Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 13:2

"And he answered and said unto them, Think ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they have suffered these things?" — Luke 13:2 (ASV)

Do you suppose that these Galileans . . .?—The tale had probably been told with a conviction, expressed or implied, that the massacre had been a special judgment for some special and exceptional guilt. Our Lord at once, here as in John 9:7, sweeps away all their rash interpretations of the divine government and declares that all, unless they repented, were under the sentence of a like destruction.

The “likewise,” however, is hardly to be taken, as some have taken it, in a literal sense. Some, it may be, of those who heard the words, perished by the sword of Titus, as the Galileans had done by the sword of Pilate, but hardly all who were impenitent. Still less could this be said of the form of death referred to in the verse that follows.