Luke 4:29

Luke 4:29

And rose up
In great wrath, and, in a noisy and tumultuous manner, before the service was well over, and without being regularly dismissed:

and thrust him out of the city;
first out of the synagogue, and then out of their city, as unworthy to be in it, though an inhabitant of it; and as if he had done something deserving of death; and therefore to be punished as a malefactor without the city:

and led him unto the brow of the hill;
the edge of it, where it run out, and hung over the precipice:

whereon their city was built;
so that it was a city upon an hill, and very visible, to which Christ may allude in ( Matthew 5:14 ) . That they might cast him down headlong; and break him to pieces: in this manner ten thousand Edomites were destroyed by the Jews, in the times of Amaziah, ( 2 Chronicles 25:12 ) though this was not an usual way with the Jews of putting persons to death, as with some other nations ^F21; their four capital punishments were stoning, strangling, burning, and killing with the sword ^F23: nor did the inhabitants of Nazareth proceed in any judicial manner with Christ, but hurried him away, in order to destroy him, without any formal process, in the manner the zealots did; though to put any man to death, or to inflict any punishment on a person on the sabbath day, as this was, was contrary to their own canon, which runs thus ^F24;

``they do not inflict punishment on the sabbath day, even though it is the punishment of an affirmative precept; they do not beat one that is guilty, nor put to death, as it is said, ( Exodus 35:3 ) "ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day": this is a caution to the sanhedrim, that they do not burn on the sabbath day he that is condemned to burning; and this is the law with respect to any one that is liable to the other punishments.''

But these men, without any regard to the place where they were, and the worship they were concerned in, and the day of the sabbath which then was, rise up in great wrath and fury, and without any show of justice, and in the most brutish and barbarous manner attempt to take away the life of Christ.

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FOOTNOTES:

F21 Vid. Rycquium de Capitol. Born. c. 4.
F23 Misn. Sanhedrin, c. 7. sect. 1.
F24 Moses Kotseneis Mitzvot Tora, pr. neg. 67.