Silversides:

Matthew 23:37:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kills the prophets, and stones them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! (Cf. Luke 13:34).

In this verse, Jerusalem evidently refers to the people of that city. It may have the leaders (denounced in the previous verses) especially in mind, but they were not solely responsible for the death of the prophets, or even of Christ himself; nor did the judgment fall only on them, as many ordinary people perished in the fall of Jerusalem.

The gathering can only be the reception of sinners by Christ, as the God-man Redeemer, the reception promised in Matthew 11 :28, ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ John Murray tells us:

What needs to be appreciated is that the embrace of which Jesus here speaks is that which he exercises in that unique office and prerogative that belong to him as the God-man Messiah and Savior. In view of the transcendent, divine function which he says he wished to perform, it would be illegitimate for us to say that here we have simply an example of his human desire or will.⁴⁴

The gathering envisaged is to Christ as one person in two distinct natures; it is that gathering which issues in forgiveness of sins, peace with God and rest unto men’s souls.

Next, the term thy children needs careful interpretation. Opponents of the free offer have striven to make the children refer to the elect of God who were actually gathered by Christ through efficacious grace. For example, Angus Stewart writes:

However, “how often” simply tells us that the religious leaders (‘Jerusalem”) opposed Christ’s gathering His elect (‘Jerusalem’s children”) many times… Yet Christ the king gathers all Jerusalem’s children by His irresistible grace.⁴⁵

This view is untenable for several reasons:

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Ford:

Now, how often does God clear himself, and cast all blame of men’s destruction upon themselves? Ezek 18:31,32, “Cast away all your transgressions,” &c, “for why will you die? I have no pleasure in the death of him that dies.” Hos. 13:8, “O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself.” To this purpose also read Isaiah 5. v. 1, 4….

To return where we left before; I shall a little further, and more fully show, that God is (if I may so say) exceeding careful to clear himself of having any hand in the death of him that dies: He thinks that he has done what was to be done on his part; “What could have been done more, that I have not done?” Isaiah 5:3.4. As if he should say, there wanted nothing to their being a fruitful people, if they would themselves. Consider also what our Savior says, John 5:40. “And,” (or rather, But), “you will not come unto me  that you might have life.” Vers. 39, he had told them, that the Scriptures testified to him, that he was the light and the life of men; “But” (says he), “you will not come unto me that you may have life.” Is not that as much as to say, “Here is life laid up in me, all sufficient to all intents and uses an safe enough, but you will not come and take it, though you may have it only for the asking?” If this be not the full purport and meaning of those words, I cannot imagine what it should be. For our Savior speaks plainly to them, that if they should die in their sins, it is not because eternal life is not to be had, but because they will not have it. And is not this enough to clear God, and condemn the unbelieving world? Add to this that affectionate passage of our Savior, Matt. 23:37, “I would have gathered them as a hen gathers her chickens, but they would not.” This clears him; and dare any man say or think, that our Savior meant otherwise than he spoke? O! how happy had that people been, if they had taken him at his word! Take one place more, Luke 19:41, 42, how pathetically he wishes, “if thou had known in this day, the things that belong unto thy peace!” Was it not in his heart (think you) that Jerusalem was the only cause of her destruction? And by all you may see, the Lord is willing to clear himself, and we may assure ourselves he is able to do it. He well knows, that all his dispensations of grace and providence are such, as will clear him against all the world. Our Savior knew well (and has not forgotten it to this day) that when he was on earth, he was no way wanting to the work which his Father had put into his hands. And this appears Isaiah 49:4, that God will justify him, that it was not by any default of his, that his labor had no better success; “His judgment is with the Lord and his reward with his God.” He knew (and knows still) that he had one all that he had to do, for the reclaiming of his countrymen and for the reconciling of the world. Did the Jews wont [for] any means, whereby they might know him to be, as he was indeed, the promised Messiah?

Thomas Ford, Autokatakritos, or, The Sinner Condemned of Himself (London: Printed for Edward Brewster, and are to be sold by Giles Widowes, at the Maiden-head, over against the Half-Moon, in Aldersgate-street, near Jewen-street, 1668), 7, and 9-10. [Some spelling modernized, some reformatting;  square bracketed insert mine; and underlining mine.]

Dabney:

Scriptures Ascribe To God Pity Towards Lost.

This view¹ has a great advantage in that it reveals and enables us to receive those precious declarations of Scripture which declare the compassion of God towards even lost sinners. The glory of these representations is that they show us God’s benevolence as an infinite attribute, like all His other perfection’s. Even where it is rationally restrained, it exists. The fact that there is a lost order of angels, and that there are persons in our guilty race, who are objects of God’s decree of preterition, does not arise from any stint or failure of this infinite benevolence. It is as infinite, viewed as it qualifies God’s nature only as though He had given expression to it in the salvation of all the devils and lost men. We can now receive, without any abatement, such blessed declarations as Ps. 81:13; Ezek. 18:32; Luke 19:41, 42. We have no occasion for such questionable, and even perilous exegesis, as even Calvin² and Turretin feel themselves constrained to apply to the last. Afraid lest God’s principle of compassion (not purpose of rescue), towards sinners non elect, should find any expression, and thus mar the symmetry of their logic, they say that it was not Messiah the God man and Mediator, who wept over reprobate Jerusalem; but only the humanity of Jesus, our pattern. I ask. Is it competent to a mere humanity to say, “How often would I have gathered your children?” And to pronounce a final doom, “Your house is left unto you desolate?” The Calvinist should have paused, when he found himself wresting these Scriptures from the same point of view adopted by the ultra Arminian. But this is not the first time we have seen “extremes meet.” Thus argues the Arminian, “Since God is sovereign and omnipotent, if He has a propension, He indulges it, of course, in volition and action. Therefore, as He declares He had a propension of pity towards contumacious Israel, I conclude that He also had a volition to redeem them, and that He did whatever omnipotence could do against the obstinate contingency of their wills. Here then, I find the bulwark of my doctrine, that even omnipotence cannot certainly determine a free will.” And thus argues the ultra Calvinist. “Since God is sovereign and omnipotent, if He has any propension, He indulges it, of course, in volition and action. But if He had willed to convert reprobate Israel, He would infallibly have succeeded. Therefore He never had any propension of pity at all towards them.” And so this reasoner sets himself to explain away, by unscrupulous exegesis, the most precious revelations of God’s nature! Should not this fact, that two opposite conclusions are thus drawn from the same premises have suggested error in the premises? And the error of both extremists is just here. It is not true that if God has an active principle looking towards a given object, He will always express it in volition and action. This, as I have shown, is no more true of God than of a righteous and wise man. And as the good man, who was touched with a case of destitution, and yet determined that it was his duty not to use the money he had in giving alms, might consistently express what he truly felt of pity, by a kind word; so God consistently reveals the principle of compassion as to those whom, for wise reasons, He is determined not to save. We know that God’s omnipotence surely accomplishes every purpose of His grace. Hence, we know that He did not purposely design Christ’s sacrifice to effect the redemption of any others than the elect. But we hold it perfectly consistent with this truth, that the expiation of Christ for sin expiation of infinite value and universal fitness should be held forth to the whole world, elect and non elect, as a manifestation of the benevolence of God’s nature. God here exhibits a provision which is so related to the sin of the race, that by it, all those obstacles to every sinner’s return to his love, which his guilt and the law presents, are ready to be taken out of the way. But in every sinner, another class of obstacles exists; those, namely, arising out of the sinner’s own depraved will. As to the elect, God takes these obstacles also out of the way, by His omnipotent calling, in pursuance of the covenant of redemption made with, and fulfilled for them by their Mediator. As to the non elect, God has judged it best not to take this class of obstacles out of the way, the men therefore go on to indulge their own will in neglecting or rejecting Christ.  Dabney, Lectures, 532-533. [Footnotes mine and underlining mine.]

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¹The view that ascribes to God a disposition of pity towards the lost.

²Here, for some reason, Dabney is misataken in that Calvin adopts the reading of these verses in line with Dabney’s. The idea that in Matthew 23:37, Christ merely as a man desires to gather the “children” of the city is foreign to Calvin. For Calvin on Matthew 23:37 see here. Dabney is correct, however, on identifying Turretin’s position on this.

Hendriksen:

Christ’s final public address fittingly closes with a moving lament, in which are revealed both his solemn tenderness and the severity of divine judgment on all who have answered such marvelous compassion with contempt. The lamentation begins as follows: 37. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those that are sent to her! how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not!⁷⁸⁴

This outpouring of grief is addressed to “Jerusalem” because this city, being the capital, Israel’s very heart and center, symbolizes the spirit or attitude of the nation as a whole intense emotion, unfathomable pathos, finds its expression in the repetition of the word Jerusalem. Cf. “altar, altar” (I Kings 13:2), “Martha, Martha” (Luke 10:41), “Simon, Simon” (Luke 22:31), and such multiple repetitions as “O my son Absolom, my son, my son Absolom! if only I had died for you, O Absolom, my son, my son!” (II Sam. 18:33); and “Land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord” Jer. 22:29; cf. 7:4). That the nation was indeed guilty of killing and stoning God’s official ambassadors has already been established; see on 5:12. Proof for “How often would I have gathered your children to myself” is found first of all in the Gospel according to John (2: 14; 5: 14; 7: 14, 28; [8 :2] ; 10: 22, 23). Incidentally, this statement of Jesus also shows that even the Synoptics, though stressing Christ’s work in and around Galilee, do bear testimony to

the extensive labor which Jesus had performed in Jerusalem and vicinity. Bearing in mind, however, that Jerusalem represented the nation, it should be pointed out that Christ’s sympathy and yearning love had by no means been confined to the inhabitants of this city or even of Judea. It had been abundantly evident also in the northern regions. See Matt. 9:36; 11:25-30; 15:32; Luke 15; etc.

The simile Jesus uses is unforgettable. A chicken hawk suddenly appears, its wings folded, its eyes concentrated on the farmyard, its ominous claws ready to grasp a chick. Or, to change the figure, a storm is approaching. Lightning flashes become more frequent, the rumbling of the thunder grows louder and follows the electrical discharges more and more closely. Raindrops develop into a shower, the shower into a cloudburst. In either case what happens is that with an anxious and commanding “cluck, cluck, cluck!” the hen calls her chicks, conceals them under her protecting wings, and rushes off to a place of shelter. “How frequently,” says Jesus, “I have similarly yearned to gather you. But you refused to come.” Did they really think that his threats were empty, his predictions of approaching woe ridiculous?

The simile Jesus uses is unforgettable. A chicken hawk suddenly appears, its wings folded, its eyes concentrated on the farmyard, its ominous claws ready to grasp a chick. Or, to change the figure, a storm is approaching. Lightning flashes become more frequent, the rumbling of the thunder grows louder and follows the electrical discharges more and more closely. Raindrops develop into a shower, the shower into a cloudburst. In either case what happens is that with an anxious and commanding “cluck, cluck, cluck!” the hen calls her chicks, conceals them under her protecting wings, and rushes off to a place of shelter. “How frequently,” says Jesus, “I have similarly yearned to gather you. But you refused to come.” Did they really think that his threats were empty, his predictions of approaching woe ridiculous?

William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew, (Grand Rapids MI.: 1973), 839-840. [Footnote value and content original; Bold original; and underlining mine.]

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⁷⁸⁴In this passage apokteinousa and lithobolousa are fem. sing. present active participles; hence (the one or she) killing and stoning; apestalmenous is acc. pl. masc. perf. passive participle of apostello: those having been sent or commissioned, with the implication “by God”; ethelesa is first per. sing. aor. indic. of ethelo: (how often) did I yearn, followed by the double compound infinitive episunalaleo to gather to myself. Later in this passage the same verb occurs in connection with a bird; hence (as a hen) gathers to herself. The noun ornis (cf. “ornithology”) basically means bird, and as such can refer to either a cock or a hen. By reason of the action ascribed to it, the reference here seems to be to a hen. The noun nossia is related to neos; hence, new ones, young ones, brood. With pterux, wing, (here acc. plural pterugas) compare petomai to fly. English pinion, pen, feather, etc., are related to it. Note also how the singular “Jerusalem” finally expands into the plural ouk ethelesata.