Charles Spurgeon Commentary Matthew 22:6

"and the rest laid hold on his servants, and treated them shamefully, and killed them." — Matthew 22:6 (ASV)

The religious remnant among the Jews, who clung to external forms with a ferocious bigotry, rose against the first preachers of the Gospel and subjected them to cruel persecutions. They cared nothing for the incarnation of Emmanuel, that mysterious marriage of Godhead and manhood. They cared nothing for the Lord God Himself, but took His servants, and by scourging, stoning, slander, and imprisonment, treated them spitefully. Their cruel conduct to the Lord’s servants proved that they were full of spite, malice, and anger. Saul of Tarsus, before his conversion, was a type of the fanatical Pharisees and religious rulers who were, as he confessed to King Agrippa, exceedingly mad against Christ’s followers.

In many cases, they not only spitefully treated the King’s servants, but they even killed them. Stephen was the first martyr of the truth after his Lord’s crucifixion, but he was by no means the last. If “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” the Holy Land was plentifully sown with it in the early days of Christianity. This was Israel’s answer to the King, who instructed the long-favored nation to unite in doing honor to His well-beloved Son. The Jews said, in effect, “We defy the King. We will not have His Son to reign over us, and as proof of our rebellion against Him, we have slain His servants.”