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Updated: May 31, 2025
But this prosperity will not always be apparent, except to the eye of faith. When Chorazin and Bethsaida rejected our LORD'S message, it needed the eye of faith to rejoice in spirit and say, "Even so, FATHER; for so it seemed good in Thy sight."
Along its mighty forest avenues, until the grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, His feet dashed in the dew of Hermon, He must have gone to pray His first recorded prayer about death; and from the steep of it, before He knelt, could see to the south all the dwellings of the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the great light, the land of Zabulon and of Naphtali, Galilee of the nations, could see, even with His human sight, the gleam of that lake by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a place loved by Him, and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left unto them desolate; and chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the hills above Nazareth, sloping down to His old home; hills on which yet the stones lay loose that had been taken up to cast at Him when He left them for ever.
Woe! woe! woe! unto thee, Chorazin, Bethsaida and Magdala, for you have not repented yet, but still choose the ghosts that haunt the sepulchres out of which ye shall be called soon; too soon for many; for I say unto you that it is not the dead that sleep but the living.
The connection in Luke of the woes against Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin with the instruction of the seventy is very natural, and marks this mission as belonging to the close of the Galilean period, while the mission of the twelve belongs to the height of Jesus' popularity.
After his return he called Matthew from the receipt of customs, performed some cures, and created scandal by eating with publicans and sinners. Then he went healing and teaching through Galilee, and even journeyed to Tyre and Sidon. He chose the twelve disciples, and sent them abroad to preach the new gospel. He worked miracles in Bethsaida and Chorazin villages two or three miles from Capernaum.
Peter walked upon the water; Magdala, where Lazarus and his sister dwelt; Capernaum, where our Lord raised to life the son of the nobleman; Bethsaida in Galilee, the native place of St. Peter and St. Andrew; Chorazin, where our Lord cured those possessed with devils; Cæsarea, and the spot where our Lord was baptized, as well as Jericho and Jerusalem.
Jesus looked at him earnestly, and said: "If you keep on saying: I thought as much, well, then, so it must be. Think rather that God's angels are with you! And you, James! Have you forgotten the trust you had in God on dry land? Yesterday on the quiet eventide, when, well fed and cared for we sat in the inn at Chorazin, you spoke much of trust in God. Trust Him also in distress."
But wisdom is justified of her children. Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
No man among you, minister or no minister, good minister or bad, will be able to sin with impunity. But he who sins on and on after good preaching will be beaten with many stripes. 'Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Is this the mercy which he tells us is blessed? Again: "And as ye would that men should do to you do ye also to them likewise." Another: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida ... and thou, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell." Is not this preaching the golden rule and practicing something else, as a man might?
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