Chapter 207 of 404

Killing the Prophets

Even religious people, even God’s own people, might kill prophets. In Matt 23:29-31//Lk 11:47-48, in a context addressed to scribes and/or Pharisees (Matt 23:29; Lk 11:46; cf. Lk 11:42), Jesus recalls the widespread early Jewish tradition that their ancestors had killed the prophets.¹⁵⁵ More recent prophetic figures, from Onias¹⁵⁶ to Jesus’ predecessor John, had shared this very fate.

In the context, Jesus challenges the hypocrisy of those who honor the prophets by caring for their tombs (Matt 23:29//Lk 11:47), yet perhaps like their ancestors will kill the prophet who has come to them.¹⁵⁷ Their behavior proves that they are spiritually not “descendants of the prophets,” but rather “descendants of those who killed them”; descendants who walked in their ancestors’ ways would also reap their ancestors’ judgments (Ex 20:5).¹⁵⁸

After this denunciation, Jesus warns that his generation will face all the reserved judgment due for the martyrdoms from Abel to Zechariah (Matt 23:35// Lk 11:51). Jesus probably chooses as examples here the first and final martyrs of the biblical record (many treated the Writings, including 2 Chronicles, as the final section of Scripture).¹⁵⁹ The blood of Abel, a prototypical martyr¹⁶⁰ and figure for the beginning,¹⁶¹ had cried for vengeance against his fraternal slayer (Gen 4:10).¹⁶² Jesus’ second example is probably the Zechariah of 2 Chron 24:20-22, martyred in the Temple.¹⁶³ According to a Jewish tradition preserved in later sources, Zechariah’s blood, like Abel’s, had cried against his murderers for vengeance; in this tradition Zechariah’s blood invited the massacre of many priests.¹⁶⁴

Jesus suggests climactic bloodguilt on that generation (Matt 23:35//Lk 11:51), a sentiment that makes particularly good sense if Jesus saw himself as a special agent of God and expected martyrdom.¹⁶⁵ The Gospel writers who recorded this earlier “Q” saying undoubtedly viewed this judgment as fulfilled in 70 CE. As Zechariah’s blood had once desecrated the priestly sanctuary and so invited judgment,¹⁶⁶ so might the blood of the priests in 66 CE as the “abomination that brings about desolation” (Mk 13:14; Matt 24:15).¹⁶⁷ (That the shedding of innocent blood invited judgment was a biblical theme continued in Jewish tradition,¹⁶⁸ and one had to take special pains to protect the sanctuary from bloodshed.)¹⁶⁹ The murder of Zechariah in the temple (Matt 23:35//Lk 11:51) recalls their murder of the very prophets whose tombs they build (Matt 23:29-31// Lk 11:47-48).¹⁷⁰

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