Matthew 22:7

‘But the king was angry, and he sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.'

Understandably the king, recognising open rebellion, was angry. He knew that he was given no alternative. Thus he did what kings do in such circumstances, he sent his armies and destroyed the rebels, and burned their city. The burning of a city was a regular way of treating rebels (Deuteronomy 13:16; see also Jeremiah 21:10 and seven other similar references in Jeremiah). The giving of such orders preparatory to his son's wedding (if it was so) would cost him not a moment of thought. It was what kings do in such circumstances. It would have been seen as another kind of wedding present to his son. (But the probability is that this retaliation would not have occurred until the wedding was over. The verses are not necessarily to be seen as in strict time sequence).

Jesus may well have had Jerusalem in mind here, for this was where the chief rebels were situated, and He was well aware of the coming destruction of the Temple. It was always ironic that Jerusalem was such a religious city that it had no place for God's Son because it was too tied up in its own interests. But this was not intended to be a literal description of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, even though Jesus knew that that was to happen. And indeed Jerusalem was not burned with fire, it was torn down stone by stone. The words He used are rather very much based on Old Testament ideas about the punishing of the wicked, with the future literal destruction of Jerusalem only in the background of His thinking. He was rather depicting the judgment of God on the rebels in the recognised way.