Luke 11:49

Luke 11:49, in plain English

Jesus says God's wisdom declared: 'I will send prophets and apostles, and they will kill some and persecute others.' God keeps sending messengers, and people keep rejecting them.

Why it's here

This is a pattern as old as humanity itself. God reaches out, people push back. But God never stops sending, which says everything about His relentless love.

Who's speaking

Jesus speaks with divine authority about the age-old pattern of God sending truth-tellers and humanity rejecting them.

Where it sits in the story

Jesus zooms out to show the big picture: from the beginning, God has sent messengers, and people have rejected them. Jesus knows He is next in that line.

The scholarly reading

Jesus cites 'the wisdom of God' (hē sophia tou theou) as declaring that prophets and apostles will be sent, and some will be killed and persecuted. This may reference a lost wisdom text or Jesus speaking as divine Wisdom personified.

Language and setting

The phrase 'wisdom of God' is unique to Luke. Some scholars identify it as Jesus Himself speaking as Wisdom incarnate (cf. Proverbs 8), others as a citation from an unknown source. Either way, it establishes a divine pattern of sending and rejection.

Voice

Jesus invokes divine wisdom to establish the prophetic pattern of sending messengers who face persecution.

Significance

Jesus places the lawyers' behavior within the long history of prophetic rejection. God keeps sending; humanity keeps killing. The pattern stretches across all of salvation history.

47Woe to you! For you build tombs for the prophets, but it was your fathers who killed them.

48So you are witnesses consenting to the deeds of your fathers: They killed the prophets, and you build their tombs.

49Because of this, the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles; some of them they will kill and others they will persecute.’

50As a result, this generation will be charged with the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the foundation of the world,

51from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, all of it will be charged to this generation.

Read all of Luke 11 — The disciples ask for a prayer, and Jesus gives them words that have echoed for two thousand years. Then he warns against empty religion.