"... Luke 11:50-51 ... As in the segment of Old Testament history that acculminated in the Babylonian exile, the culmination of generations of accumulated wickedness is contemplated here as bringing the judgment of God. There is both personal responsibility and inherited guilt. The idiom 'to seek the blood' is an Old Testament idiom that in the LXX uses the language found here (Genesis 9:5; 42:22; 2 Kings 4:11; Ezekiel 3:18; etc.). The language evokes the Old Testament stipulation of a death penalty for murder, with its implications of the cleansing of the land from pollution (e.g., Numbers 35:33). 'Prophets' here is used loosely (compare the use in Genesis 20:7 in connection with Abraham) of those with an intimate link with God (this is a problem for Matthew, who speaks rather of 'all the righteous blood'). The present generation is to answer for all the pollution caused by the spilling of the blood of God's servants from creation onwards (compare Revelation 18:4). This comprehensiveness finds its home in apocalyptic thought (the similarity between 'from foundation of the world' here and 'from the beginning of creation' in Mark 13:19, along with the general similarity of thought, suggests that the link to Daniel 12:1 of that verse may be via an exegetical tradition also reflected here) ..."