Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.
Read Chapter 22
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Then went the Pharisees . . . entangle, &c. For entangle, the Greek has παγιδεÏσωσιν, i.e, ensnare; for παγίδες are snares. And so the Syriac has prepare gins like bird-catchers. The Pharisees put captious questions to Christ with the design that whatever way He might answer, He should incur blame; and that so they might, as it were, entrap Him in His answer, and that He might be open to the charge of treason against either human or Divine Majesty. "They laid a plot by means of a dilemma," says S. Augustine (l. I, contra Crescen. c17), that whichever He should choose of its two horns, He might be caught. If He answered that it was lawful, He would he a traitor to the people of God; but if He said it was not lawful, He would be punished as an enemy to Cæsar.
With the Herodians; Syr. with those who were of the house of Herod.
The Herodians were a Jewish sect, who favoured the Roman Csar, and the payment of tribute to him. They were named from the first Herod of Ascal...
Then. When? When most of all they ought to have been moved to compunction, when they should have been amazed at His love to man, when they should have feared the things to come, when from the past they ought to have believed touching the future also. For indeed the things that had been said cried aloud in actual fulfillment. I mean, that publicans and harlots believed, and prophets and righteous men were slain, and from these things they ought not to have gainsaid touching their own destruction, but even to believe and to be sobered.
But nevertheless not even so do their wicked acts cease, but travail and proceed further. And forasmuch as they could not lay hands on Him (for they feared the multitude), they took another way with the intention of bringing Him into danger, and making Him guilty of crimes against the state.
