Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 219 · August 7
Ye Would Not
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!”
A bird standing with her wings held open, and nothing underneath them.
That is the picture he reached for, and the conversation it came out of makes it heavier. Certain Pharisees have just told him to get out of the district, for Herod will kill thee, and he sends them back with a message: Go ye, and tell that fox. Then his reason for staying. It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. He is speaking about the city that is going to kill him, and what comes out of him is grief, with the name said twice: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
How often is the phrase to stay with. It says this has been going on a long time and been declined a long time, and Luke lets ye would not stand as the last word in the sentence. Nothing in the paragraph repairs it. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. One conditional future is offered, and the condition is a line the city has to say with its own mouth: ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. It is the only door left open in the paragraph, and it costs nothing, and it opens only from the inside. The city he was weeping over would not say it. So the picture holds where he left it: the wings still out, and nothing underneath them.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 219 is Boldness and Access (Ephesians 3:12).