Jesus wanted the people to remember what they had actually found when they went out to John. The first question asks their purpose; the second offers an answer they would reject. A reed bends whichever way the wind blows. Barnes says reeds were "an image of a light, changing, inconstant man," and Gill gives as one possible sense "an inconsistent, wavering, and unstable man" (he also suggests it may refer to the preacher's gestures). The timing matters too: Jesus speaks of John right after John's question has been answered, and He speaks in John's favor.

The people give no recorded answer. Jesus answers His own questions step by step: not a reed, not a man in soft raiment (Luke 7:25), but "A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet" (Luke 7:26). He names John as the messenger of whom it is written, "Behold, I send my messenger before thy face" (Luke 7:27), and says, "there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist" (Luke 7:28).

John had lived "in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel," and "the word of God came unto John ... in the wilderness" (Luke 1:80; 3:2). He preached in "all the country about Jordan" (Luke 3:3), and crowds went out to hear him and be baptized.

Barnes notes that the region where John preached, overflowed each year by the Jordan, produced great quantities of reeds "of a light, fragile nature, easily shaken by the wind."

Jesus honors John publicly, and He does it right after John has sent an honest question from prison. Matthew Henry says of John, "He was firm as a rock, not fickle as a reed." John's question did not make him a reed in Jesus' eyes.

The passage also shows that how people received John revealed how they received God. "All the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God," while "the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves" (Luke 7:29-30).