Understanding that Israel’s history was coming to a climax, Jesus set before the people two paths – a wide path that led to destruction; and a narrow path that led to life (Matt.7:13-14; Lk.13:24). There is an echo here of Jeremiah 21:8-10, where the ‘way of death’ culminates in the destruction of Jerusalem by the king of Babylon and the way of life is escape from the city and surrender to the Chaldeans. Perhaps Jesus had this in mind when he told the disciples in Judea to escape to the mountains before the end (Matt.24:16-18; Mk.13:14). The choice, and the division in Israel that resulted from it, is also foreshadowed in the distinction in Daniel between, on the one hand, those who ‘forsake the holy covenant’ and, on the other, ‘the people who know their God’ – the wise, who will be refined through suffering and in the end raised to ‘everlasting life’ (Dan.11:30-35; 12:2).
Jesus was in no doubt that Israel was on a course that would lead to the destruction of Jerusalem, the slaughter of a large part of the population, and the shattering of Jewish religious life. When he created havoc in the temple, he angrily cited Jeremiah 7:11: ‘Is my house, whereon my name is called, a den of robbers in your eyes?’ The context is important and Jesus meant his hearers to recall it: the verse forms part of a prophecy of judgment against Jerusalem and the temple that concludes: ‘Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched’ (20). The ‘way of life’, on the other hand, meant a radical revision of religious, social, and personal priorities and a willingness to trust that the course which Jesus was charting through opposition and suffering towards resurrection and glory was Israel’s only real hope of salvation.
The same choice appears in Paul’s preaching to the Jews in Pisidian Antioch. The forgiveness of the nation’s sins was proclaimed through Jesus – the hope of avoiding catastrophic judgment on the nation (Acts 13:38-39). But if they rejected that forgiveness, they could not expect to escape the sort of national ruin prefigured in Habakkuk 1:5-11 (Acts 13:40-41).
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