<p>8:20 See on 6:26.</p>
<p><i>And Jesus said to him: The foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head</i>- The only other time the Greek phrase is used in the record that on death, He &lsquo;bowed His head&rsquo; (Jn. 19:30). His later warnings about what it meant to follow Him were to the effect that it meant carrying our cross with Him to the place of crucifixion. Perhaps there is a hint of that here. It may be that that night, the Lord literally had nowhere to sleep. But it was not the case for Him every night. Yet He seems to be purposefully painting a demanding picture in order to make the point- that following Him was not a case of tagging along with the crowd, hearing garbled reports of His words from others and enthusiastically hoping for some personal benefit from being involved with Him. Jesus died because He gave out His Spirit, as an act of the will. He gave His life, it was not taken from Him by murder. The fact the Lord died not just because events overtook Him and happened to Him is perhaps reflected in Paul&rsquo;s speaking in Rom. 6 of &ldquo;the death that he died&hellip; the life that he liveth&rdquo;. He died a death; he Himself died it; and yet just as truly, He lived a life. He didn&rsquo;t just let events happen to Him. He was not mastered in His life by human lusts and selfish desires; He was in that sense the only ultimately free person to have ever lived. When He &ldquo;bowed his head&rdquo;, the same Greek is used as in Mt. 8:20: &ldquo;The Son of man has no place to lay / bow his head&rdquo;. It was as if He only lay His head down, giving out His life, when He knew it was time to rest from a day&rsquo;s work well done. He lived a surpassingly free life, and freely gave that life up; it was not taken from Him.&nbsp;When the Lord spoke of how &quot;the son of man has nowhere to lay his head&quot; (Mt. 8:20), He was apparently alluding to a common proverb about how humanity generally [&quot;son of man&quot; as generalized humanity] is homeless in the cosmos. In this case, we see how the Lord took every opportunity to attest to the fact that what was true of humanity in general was true of Him. Perhaps this explains His fondness for describing Himself as &quot;son of man&quot;, a term which can mean both humanity in general, and also specifically the Messiah predicted in Daniel.</p>