A star over Jacob

When the chief priests and elders ask Jesus: “By what authority are you doing these things?” they’re referring both to his teaching and to his self-assured public actions – throwing the traders out of the temple, entering Jerusalem in triumph, allowing the children to acclaim him, and curing the sick.

What they want him to do is to prove to them that he has the authority to act in this way or to admit openly that he’s the Messiah, prophesied in our first reading by the non-Israelite prophet, Balaam, centuries before, shortly before the death of Moses and the crossing of the Jordan, when he said: “I see him, though not now; I observe him, though not near; a star shall advance from Jacob, and a scepter shall rise from Israel.”

However, Jesus knows that their motives are devious, and he declines to give them a direct answer. He prefers to put a question to them, forcing them to make their own attitude clear. He seeks to provoke them into examining their own consciences, but instead they make their own attitude clear: they plead ignorance.