Luke 19:39-40 39And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” 40And answering, he said, “I say to you, if these were kept silent, the stones would cry out.”
These verses highlight the other response Jesus got when he came into Jerusalem. Not everyone following Jesus was a disciple. At different points in his Gospel, Luke has noted questions and criticisms from the Pharisees. Only Luke records the criticism of the Pharisees in these verses. This is the last time this group of pious Jews is mentioned in Luke. They represent those who opposed Jesus and embody the “enemies” from the earlier parable in verse 27. Not all Pharisees were against Jesus (13:31), but most were blinded to the fresh message of wholeness through love that Jesus brought. They were blinded by their effort to be holy before God by obedience to the law and their various interpretations of it.
The Pharisees following Jesus on the first day of the week as he entered Jerusalem were critical of the praise the disciples were heaping upon him. The implication is that they did not believe Jesus worthy of the designations attributed to him by the crowds. Why were they following him in the first place? Perhaps they were curious like other people, or they were hoping that he might actually meet their expectations. More likely, they disagreed with the disciples and wanted to maintain the religious status quo and hold on to their elite status.
Jesus’ response was in the form of a soft rebuke. His words echo Habakuk 2:11, which refers to the stones crying out. The grammatical construction is a rare conditional clause (ean with the future tense) that shows that if the first part is not done, the second part will be done. This was a time of praise and celebration because soon there would be weeping and fear. These verses prelude the sad rejection Jesus would soon experience in Jerusalem by the Jewish elite. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says, “ a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” This was a time to laughter, rejoicing, and dancing because the King had come to town. Even the disciples who had followed Jesus of three years did not understand the suffering that awaited Jesus that week. The Pharisees gave a premonition of what was to come.
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