Matthew 11:16
Matthew 11:1616To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
receives little JW commentary. Where it appears, the verse is read as Jesus's rebuke of the unbelieving Jewish generation that rejected both John and Jesus — a lesson about fickle religious response, not as a constraint on what "this generation" means in . The Watchtower needs to be uncoupled from to preserve the overlapping-generations doctrine.
is one of the four Synoptic uses of "this generation" (he genea haute) that lock down the meaning of . In every Gospel occurrence — , 12:41-42, 23:36, , and — Jesus uses the phrase to refer to his own contemporaries. There is no linguistic precedent for treating as the single exception. Pair with ("the men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgement with this generation") to see Jesus making the contemporaneous reference unambiguous. Then ask the Witness: if "this generation" means his contemporaries everywhere else in the Gospels, what exegetical reason — not a rescue motive — does the Watchtower offer for treating differently?