9. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, even more than a prophet.
10. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send My messenger before You, who will prepare Your way before You.’
11. “Amen, I tell you, among those born of women, none has arisen greater than John the Immerser. Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
12. From the days of John the Immerser until now, the kingdom of heaven is treated with violence, and the violent grasp hold of it.
13. For all the prophets and the Torah prophesied until the time of John.
14. And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.
15. He who has ears, let him hear!
16. “But to what shall I compare this generation? It’s like children sitting in the marketplaces who call to one other, saying,
17. ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We wailed, but you did not mourn.’
18. “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’
19. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
20. Then Yeshua began to denounce the towns where most of His miracles had happened, because they did not turn from their sins.