Luk 20 | Abbott

Luke 20

These things; referring, perhaps, both to his public teaching in the temple, and to his expulsion of the buyers and sellers.

God forbid. They meant, by this exclamation, not to object to the punishment of such husbandmen, in the imaginary case, but to express their dissent in respect to the religious truth intended by it, viz., that the Messiah would be rejected by the Jewish people, and that they would consequently be destroyed. Hence the force of the Savior's reply in the two succeeding verses.

Just men; men honestly desirous of instruction.

Is it lawful, &c. They hoped to lead him to say something which the Roman government might consider seditious or treasonable.

Unto him; that is, in his view. When men die, they die only to those who survive them. In the sight of God, they continue to live, changing only the scene of existence.

Greater damnation; the guilt of their actual ungodliness being aggravated by their hypocritical pretensions to piety.