Matthew 11:20-24

Woe to Unbelieving Cities (Luke 10:13; in the address to the Seventy). We should rather have expected to find this passage in Matthew 10. Some scholars regard the denunciation as the product of a later generation rather than an utterance of Jesus. The Galilean cities had been comparatively receptive of His teaching, and it is not like Him to make miracles the basis of faith. Note, too, the contrast with the gentleness of Matthew 11:29. Still the passage may well reflect the tragic sense of failure experienced by Jesus at the crisis of His work in Galilee, when He had to leave to save Himself from Herod (Luke 13:1), and because of the changing attitude of the people. As He set out on the road to Phœ nicia, the scene of His work lay spread out before Him. Here He had long laboured to lay the corner-stone of the new Kingdom, to banish pain and ignorance and sin, and to show men the way to the Father and to each other. The utterance is less a curse than a statement of fact put in the form of a dirge or lament, so characteristic of the East.

Matthew 11:21. Chorazin: the modern Kerâ zeh, two miles NNW. of Tell Hû m (p. 29). The Gospels do not mention any incident as taking place here. An ancient Christian tradition (Pseudo-Methodius) connects it with Antichrist (ET, 15:524). Tyre and Sidon were often denounced by the OT prophets for their luxury and wickedness. So was Babylon, with which Capernaum (Matthew 11:23) is implicitly compared. See Isaiah 13:19 f.