Luke 13:34

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her own brood under her wings, and you would not!”

He then turns His grieving attention to Jerusalem. He may well have said something like this each time He visited it (compare Matthew 23:37), for Jerusalem, the supposed holy city, represented all that He had come to die for. And it probably almost broke His heart. He saw it as the supreme murderer of prophets. Compare 2 Chronicles 24:20; Jeremiah 26:20. See also 1 Kings 18:4; 1 Kings 18:13; 1 Kings 19:10; Nehemiah 9:26 for murdered prophets not slain in Jerusalem, for in symbol Jerusalem stands for the whole of Israel.

Jesus then declares that His longing had been to take Jerusalem and its people under His wings, like a mother bird does her chickens, gathering them together to Himself. Compare for the idea Psalms 36:7; Psalms 57:1; Psalms 61:4; Psalms 63:7; Psalms 91:4. Thus He was here taking to Himself the prerogative of God. But He points out that they had rejected Him. They had refused to respond. (The Rabbis would later talk about proselytes coming under the wings of the Shekinah, which confirms that this is a totally Jewish picture, for they would not have copied Jesus).

‘How often.' This seems to confirm a number of visits to Jerusalem, more even than Luke hints at. It confirms what we find in John.