a prophet, that is true, still He was more than a prophet. He was Jehovah; for none but Jehovah could gather Israel. As it is said, "He who scattered Israel will gather him." Israel had rejected Jehovah while they stood under responsibility to Him; but Jehovah will own them when He comes in grace. The moment He said, I must die, since you reject Me, Jehovah shone out at once.
The picture is an everyday one: a farmyard bird calling her chicks in. What it stands for is not everyday at all:
In Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34 the picture is the farmyard hen and her well-known care for her chicks. It shows how the Lord would have gathered the Jews under His almighty and loving protection. But, sadly, they would not!
The image was already familiar to anyone who prayed the Psalms, where sheltering wings are the standing picture of refuge in God:
"In the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge"; "I will trust in the covert of Your wings"; "in the shadow of Your wings will I rejoice" — these are expressions we have met elsewhere in the Psalms. What difficulty, then, is there in seeing Israel here under such shelter? And from the New Testament comes one sweet, moving word which clasps this from the other side: "How often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not!"
One writer sets the offer beside the refusal, line by line:
He longed to gather them beneath His sheltering wing; but they would not nestle there. They preferred the wings of the archenemy to the wings of Jehovah. He had opened His heart to receive them; but they would not trust Him. All day long He had stretched out His hands to them; but they would not have Him.
So the end of the verse shows no failure in His power. It shows the strength of their own will:
He was then more than a prophet — the Lord Jehovah. He was able to gather them. And His love showed its divine source and character: again and again He had been willing to gather the children of Jerusalem together. He could have been their Shield and exceeding great Reward, but they would not. There is no blessing that the will of man cannot shut its eyes to and reject.
Those two words look back over centuries, not months. One writer counts three earlier times when God tried to bless the nation, starting with the escape from Egypt:
Three times before, at the end of a whole period of God's dealings with them, He had already tried to bless Israel. He would have gathered them as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and they would not. I believe these are the times He points to in His lament over Jerusalem in the words "how often": first, the Exodus; second, the dedication of the temple by Solomon; and third, the return from Babylon under Nehemiah.
Here the One who announces judgment is weeping over those He warns. One writer draws out what this asks of us:
Here we see the spirit of our Master, when at the end of that age He had to foretell the doom of those who refused Him. We need to drink into this spirit. Our lot is cast in the closing days of another era. Our business is to win people out of the world. We shall not do that unless we first keep ourselves clear of it and its spirit. Then we go on to gain the beautiful spirit of compassion which shone to perfection in our Master.
- Who gathers: No prophet could say "I would have gathered." Only Jehovah gathers Israel. The speaker is God Himself, standing in the city that is about to kill Him.
- How often: The words look back over centuries. One commentator counts three earlier tries to bless the nation: the escape from Egypt, Solomon's temple, and the return from Babylon.
- How He gathers: Like a hen calling her chicks. His almighty protection came in the gentlest form.
- Why they refused: His power did not fail. They would not come in. There is no blessing the will of man cannot shut its eyes to and reject.
- What it leaves us: Our Master foretold doom while grieving over the doomed. We are to drink in that same compassion as we call people out of the world.