<p>13:10 <i>And said, You son of the devil</i>- The Jewish religious leaders were &ldquo;of your father the Devil&rdquo; (Jn. 8:44). This would explain the Lord&rsquo;s description of Judas as a Devil (Jn. 6:70) because the Jewish Devil had entered him and conceived, making him a &lsquo;Devil&rsquo; also. In the space of a few verses, we read the Lord Jesus saying that &ldquo;the Devil&rdquo; is a &ldquo;liar&rdquo; &ndash; and then stating that His Jewish opponents were &ldquo;liars&rdquo; (Jn. 8:44,55). These are the only places where the Lord uses the word &ldquo;liar&rdquo; &ndash; clearly enough He identified those Jews with &ldquo;the Devil&rdquo;. If the Jews&rsquo; father was the Devil, then &lsquo;the Devil&rsquo; was a fitting description of them too. They were a &ldquo;generation of (gendered by) vipers&rdquo;, alluding back to the serpent in Eden, which epitomized &ldquo;the Devil&rdquo;; &ldquo;that old serpent, called (i.e. being similar to) the Devil and Satan&rdquo; (Rev. 12:9). In the same way as Judas became a Devil, the &ldquo;false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-Jesus&rdquo; is called a &ldquo;son of the Devil&rdquo; (Acts 13:6,10), which description makes him an embodiment of the Jewish opposition to the Gospel.</p><p>&quot;You son of the Devil&quot; is implying he was a tare sown among the wheat (Mt. 13:38).</p><p><i>You enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and all villainy, will you not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?</i>- Just as the preaching of the Gospel was to make straight paths for the Messiah to come (Lk. 3:4), so we are to make&nbsp;<i>our</i>&nbsp;paths straight (Heb. 12:13)- as if somehow we are the Lord Jesus; His revelation to this world at the second coming will in a sense be our revelation. Hence the final visions of Revelation speak of the Lord's second coming in terms which are applicable to the community of those in Him e.g. a city of people coming down from Heaven to earth. John&rsquo;s preaching was in order to make s.w. &lsquo;to bring forth fruit&rsquo; His the Lord&rsquo;s paths straight- but the ways of the Lord are &ldquo;right&rdquo; s.w. &ldquo;straight&rdquo; anyway (Acts 13:10). So how could John&rsquo;s preaching make the Lord&rsquo;s ways straight / right, when they already are? God is so associated with His people that their straightness or crookedness reflects upon Him; for they are His witnesses in this world. His ways are their ways. This is the N.T. equivalent of the O.T. concept of keeping / walking in the way of the Lord (Gen. 18:19; 2 Kings 21:22). Perhaps this is the thought behind the exhortation of Heb. 12:13 to make straight paths for our own feet. We are to bring our ways into harmony with the Lord&rsquo;s ways; for He is to be us, His ways our ways. Thus Is. 40:3, which is being quoted in Lk. 3:4, speaks of &ldquo;Prepare ye the way&nbsp;<i>of the Lord</i>&rdquo;, whereas Is. 62:10 speaks of &ldquo;Prepare ye the way&nbsp;<i>of the people</i>&rdquo;. Yet tragically, the way / path of Israel was not the way / path of the Lord (Ez. 18:25).</p><p>&quot;The right ways&quot; is literally, the straight streets. The same word is used of the street called &quot;Straight&quot; where Paul was baptized (Acts 9:11). That street was chosen in order to demonstrate to Paul how his new life was to be walked along a straight way or street, towards the Kingdom; remembering how John the Baptist's mission had been to make straight s.w. the Lord's paths or roads (Mt. 3:3).</p>