NOTES for Luk 13:31-35
The Saviour's preaching continually displeased the powerful of this world. At the beginning of this chapter, the Lord is asked about a cruel act of Pilate's. He neither approves nor excuses it, although He calls not for armed resistance, as people expected Him to, but for repentance. People's attitude towards Christ also caused considerable anxiety to Herod and to Pilate. At one point, those who have seen the miracle He performed conceive the idea of seizing Him “by surprise” and making Him king. Herod's desire to kill Christ is therefore only one expression of the attitude towards the Saviour of those whose way the Lord obstructed in one manner or another. For us, what He Himself says in this connection matters far more.
In response to Herod's threats, the Lord invites His hearers to recall certain passages from the Law and the Prophets. He says that it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside Jerusalem, recalling Israel's repeated rejection of God's messengers—a rejection that foreshadowed His own. As He said to the prophet Samuel: “It is not you but Me they have rejected, so that I should not reign over them.” The Saviour then quotes the song Moses sang after the destruction of the golden calf (Deut 32), grieving that so often He wished to gather His people as a bird gathers her young beneath her wings. For in that song Moses speaks of the people's rejection of God, who cared for them as a bird cares for its young. The Lord goes on to quote Jeremiah's prophecies and words from the psalms saying that those who betray God are left alone with their sin.
Thus Christ's rejection and execution become more than events in the lives of Jesus and His contemporaries: they take their place within the historical context of the tragic rupture between God and humanity. Christ warns that by killing Him, people “fill up the measure of their fathers' lawlessness.” Here it is especially important to hear how tenderly the Lord cares for people as He gathers them into His Kingdom, and to remember that by accepting rejection and execution, He brings the whole history of humanity's salvation to a victorious conclusion.