Matthew 11:16

τίνι ὁμοιώσω : the parable is introduced by a question, as if the thought had just struck Him. τὴν γενεὰν ταύτην. The occasion on which the words following were spoken would make it clear who were referred to. Our guide must be the words themselves. The subjects of remark are not the βιασταὶ of Matthew 11:12, nor the ὄχλοι to whom Jesus had been speaking. Neither are they the whole generation of Jews then living, including Jesus and John (Elsner); or even the bulk of the Jewish people, contemporaries of Jesus. It was not Christ's habit to make severe animadversions on the “people of the land,” who formed the large majority of the population. He always spoke of them with sympathy and pity (Matthew 9:37; Matthew 10:6). γενεά might mean the whole body of men then living, but it might also mean a particular class of men marked out by certain definite characteristics. It is so used in Matthew 12:39; Matthew 12:41-42; Matthew 12:45; Matthew 16:4. The class or “race” there spoken of is in one case the Scribes and Pharisees, and in the other the Pharisees and Sadducees. From internal evidence the reference here also is mainly to the Pharisees. It is a class who spoke of Jesus as reported in Matthew 11:19. Who can they have been but the men who asked: Why does He eat with publicans and sinners (Matthew 9:11)? These vile calumnies are what have come out of that feast, in the same sanctimonious circle. Luke evidently understood the Pharisees and lawyers (νομικοὶ) to be the class referred to, guided probably by his own impression as to the import of the passage (vide Luke 7:30). παιδίοις … ἀγοραῖς : Jesus likens the Pharisaic γενεά to children in the market-place playing at marriages and funerals, as He had doubtless often seen them in Nazareth. The play, as is apt to happen, has ended in a quarrel. προσφ. τοῖς ἑτέροις … λέγουσιν. There are two parties, the musicians and the rest who are expected to dance or mourn according to the tune, and they are at cross purposes, the moods not agreeing: ἑτέροις, the best attested reading, may point to this discrepancy in temper = a set differently inclined. ηὐλήσαμεν : the flute in this case used for merriment, not, as in Matthew 9:23, to express grief. ἐθρηνήσαμεν : we have expressed grief by singing funeral dirges, like the mourning women hired for the purpose (vide ad Matthew 9:23). ἐκόψασθε : and ye have not beat your breasts in responsive sorrow. This is the parable to which Jesus adds a commentary. Without the aid of the latter the general import is plain. The γενεά animadverted on are like children, not in a good but in a bad sense: not child-like but childish. They play at religion; with all their seeming earnestness in reality triflers. They are also fickle, fastidious, given to peevish fault-finding, easily offended. These are recognisable features of the Pharisees. They were great zealots and precisians, yet not in earnest, rather haters of earnestness, as seen in different ways in John and Jesus. They were hard to please: equally dissatisfied with John and with Jesus; satisfied with nothing but their own artificial formalism. They were the only men in Israel of whom these things could be said with emphasis, and it may be taken for granted that Christ's animadversions were elicited by pronounced instances of the type.