<p>23:35&nbsp;<em>That upon you</em>- One would&rsquo;ve expected God to be so hurt by the death of His Son that judgment came immediately upon those responsible. But instead, the Lord predicted that the judgment would come only after the Jews had further persecuted the apostles as they went out to fulfil the great preaching commission to the Jews. This apparent delay was not because God was not hurt or not angry. He was. But His patient love and desire for human repentance, to give them yet more chances, was simply greater. The delay was so that the Lord could send out the apostles of :34 to appeal to Israel for repentance. But they had been given final appeal after final appeal. And still God waited for their repentance. With what eagerness must He have watched for response to the preaching to them, and with what generous provision He would&rsquo;ve provided for all those who wished to make that appeal to the Jews. And nothing has changed to this day. The idea of blood coming upon,&nbsp;<em>epi</em>, a person clearly meant &lsquo;guilt for their death&rsquo;. Soon the Jews were to be using this very term in asking for the blood of Jesus to be &lsquo;upon&rsquo; them (27:25). Because Jesus was the personification of God&rsquo;s prophetic word and thereby the summary of all the prophets, their desire for&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;blood to be upon them was effectively taking upon themselves the blood of the prophets.</p><p><em>May fall the guilt for all the righteous blood shed on the land</em>- This stands for &lsquo;<em>judgment for</em>&nbsp;all the righteous blood shed&rsquo;. Note how language is being used here. The sin is put by metonymy for&nbsp;<em>the judgment for</em>&nbsp;the sin. Sin is its own judgment. To sin is to ask for judgment / condemnation. In this lies the utter lack of logic in any sin. And iniquity was added to their iniquity (Ps. 69:27- a specific prophecy of the Jews who killed Jesus), just as righteousness can be imputed.&nbsp;</p><p><em>From the blood of Abel the righteous</em>- If that generation were guilty of Abel&rsquo;s murder, this associates them with Cain. The Jewish false teachers are likened to Cain (1 Jn. 3:12; Jude 11); and the Lord says that the Jews seeking to kill Him are the sons of the one who was a &ldquo;murderer from the beginning&rdquo; (Jn. 8:44). Cain was the first murderer.&nbsp;</p><p><em>To the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah</em>- Or, Baruk. The prophet Zechariah would fit this description, but there&rsquo;s no record of him being murdered. Josephus in&nbsp;<em>The Jewish War</em>&nbsp;4.5.4 speaks of a Zacharias ben Baruch who was assassinated by the Zealots in the Sanhedrin. But he was not a prophet, and this event was still future. And he wasn&rsquo;t killed in the temple. However, there was a prophet Zechariah who was stoned to death in the temple (2 Chron. 24:19-22). He was the son or grandson of Jehoiada, so it&rsquo;s feasible he was the son of a Baruk. The Hebrew Bible ended with 2 Chronicles, and so the mention of this murder would form an appropriate inclusio with the first murder, of Abel. All the murders of the faithful, from the first to the last as recorded in the Hebrew Bible, were going to have their judgment exacted from the generation who crucified God&rsquo;s Son.&nbsp;</p><p><em>Whom you slew between the sanctuary and the altar</em>- See on :18&nbsp;<em>The altar.</em>&nbsp;The mention of this detail would perhaps be because the Lord has just spoken of their wrong attitude to both temple and altar (:20,21). He is saying that effectively they had desecrated temple and altar- when they claimed such deep reverence for them. Their mercenary focus upon the gold of the temple and the gifts placed upon the altar was to such an extent that they had robbed the actual temple and altar of their holiness. This was no better than killing a righteous prophet in the holy place.&nbsp;</p><p><em>&quot;</em>Whom <em>you</em> slew&quot; shows that the murder was counted to them, in the sense that the blood of those martyrs was &ldquo;required of this generation&rdquo; (Lk. 11:51). Sin, like righteousness, can be imputed as part of the downward spiral which operates as the opposite of the upward spiral in spiritual life.</p>