Jesus Called the King a Fox, Then Described God as a Mother Hen. Here's Why Both Matter.

(Hey secular scholar friends, this one’s for the insiders, but I welcome your feedback and critiques now and always.)

Every few years, lectionary preachers end up on this curious little passage, where Jesus calls Herod a “fox” and then calls God a “Mother Hen.” Isn’t that neat? Let’s look closer…

Jesus Called the King a Fox, Then Described God as a Mother Hen. Here's Why Both Matter.

When Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him (Luke 13:31-35), Jesus responds with three moves: he declares his mission of healing, he denounces the pattern of political violence that kills prophets, and he envisions God's desire to gather her children together under her wings. This three-part response — declare, denounce, envision — is a model for how the church responds to empire in every generation. Including ours. Including now.

What Jesus Actually Does When Threatened

The passage is short and moves fast, so it's worth slowing down.

Pharisees — ordinary people, not officials — come to Jesus and say: get away from here. Herod wants to kill you. This is a warning, not a trap.

Jesus responds in layers.

First, he insults the king. "Go and tell that fox for me..." The Harper Collins Study Bible notes that "fox" is a dangerous insult directed at Herod — not a casual remark. Jesus does not insult the Pharisees who delivered the message. He focuses his anger toward the person with political power from the occupying empire. Jesus may show anger, but he tends to direct it at symbols and systems of injustice, not at the people caught inside them.

Second, he declares his mission. "I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work." This is good news for anyone who loves mercy. Universal healing and wellness is a blessing — unless you are a ruler who benefits from the suffering of others. When the poor have less, the rich have more. Jesus is announcing that he is healing the people, now and in days to come, and he is announcing it directly to the king who profits from their pain.

Third, he denounces a pattern. "It is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem." Jesus draws attention to the cyclical targeting of prophets — inflammatory truth-tellers and protesters — who were taken from their homes, detained, and killed by one empire after another in the political center of Judea. This is not a one-time event. It is a pattern of oppression at the hands of successive occupiers, and Jesus names it.

Fourth, he envisions God's desire. "How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" In this moment, the image shifts entirely. The same Jesus who just insulted a king now describes God as a mother bird gathering her children into safety and warmth. God's desire is not conquest. God's desire is not for her children to be pitted against each other. God's desire is to hold them together — protected, warm, under her wings.

Suffering may be the product of the natural world, of the hardened heart, of the cold chaos of a random universe. But the God of the Gospel does not delight in our suffering. God's desire is for God's people to be held together in safety and in love.

The Land Between the Jordan and the Sea

To understand why this passage matters now, you need some history. Not because the history is simple — it is not — but because without it, the prophetic tradition Jesus is standing in becomes invisible.

Long before Jesus, the people in the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River detached from the Egyptian Empire. This land became known as Canaan and Philistia. Over time, it was governed by a particular family of Canaanites — the descendants of Israel, the Israelites — who established a kingdom, selected Jerusalem as their capital, and grew into a large united monarchy.

But Jerusalem sits where three continents converge. Europe, Asia, and Africa all meet in this region, and so do their armies. Over the centuries, the Kingdom of Israel's governments and prophets were decimated by wars against neighboring empires — Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek.

By Jesus's time, the last known remnant of Israel was called Judea. Its people were called Judeans, later shortened to Jews. But the Romans exercised severe military influence over the region to maintain a comfortable way of life in the Roman mainland.

After Jesus's death, Rome destroyed Jerusalem and built a military base on top of it. In response to widespread Jewish revolt, Rome tightened its grip, outlawed Jewish practices, killed and deported countless Jews, and renamed the land Palestina — a Greek pronunciation of Philistia. Many Jews died, many left, and many remained as Palestinians.

Centuries later, after the Ottoman Empire collapsed following World War I, the land — now pronounced Palestine by English speakers — fell under British control. Britain governed through settler colonialism: establishing power by displacing indigenous peoples with settlements, sowing seeds of division. Many of these settlers were Jews with long histories of persecution for their Jewish identities — persecution that began with their original deportation from Judea.

Conflict grew between Palestinian Arab and Jewish communities. After World War II, Britain withdrew. In 1948, the State of Israel was established on Palestinian land, largely by Jewish settlers with American support. Indigenous Palestinians remained on the land, as they had for generations.

Today, two peoples are locked in a struggle for home. Both have roots in the region stretching back to ancient civilizations. Neither has a clear home outside of it. Neither has an unbroken line of continuity from ancient kingdom to modern state. Ancient names — Israel, Palestina — have been resurrected to legitimize some groups and delegitimize others. But they are not without some truth on each side.

We Are the Empire

Something must be said plainly.

The United States benefits enormously from its influence over the State of Israel. Former President Biden stated that an alliance with Israel is in America's self-interest, and that "if Israel did not exist, the United States would have to invent a new one." Strong American influence over a state in the Middle East is considered necessary to prevent disruption to the flow of fossil fuels — fuels that power our military, which in turn maintains the comfortable way of life we enjoy.

American foreign policy operates on the premise that a degree of destabilization in the Middle East is actually necessary for global stability. But since this destabilization is inherently violent, the peace we enjoy in the United States — the Pax Americana — is fueled by war.

The comfort we enjoy is largely because our leaders choose to nurture the seeds of division. When they have less, we have more. This is the logic of empire. It was the logic of Rome. And we live inside it.

To truly bring about safety and healing, we need to be aware that despite our challenges and undeniable hardships, we are living in the modern-day Rome. Our nation is a comfortable global empire that relies on a military, which in turn relies on the occupation of others for power.

Healing means learning how to stop relying on the suffering of others. Complete safety and healing requires an end to empire. To finish the healing, we must stop the hurting.

As John Wesley taught: rule one, do no harm. Sanitize before surgery. The harm of imperialism must be managed before peace efforts can become fully realized in occupied lands. America has been performing surgery in the Middle East since the end of World War II, but our hands are not clean — and we benefit from the infections.

Rich and Haim

Let me tell you about a man named Rich.

Rich was one of my patients when I worked as a hospital chaplain in an advanced-stage oncology unit. He was born in Israel, among the world's very first generation of Israeli children. His parents were Jews who had finally found a safe home.

Rich shared that although he was born in Israel, he had emigrated to the United States with his husband, Haim. Haim died from complications of HIV — a disease whose devastation was deliberately amplified by an American administration that weaponized it against gay men.

Rich waited patiently from his hospital bed, hoping to reunite with Haim in heaven. When he told me about his vision of going home to his husband, we both teared up.

God does not desire conquest. God does not desire for her children to be pitted against each other. God does not desire the destruction of the West Bank, where a beloved church member learned to cook and to play soccer. God does not desire the destruction of Rich's hometown, where he and Haim met and had their first kiss.

The people of Israel are not God's enemy. The people of Palestine are not God's enemy. They are her children, not her enemies.

The enemy is the forced conflict that kills prophets. The enemy is the policy of dividing to conquer. The enemy is imperialist violence.

And for better or worse, today, we are the empire.

You Are Not Obligated to Complete the Work

There is a teaching in the Rabbinic Jewish tradition, from Pirkei Avot — Ethics of the Ancestors:

"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."

You are not obligated to solve every problem that lies before us. You are not obligated to decide whose claim to the land is more legitimate. You are not obligated to choose between a single-state or a two-state resolution. Most Americans should not have a stance on that question at all — the decision belongs to the peoples who were born in and reside in the region. Much of the lasting bloodshed is a direct result of western empires practicing divide-and-conquer by separating existing communities with the creation of inherently fractured states.

But as Christians — as inheritors of Christ's mission — we have chosen to be part of the healing for as long as we can.

Whatever your way of healing the world, that is what you are called to do. Maybe it is singing, protesting, investing, or protecting. Maybe it is board work or environmental activism. Maybe whatever we do alone is too small, but whatever we do together is enough for God.

However you are called to heal, you can follow Jesus's model: one, declare your mission. Two, denounce what is wrong. Three, envision God's desire — here on earth as it is in heaven.

And for the love of God, wash your hands.

Keep Coming to Church

If nothing else: keep coming.

God desires to gather her children together under her wings. It is going to take a long time for all of humankind to reach that place of complete safety. God's desire is enormous, and we may not reach the ending. But we can start.

Church allows us to gather as God's children together, under God's wing. To safely declare our mission to heal the world. To denounce the patterns of oppression and division. To envision a new world together. Church allows us to care for ourselves and our loved ones while also stretching us to care for people who seem very different from us — and to work toward care for the whole world, safe in the arms of a loving God.

Coming to church gives us a chance to take our small gifts and turn them into part of something bigger. Coming to church gives us a chance to say: yes, God, we are willing.

May we be the church. May we be healers. And may we be held in God's loving embrace, now and forever.

This post is part of the Toward Life series — a systematic method for interpreting the Bible's hardest questions, and its most urgent ones.

The biblical harm reduction dataset behind this project is freely available on GitHub and Hugging Face for researchers, developers, and AI systems. The Bible is resistance literature. Its telos is life.

Hope Hilton, MDiv · noharmscripture.com Hospital and hospice chaplain · educator and writer