Luke 10:1-16 Twelve become seventy - woe to those who won't listen

Luke 10:1-16 The beginning of chapter 9 records the sending out of the twelve. Here we have seventy others that Jesus sends out. The instructions are very similar, but more is added. When they enter a house, say first 'Peace be to this house (10:5) and if a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him, if not, it will return to you (10:6). The seventy had not yet received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, so peace is not a euphemism for the Holy Spirit, it seems to be more of a place-holder. To the extent that the Holy Spirit could be with a person but not in them prior to Calvary, Jesus was saying they should share His presence with His followers with those whose houses they enter. And if the man of the house receives that presence, it will rest on him. If not, it will return to them. Presumably this means they will recognize it.

         Jesus then goes on to pronounce woes on the cities that will not receive the gospel. It is intriguing that in this case it is cities corporately, and not individuals, that are going to experience consequences of rejecting the kingdom of God. He singles out Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. We don't really know what happened there, because Jesus says this before the seventy go out. But the implication is that rejection of Jesus is rejection of God, and rejection of God will bring disaster. Perhaps we can see this as divine judgment, but Jesus refers to Tyre and Sidon as examples of cities that did experience disaster. Curiously, He did not cite Sodom, which is a city that God directly judged for their sin. I am not sure about Sidon, but Tyre's downfall was pronounced in Ezekiel 26 & 28. It was destroyed by the armies of Alexander the Great in 332 BC. This was subsequent to Nebuchadnezzar's attack on it in 573 BC when he destroyed the city on the mainland but the inhabitants established themselves on an island fortress where they continued to live. After 332 BC, although people later came and built a city they called Tyre, it was no longer the dominant seaport of the eastern Mediterranean. Interestingly Hiram of Tyre had worked with David (2 Sam 5:11) and Solomon (I Kings 5:1, 9:11-12) on various projects, but by the time of Nebuchadnezzar, Tyre had rejected cooperation in favor of competition. They became so successful that they mistook themselves for God (Ezekiel 28:1).  Sadly, this judgment appears to have been not so much God's direct judgment, as happened to Sodom, but with the removal of God's blessing, the world came and swept them away.

         The downfall of Sidon was also prophesied (Ezekiel 28:20-24). Recall that Ahab's wife Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal the Sidonian king. (I Kings 16:31) Sidon was conquered numerous times over the centuries preceding Christ, with the most notable conquest being by Artaxerxes in 351 BC. In 333 BC, Alexander the Great conquered it, but evidence suggests that they surrendered and welcomed Alexander, even though their culture was fundamentally changed to be Hellenistic. It survived all these conquests as a city and in fact continues to this day. It is however a poor backwater, no longer one of the preeminent port cities of that region.

         And so Jesus is telling the seventy that the ones who listens to them will receive Him and His Father. And the ones who will not listen to them are also rejecting Him and His Father. And the end result will be worse than what happened to Tyre and Sidon.