NOTES for Luk 11:29-32
In describing His contemporaries who witnessed His earthly ministry, Jesus compares them now with the Queen of Sheba, now with the people of Nineveh, who turned back and repented of their sins under the influence of the prophet Jonah's preaching. In speaking this way, the Savior wants to emphasize the unwillingness of many of His listeners to hear the message He is trying to bring them. He understands the “sign of the prophet Jonah” in two ways.
In one case, He recalls the tradition preserved in the Book of Jonah of the prophet spending three days in the belly of the whale that swallowed him. This is a clear allusion to the coming events, His death and resurrection. In this passage, however, the subject is different: the success of Jonah's preaching in Nineveh, unexpected by the prophet himself. Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, was as much a symbol of the world's evil for Jews before the Exile as Babylon became for Jews after the Exile. Nevertheless, the people of Nineveh managed to hear the prophet, while Jesus' contemporaries do not want to hear Him.
The same applies to the Queen of Sheba, who ruled the Sabaean kingdom when Solomon reigned in Jerusalem. She was willing to travel far to hear a man reputed to possess wisdom given him by God, and she did make that journey. Those listening to Jesus, meanwhile, did not need to travel anywhere: the Savior Himself came to them, yet His coming and His testimony aroused no interest in them. None of this interests them because, unlike the Ninevites or the Queen of Sheba, they already know everything.
They know what the Messiah should look like, how and from where He should come, and what He will do and how. Most importantly, they are certain that the Messiah will come to them and for their sake first of all. That is why they are Pharisees, the “separated ones”: they are the remnant, the very messianic remnant of which the ancient prophets spoke. Such self-assurance usually closes a person completely to every word, whether God's or human, and consequently leaves them unready to enter the Kingdom.