Woes to the unrepentant cities
and Luke's gospel record Jesus' message of woe to the unrepentant cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, located around the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, for their refusal to repent.
The text in Matthew's gospel states:
The three cities mentioned lay just north of the Sea of Galilee. Chorazin is not otherwise mentioned in the Gospels. Bethsaida is where Philip, Andrew, and Peter were from, and where Jesus healed a blind man. Capernaum, however, is mentioned many times in the Gospels and was the site of many of Jesus' healings and miracles, serving for a time as the center of his public ministry.
Tyre and Sidon were cities against which the prophets of the Old Testament had pronounced God's judgment. Sodom was infamous as the city which, according to the Book of Genesis, God had spectacularly destroyed for its wickedness in the time of Abraham.
In essence, then, Jesus is contrasting three Jewish towns where he has performed many signs, with three Gentile cities known for such extraordinary wickedness as to deserve God's destruction, saying that on the Day of Judgment the former will be judged more harshly, because of their greater unwillingness to repent.
These cities are associated with the Antichrist in medieval sources. The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, commenting on the above Gospel passage, states that the Antichrist "will be conceived in Chorazin, be born in Bethsaida, and begin to rule in Capernaum."
