Page 253 - Demo

249i ) A Scribe, that is a learned man, says, “I will follow thee wheresoever thou goest.” Jesus (pbuh) answers: “The foxes have their holes; the birds of heaven their own nests; but the Son of Man has no place where to lay his head.”[1] In the verse following, he refuses one of his followers’ permission to go and bury his father! You will find not a single saint, father, or commentator to have troubled his head or the faculty of reasoning in order to discover the very simple sense embodied in the refusal of Jesus (pbuh) to allow that learned Scribe to follow him. If he had place for thirteen heads he could certainly provide a place for the fourteenth too. Besides, he could have registered him among the seventy adherents he had [2] The Scribe in question was not an ignorant fisherman like the sons of Zebedee and of Jonah; he was a scholar and a practised lawyer. There is no reason to suspect his sincerity; he was led to believe that Jesus (pbuh) was the predicted Messiah, the Son of Man, who at any moment might summon his heavenly legions and mount upon the throne of his ancestor David. Jesus (pbtuhem) perceived the erroneous notion of the Scribe, and plainly let him understand that he who had not two square yards of ground on earth to lay his head could naturally not be “the Son of Man”! He was not harsh to the Scribe; he benevolently saved him from wasting his time in the pursuit of a futile hope!ii) Jesus Christ (pbuh) is reported to have declared that the Son of Man “will separate the sheep from the goats.” [3] The “sheep” symbolize the believing Israelites who will enter into the Kingdom but the “goats” signify the unbelieving Jews who had joined with the enemies of the true religion and were consequently doomed to perdition. This was practically what the Apocalypse of Enoch had predicted about the Son of Man. Jesus (pbuh)[1] Matt. viii. 20.[2] Luke x. 1.[3] Matt. xxv. 31-34.