Luke 11:50

That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary: yea, I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation.

Required of this generation ... The prophecy is here extended by Jesus to reveal the fate of the chosen people. The long ages of their rebellious conduct against God would at last be resolved in the final hardening and overthrow of their nation, coupled with the scattering of the Jews all over the earth, the primary fulfillment of which occurred less than a generation afterward in the Jewish-Roman war which destroyed the Holy City in 70 A.D. The appearance of Christ provided the last opportunity for Israel. Their long sustained habit of breaking God's laws and murdering his messengers had been endured on the part of God, for the reason that the preservation of Israel was necessary until the promised Seed should be delivered; but now that the Son of David had indeed appeared on earth, the summary punishment which the nation had so long merited would be suspended no longer. No generation was ever punished for the sins of its ancestors, except in the sense of their receiving the consequences of choices made by their ancestors, the great example of this being the sufferings of humanity due to the sin of Adam; but, in this place, more was intended. Not only would the ancient policy of Israel in rejecting God and raising up a king of their own choice finally reach its climax in that generation; but added to that disaster was the inveterate wickedness of that generation themselves in rejecting the Messiah, bringing a deserved judgment of punishment upon them. Had they received Christ, the blood shed by their ancestors would not have been required of them; but through their continuation in the evil ways of their ancestors, they brought the accumulated wrath of centuries upon themselves.

Zachariah ... Many modern commentators identify this person with "Zechariah, the son of Jehoida (2 Chronicles 24:20,21); and, as 2Chronicles was the last book in the Hebrew arrangement of the Old Testament Scriptures, it is supposed that Jesus referred to Abel, the first victim of murder recorded in Genesis, and coupled it with this example from the last book of the Hebrew Old Testament, thus making these first and last murders an idiomatic summary of all the murders perpetrated by God's enemies. The conviction here is that there are insurmountable difficulties in such a view: (1) It is based on the conceit that Matthew's identification of the Zachariah mentioned here is an error. Matthew called him "Zachariah the son of Barachiah" (Matthew 23:35); and, although it is fully possible that Jehoida and Barachiah are the same person (many Hebrews had more than one name), yet there is no proof of it. (2) Furthermore, the circumstance of this murder's having taken place between the altar and the sanctuary is not mentioned in 2Chronicles, where the murder was described as occurring "in the court of the house of the Lord" (2 Chronicles 24:21). This COULD be a description of the same place; but McGarvey denied this.[52] (3) The third and most convincing objection lies in the words "whom ye slew." This refers to a murder which those very persons whom Jesus was addressing had committed. It touches the ancient murder mentioned in 2Chronicles in only two places, the similarity of the names of the victims and the proximity of the scenes of the two murders. It had been a secret murder, of course, not in the court, but between the "altar and the sanctuary"; and by these words Jesus revealed that he knew all about the secret lives of his diabolical enemies. See more on this in my Commentary on Matthew, Matthew 23:35.

Thus, Christ included all the righteous blood ever shed on earth, from the times of Abel until that very hour, as entering into the weight of that judgment that fell upon that generation, and not merely the far shorter lists of murders recorded between Genesis and 2Chronicles. By understanding "whom ye slew" as a reference to the men in his presence and a murder they had committed, the appearance of error in Matthew's Gospel is avoided; but of course there are those who would much prefer to see an error in Matthew, and yet there can be no intelligent denial of the possible meaning ascribed here to the clause, "whom ye slew."

Of course, it will be argued "that it is not likely" that two men with the same (or similar) names would have been murdered; but why not? Josephus even gives the name of a third "Zacharias, son of Baruch"[53] who was slain about thirty-four years after Jesus spoke this. Furthermore, it should be noted that Jesus spoke this denunciation three decades before Luke recorded it, and that the Gospel itself was written nearly a decade before the third Zacharias was killed in A.D. 68.

[52] J. W. McGarvey, Commentary on Matthew and Mark (Delight, Arkansas: The Gospel Light Publishing Company, 1875), p. 202.

[53] Flavius Josephus, Life and Works, translated by William Whiston (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston), p. 755.