25. If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? Now those who are splendidly clothed and live luxuriously are in royal palaces.
26. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and much more than a prophet.
27. This is he of whom it is written: ‘Look, I am sending My messenger before Your face,who shall prepare Your way before You.’
28. I say to you, among those who are born of women there is no greater prophet than John the Baptist. Yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”
29. All the people who heard Him, including the tax collectors, justified God, having been baptized with the baptism of John.
30. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God for themselves, not having been baptized by John.
31. Then the Lord said, “To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like?
32. They are like children sitting in the marketplace, calling to each other, saying: ‘We played the flute for you,and you did not dance;we mourned to you,and you did not weep.’
33. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine. But you say, ‘He has a demon.’
34. The Son of Man has come eating and drinking. But you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’
35. But wisdom is justified by all her children.”
36. One of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with him. So He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down for supper.
37. There, a woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that Jesus was sitting for supper in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment,
38. and stood behind Him at His feet, weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment.
39. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw it, he said to himself, “If this Man were a prophet, He would have known who and what kind of woman she is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.”