JEWISH RULERS SEEK TO ENSNARE JESUS
(Court of the Temple. Tuesday, April 4, A. D. 30.)
Subdivision A. PHARISEES AND HERODIANS ASK ABOUT TRIBUTE.
MATT. 22:15-22
MARK 12:13-17
LUKE 20:20-26
"This answer is full of consummate wisdom. It establishes the limits, regulates the rights, and distinguishes the jurisdiction of the two empires of heaven and earth. The image of princes stamped on their coin denotes that temporal things belong all to their government. The image of God stamped on the soul denotes that all its faculties and powers belong to the Most High, and should be employed in his service." -Adam Clarke
"Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words." Matthew 22:15
It seems stupid to me that the Pharisees thought that they could "entangle him" in his words because Jesus, as God, with God, since the beginning, is the Creator and the Supreme Master of Rhetoric:
"In the beginning was the Word, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1:1-5How could they hope to entrap him in the very words He made? The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge makes an apt cross reference here:
"Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision." -Psalms 2:1-4
And another from the New Testament:
"Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted." Hebrews 12:3
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