The Fox and the Hen
Lent 2 Year C 2025; Luke 13:31-35
In the temptation story we were reminded that Jerusalem was the center of the world in Jewish imagination, and in biblical narrative generally. The last temptation was offered there as a sign that God’s presence made it the place where true power lay. Jerusalem and how power is wielded there is also central in this week’s and next week’s Gospels, both from Luke 13 (although read in reverse order).
This scene begins not in the city however but with the pretensions and fears of a regional power-broker, Herod Antipas the tetrarch of Galilee. Herod—a son of that Herod the Great of the infancy stories—has featured before in Luke’s narrative, the wicked king (as the various Herods always are) who disposed of John the Baptist. His imprisonment of John had been mentioned by Luke straight after the account of John’s ministry. Herod “had been reproved by [John] for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done” (3: 19). Although Luke never tells the story of John’s death—for him it would be going backwards, conceptually—John is not absent from the narrative, at least as a point of reference (cf. 7:18-35).
Herod’s motive for seeking to kill Jesus is not stated, but can reasonably be inferred from the comparison reported with John. So when Herod had asked, like the disciples (and like the reader) who this Jesus was (9:9), he makes a puzzled comparison with John and only there alludes to the murder. Luke thus implies that Herod feared the same frankness from Jesus that had turned him against John.
The fact that Pharisees carry the message may seem surprising, because they are so often cast as opponents of Jesus. There are some other places where we realize Jesus and the Pharisees took each other seriously (14:1; John 3:1) and that not every interaction was immediately conflictual; yet here their warning reflects a lack of understanding of what Jesus must do.
The Pharisees warn Jesus to “get away from here” because of Herod. What “here” amounts to isn’t completely clear; Jesus may not actually be in Herod’s territory, although Luke is not always about the details when it comes to geography. Jesus had begun his fateful journey to Jerusalem some time ago, after the events establishing his identity in chapter 9: “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51) and just before this story we read that “Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem” (13:22).
The point here is less the exact location than the direction of travel. As it will turn out, Jesus ironically is actually on his way to see Herod (23:8-12) as well as to destruction (or so it will seem). The sayings that follow create a contrast that is moral more than spatial.
“Go and tell that fox for me” is a scathing analysis of Herod’s character and actions. The pithy words that follow are partly a description of just what Jesus has been doing in the intervening chapters, but also a striking anticipation of how his work will come to a head:
Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem (32-3)
How this constitutes an answer to Herod may initially seem baffling, yet in both his acts of healing power and in his willingness to suffer Jesus will show Herod what real authority means. There is obviously an allusion to the coming events involving a “third day,” and so this connects Jesus’ present ministry and his work of healing and wholeness (contrasted implicitly with the fox’s work of wanton destruction) with that great work to be accomplished in Jerusalem.
Now however Jesus lifts his voice in lament over Jerusalem. The first part of this saying places him in the tradition of rejected prophets, a reprise of the connections made in his transfigured experience with Moses and Elijah. The second part is more striking though, as Jesus likens his care for this city, with which Luke has so closely identified him from childhood on, to the concern of a mother hen for her young (cf Ps 91:4). The depth of this connection is presently most clearly in this Gospel. Only Luke will report Jesus weeping when he enters the city, after he is acclaimed (as this saying anticipates) as the one who comes in the name of the Lord (19:41) .
While almost identical to Matthew’s version of the saying (23:37-39), Luke has distinctively placed this straight after the summation and dismissal of Herod the fox. This juxtaposition of the fox and the hen thus forms a lesson about power and its true nature. Herod—like some rulers of more recent times—sees his subjects alternately as threats to be neutralized or punished, or just as prey for exploitation, and thus proves to be only interested in his own welfare. Jesus’ unmitigated care for his own people protects them, yet makes him apparently vulnerable.
The image of the mother hen is one of deepest love and care, but also of vulnerability. The reader is aware of the suffering that Jerusalem underwent a few decades after these events, as well as of Jesus’ own passion. We should understand this not as a dismissal of Jerusalem’s suffering, but as solidarity with it on Jesus’ part. He mourns not just his rejection, but the suffering the people will undergo at the hands of other predatory powers.
Herod and Jesus will eventually meet in person, and in Jerusalem (23:8-12). That encounter (also unique to Luke) replays this comparison of the two models of power. Herod in this version will be the one responsible for dressing Jesus in royal apparel (23:11), an intended form of mockery whose irony doubles back on Herod. Mockery and derision in the mouths of the corrupt powerful, the foxes, serve mostly to show their own unfitness to wield authority. The hen is a symbol of the crucified, one whose work is fulfilled not in her own protection, let alone pursuit of her own self-interest, but in the healing and flourishing of her children.