And when the messengers of John were departed, he began to speak unto the people concerning John,
What went you out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?
All Commentaries on Luke 7:24 Go To Luke 7
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
“What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed shaken with the wind?” When he admonished John’s disciples to believe in the cross of the Lord, as they departed he turned to the crowds and began to call the poor to virtue. He did this for fear that they would be exalted in heart, fickle in mind and weak in foresight, and might prefer the showy to the useful and the fleeting to the eternal. “What did you go out into the desert to see?” The world here seems to be compared with a desert, still uncultivated, barren and infertile, which the Lord said could not yield increase. We think that people, swollen in the physical mind, devoid of inner virtue and boasting with the brittle loftiness of worldly glory are to be imitated as the example and image. Dangerous people, whom an inconstant way of life disquiets with the storms of this world, are rightly to be compared with a reed. We are reeds founded on no root of a more robust nature…. Reeds love rivers and the fleeting. Perishing things of the earth delight us. –.
