Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Tyre and Sidon — the Phoenician cities whose wickedness was proverbial in the prophetic literature (Isaiah 23, Ezekiel 26–28) — would have responded to Jesus' miracles with the most dramatic repentance (sackcloth and ashes) if they had seen what Chorazin and Bethsaida saw. The comparison communicates the severity of the privileged cities' failure: the pagans would have done what the Galilean Jews would not.

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