Matthew 23:37

Jerusalem was the city of David and the city of peace. It was the city God had chosen to reveal Himself to Israel through the temple and as the capital of His kingdom on earth. However it (personified) had killed the prophets God had sent to His people with His messages. Stoning was the penalty for the worst crimes in Israel, including false prophecy. The people had used this form of execution on those who faithfully brought God’s Word to them. Jesus’ words recall His ancestor David’s sorrow over the death of his son Absalom (2 Samuel 18:33; 2 Samuel 19:4). The repetition of "Jerusalem" reveals the strong emotion that Jesus felt (cf. Luke 10:41; Acts 9:4).

Many times during His ministry Jesus had sought to gather and shelter Jerusalem, used here by synecdoche to represent the whole nation. Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which one part stands for the whole or the whole stands for one of its parts. He wanted the people to take refuge in Him as chicks do under their mother hen physically and as God’s people had done under God’s care spiritually (cf. Deuteronomy 32:11; Psalms 17:8; Psalms 36:7; Psalms 91:4; Jeremiah 48:40). In spite of God’s loving initiatives Israel had willfully rejected Him repeatedly. Jesus’ identification with God is very clear in this verse (cf. Ezekiel 18:32). Jeremiah prefigured Jesus as he sadly described Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians in the Book of Lamentations.