Luke 11:47-51

Persecuting Orthodoxy. “ Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. 48. Truly ye are witnesses that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. 49. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute: 50. That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; 51. From the blood of Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation. ” Head religion is almost always connected with hatred of living piety, or spiritual religion, and readily becomes persecuting.

All travellers, and particularly Robinson, mention the remarkable tombs, called tombs of the prophets, which are seen in the environs of Jerusalem. It was perhaps at that time that the Jews were busied with those structures; they thought thereby to make amends for the injustice of their fathers. By a bold turn, which translates the external act into a thought opposed to its ostensible object, but in accordance with its real spirit, Jesus says to them: “Your fathers killed; ye bury; therefore ye continue and finish their work.” In the received reading, μαρτυρεῖτε, ye bear witness, signifies: “When ye bury, ye give testimony to the reality of the bloodshed committed by your fathers.” But the Alex. reading μάρτυρές ἐστε, ye are witnesses, is undoubtedly preferable. It includes an allusion to the official part played by witnesses in the punishment of stoning (Deuteronomy 17:7; Acts 7:58). It is remarkable that the two terms μάρτυς, witness, and συνευδοκεῖν, to approve, are also found united in the description of Stephen's martyrdom. They seem to have had a technical significance. Thus: “Ye take the part of witnesses and consummators of your fathers' crimes.” The reading of the Alex., which omit αὐτῶν τὰ μνημεῖα, their graves, at the end of Luke 11:48, has a forcible conciseness. Unfortunately those MSS. with the T. R. read αὐτούς after ἀπέκτειναν; and this regimen of the first verb appears to settle that of the second.

In connection with the conduct of the Jews toward their prophets, whom they slew, and honoured immediately after their death, the saying has been rightly quoted: sit licet divus, dummodo non vivus.

The parallel passage in Matthew (Matthew 23:29-31) has a rather different sense: “ Ye say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets; Wherefore ye witness against yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. ” The oneness of sentiment is here proved, not by the act of building the tombs, but by the word children. The two forms show such a difference, that they could not proceed from one and the same document. That of Luke appears every way preferable. In Matthew, the relation between the words put by Jesus into the mouth of the Jews, Luke 11:30, and the building of the tombs, Luke 11:29, is not clear.

Διὰ τοῦτο καί : “And because the matter is really so, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, the wisdom of God hath said.” What does Jesus understand by the wisdom of God? Ewald, Bleek, etc., think that Jesus is here quoting a lost book, which assigned this saying to the wisdom of God, or which itself bore this title. Bleek supposes that the quotation from this book does not go further than to the ναί, Luke 11:51; the discourse of Jesus is resumed at the words, Verily I say unto you. But, 1. The discourses of Jesus present no other example of an extra-canonical quotation; 2. The term apostle, in what follows, seems to betray the language of Jesus Himself; 3. The thought of Luke 11:50-51 is too profound and mysterious to be ascribed to any human source whatever. According to Meyer, we have indeed a saying of Jesus here; but as it was repeated in oral tradition, it had become a habit, out of reverence for Jesus, to quote it in this form: The wisdom of God (Jesus) said, I send...Comp. Matthew 23:34: I send (ἐγὼ ἀποστέλλω). This form of quotation was mistakenly regarded by Luke as forming part of the discourse of Jesus. But Luke has not made us familiar thus far with such blunders; and the διὰ τοῦτο, on account of this, which falls so admirably into the context of Luke, and which is found identically in Matthew, where it has, so to speak, no meaning (as Holtzmann acknowledges, p. 228), is a striking proof in favour of the exactness of the document from which Luke draws. Baur thinks that by the word, the wisdom of God, Luke means to designate the Gospel of Matthew, itself already received in the Church as God's word at the time when Luke wrote. But it must first be proved that Luke knew and used the Gospel of Matthew. Our exegesis at every step has proved the contrary; besides, we have no example of an apostolical author having quoted the writing of one of his colleagues with such a formula of quotation. Neander and Gess think that here we have a mere parenthesis inserted by Luke, in which he reminds us in passing of a saying which Jesus in point of fact did not utter till later (Matthew 23). An interpolation of this kind is far from natural. The solitary instance which could possibly be cited (Luke 7:29-30) seems to us more than doubtful.

Olshausen asserts that Jesus intends an allusion to the words (2Ch 24:19): “ He sent prophets to them, to bring them again unto Him; but they would not receive them. ” But the connection between those two sayings is very indirect. I think there is a more satisfactory solution. The book of the O. T. which in the primitive Church as well as among the Jews, in common with the books of Jesus Sirach and Wisdom, bore the name of σοφία, or wisdom of God, was that of Proverbs. Now here is the passage which we find in that book (Luke 1:20-31): “ Wisdom uttereth her voice in the streets, and crieth in the chief places of concourse...Behold, I will pour out my Spirit upon you (LXX., ἐμῆς πνοῆς ῥῆσιν), and I will make known my words unto you...But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof. Therefore I will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh...(and I shall say), Let them eat of the fruit of their works! ” This is the passage which Jesus seems to me to quote. For the breath of His Spirit, whom God promises to send to His people to instruct and reprove them, Jesus substitutes the living organs of the Spirit

His apostles, the new prophets; then He applies to the Jews of the day (Luke 11:49 b) the sin of obstinate resistance proclaimed in the same passage; finally (Luke 11:50-51), He paraphrases the idea of final punishment, which closes this prophecy. The parallelism seems to us to be complete, and justifies in the most natural manner the use of the term, the wisdom of God. By the words prophets and apostles Jesus contrasts this new race of the Spirit's agents, which is to continue the work of the old, with the men of the dead letter, with those scribes whom He is now addressing. The lot which lies before them at the hands of the latter, will be precisely the same as the prophets had to meet at the hands of their fathers; thus to the sin of the fathers there will be justly added that of the children, until the measure be full. It is a law of the Divine government, which controls the lot of societies as well as that of individuals, that God does not correct a development once commenced by premature judgment. While still warning the sinner, He leaves his sin to ripen; and at the appointed hour He strikes, not for the present wickedness only, but for all which preceded. The continuous unity of the sin of the fathers involves their descendants, who, while able to change their conduct, persevere and go all the length of the way opened up by the former. This continuation on the part of the children includes an implicit assent, in virtue of which they become accomplices, responsible for the entire development. A decided breaking away from the path followed was the only thing which could avail to rid them of this terrible implication in the entire guilt. According to this law it is that Jesus sees coming on the Israel round about Him the whole storm of wrath which has gathered from the torrents of innocent blood shed since the beginning of the human race. Comp. the two threatenings of St. Paul, which look like a commentary on this passage (Romans 2:3-5; 1Th 2:15-16).

Jesus quotes the first and last examples of martyrdoms mentioned in the canonical history of the old covenant. Zacharias, the son of the high priest Jehoiada, according to 2 Chronicles 24:20, was stoned in the temple court by order of King Joash. As Chronicles probably formed the last book of the Jewish canon, this murder, the last related in the O. T., was the natural counterpart to that of Abel. Jesus evidently alludes to the words of Genesis (Luke 4:10), “ The voice of thy brother's blood crieth from the ground,” and to those of the dying Zacharias, “ The Lord look upon it, and require it. ” Comp. ἐκζητηθῆ, Luke 11:50, and ἐκζητηθήσεται, Luke 11:51 (in Luke). If Matthew calls Zacharias the son of Barachias, it may be reconciled with 2 Chronicles 24 by supposing that Jehoiada, who must then have been 130 years of age, was his grandfather, and that the name of his father Barachias is omitted because he had died long before. Anyhow, if there was an error, it must be charged against the compiler of the first Gospel (as is proved by the form of Luke), not against Jesus.