10:1-16 Christ sent the seventy disciples, two and two, that they might strengthen and encourage one another. The ministry of the gospel calls men to receive Christ as a Prince and a Saviour; and he will surely come in the power of his Spirit to all places whither he sends his faithful servants. But the doom of those who receive the grace of God in vain, will be very fearful Those who despise the faithful ministers of Christ, who think meanly of them, and look scornfully upon them, will be reckoned as despisers of God and Christ.

Verse 12. - But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city. Such a rejection implies that they would have nothing to do with the Master of these preachers, the pitiful, loving, Galilaean Teacher. These were days of possible mighty blessings, of proportional terrible punishments. The woe of Sodom, that well-known swift destruction, most probably through sudden volcanic agency, was tolerable in comparison with the far more awful doom reserved in the immediate future, at the hands of Rome, for these guilty cities of Palestine (see a further note on this on ver. 15).

But I say unto you,.... The same that he said to the twelve apostles, when he sent them out, Matthew 10:15,

that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. By "that day" is meant, the famous day to come, the last day; the day of judgment, as it is expressed in Matthew; and so the Ethiopic version reads here, "it shall be better in the day of judgment". Sodom was a very wicked city, and was destroyed by fire from heaven for its iniquity, and its inhabitants suffer the vengeance of eternal fire: and there was also Gomorrha, a neighbouring city, guilty of the same crimes, and shared the same fate; and which is mentioned along with Sodom in Matthew; and is here read in the Persic version. And the sense of the whole is, that though the iniquities of Sodom and Gomorrha were very great, and their punishment very exemplary; yet, as there will be degrees of torment in hell, the case of such a city, which has been favoured with the Gospel, and has despised and rejected it, will be much worse than the case of those cities, which were devoured by fire from heaven; and than that of the inhabitants of them in the future judgment, and to all eternity; See Gill on Matthew 10:15.

12-15. (See on [1627]Mt 11:20-24).

for Sodom—Tyre and Sidon were ruined by commercial prosperity; Sodom sank through its vile pollutions: but the doom of otherwise correct persons who, amidst a blaze of light, reject the Saviour, shall be less endurable than that of any of these.

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