The Doom Of The Lakeside Towns
THE DOOM OF THE LAKESIDE TOWNS
MATTHEW 11:16-24
Jesus is unambiguous. The day of judgment is no fiction.
Those who found fault with John the Baptist for his ascetic way of life were equally ready to criticize Jesus for a way of life which was very different from John’s. (Whatever inner significance the title “Son of Man” may bear elsewhere, in 11:19 it cannot be understood otherwise than as a circumlocution for the personal pronoun “I.”) There was no pleasing such people: they were like children playing out-of-doors, at odds with one another because one half wanted to play weddings while the other half wanted to play funerals. (If 11:17 is turned back into Aramaic, it has the form of a jingling rhyme.) But the wisdom of God was vindicated equally in John’s asceticism and in Jesus’ eating with “tax collectors and sinners” (11:19).
For all the popular excitement which the Galilean ministry had aroused, it found little genuine or lasting response from those lakeside towns where Jesus had been most active. Chorazin is commonly identified with modern Kerazeh and Capernaum with Tell-Hum, while Bethsaida may be et-Tabgha or Mas’adiya, according as it is to be located on the west shore of the lake or east of the point where the Jordan enters it (the latter is the more probable). Gentile cities in Old Testament times had experienced prophetic denunciation (like Tyre and Sidon; cf. Ezekiel 26:1–28:23) and divine judgment (like Sodom; cf. Genesis 18:20–19:28), without a hundredth part of the knowledge of God which these lakeside towns had been given during recent months: the judgment of the latter on the great day would be correspondingly greater than that of those more ancient communities; and indeed in their case the eschatological doom was anticipated when the Romans crushed the revolt in Galilee in the spring of AD 67. The opening words in the denunciation of Capernaum echo those addressed to the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14:12-15. The greater the privilege, the greater the responsibility.