Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 13:33

"Nevertheless I must go on my way to-day and to-morrow and the [day] following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." — Luke 13:33 (ASV)

Nevertheless I must walk.—It is better understood as, I must journey, or, I must go onward; the word being the one used in Luke 9:51, Luke 9:53. These words indicate the same intensity of conviction and purpose as expressed before.

I cannot bring myself to accept the words that follow—“to-day and to-morrow . . .”—as meaning that only three days were to pass before He would enter Jerusalem. This interpretation would not have been true in fact. It would have seemed obvious—had we not abundant proof of people's inability to enter into the poetic forms of Eastern speech when these differ from our own—that the literal meaning here is altogether out of place, and that the same formula is used as in the preceding verse, with the same meaning: that is, conveying the thought of a short, undefined interval.

It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.—The word used here for “it cannot be” occurs in the New Testament only in this passage and has a peculiar, half-ironical force: “It is not fitting, it would be at variance with the fitness of things, it is morally impossible.” Jerusalem, it has been said, had made the slaughter of the prophets a special prerogative, a monopoly, of which no one could rob her.