<p>21:16&nbsp;<em>Do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them: Yes. Did you never read</em>- He was speaking to the educated who could read. &quot;Never read&quot; would've jarred with them- they spent their lives poring over the Scriptures. But we can read and yet never really read as God intends.</p><p><em>Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise?</em>- A strange grammatical construction, the plural &quot;babes&quot; have a singular &quot;mouth&quot;, so united are they in devotion to the Lord. Hence we find that the word translated &quot;perfected&quot; is elsewhere rendered &quot;perfectly joined together&quot;. The quotation from Ps. 8:2 is from a Psalm often alluded to in the New Testament. It was first written as David reflected upon his victory over Goliath, an incident clearly typical of the Lord's victory on the cross. The young people rejoiced in David's victory and joined Him in triumphing over his enemies in praise to God for the victory. This indicates that the Lord considered His victory as in a sense already accomplished; He saw those youngsters' praise of Him and acceptance of their place in God's house as being effectively their praise for His victory over the Goliath of sin. The quotation also associates the angry, intellectually defeated Jewish leaders with the Philistines- another one in a series of suggestions that they are effectively Gentiles and no longer God's people (see on :13). Let's pause to give all this teaching its due weight- that legalism and exclusiveness are no better than Baal worship, and such orthodoxy is only a faithfulness to human tradition rather than to God.</p>