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16 “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the town square who call to one another:
17 We played music for you and you did not dance.
We sang a dirge for you and you did not weep.
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and you said, “He is possessed by a demon.” 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you said, “Look, the man is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners.” But wisdom is justified by its works.
20 Then he began to reproach the towns where his greatest miracles had happened, because they had not repented: 21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! Because if the miracles that happened with you had happened with Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22 But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the Day of Judgment than for you. 23 And you, Capernaum:
Will you be raised up to Heaven? You will be cast down to Hades!
Because if the miracles that happened with you had happened in Sodom, it would still be standing today. 24 But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom on the Day of Judgment than for you.”
Comments
Chapters 11-12 are charactized by increasingly severe opposition to Jesus, beginning with respectful doubt from John and ending with violent hostility from the Scribes and Pharisees. Between those two extremes are communities in Galilee characterized by faultfinding and indifference. Jesus quotes a contemporary children’s song to highlight the absurding of complaining that John the Baptist was too strict and that Jesus is too lax. He tells the Galilean towns of Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida that they were worse than the cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom (cities notorious in the OT for their immorality) because they remained unmoved by Jesus’ miracles. The quotation in verse 23 is a paraphrase from Is 14.13-14, which in its original context referred to Babylon, another proverbially wicked city.