I tell you, Nay: but, except you repent, you shall all likewise perish.
All Commentaries on Luke 13:3 Go To Luke 13
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. "Likewise"—that Isaiah , by a similar death, none excepted, says Maldonatus; and so Wisdom vi8: "He hath made the small and great, and careth for all alike. For He cares for all without exception, though for some more and for others less." Secondly, and more simply, You shall equally perish, though by another kind of death, by an eternal instead of a temporal one, or even by a temporal. Thirdly, and properly, Jansenius says, "By a similar death; the destruction and vengeance of God." For the Jews were besieged by Titus at the time of the Passover, when they were sacrificing; and, when the city was taken, many were slain in the temple, where they were sacrificing, and accustomed to sacrifice. So Euthymius, S. Thomas, Hugo, N. de Lyra, S. Cyril in the Catena.
Observe that Christ here teaches us, in like calamities, to give our minds to the thought of our sins, and to repentance, that we fall not into the like punishments of God.
Symbolically, Bede says that Pilate means, the mouth of the hammerer, (os malleatoris) that Isaiah , the Devil, who is always ready to destroy. "Blood"—that Isaiah , sin and concupiscence. The sacrifices are good actions which the Devil, either for the delight of the flesh, or from the ambition of human praise, or some other evil motive, pollutes.
