But when ye see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, then know that its desolation is drawn nigh.
Jesus had just said the temple would be pulled down. The disciples asked when this would happen, and what sign would come first. Luke records this answer: an army around the city. Anyone could see that sign, and see it in time to escape.
Matthew, Mark and Luke all record this discourse. Only Luke names an army around the city. That detail ties the words to an event in history, not to the distant future.
Only Luke has this. So he speaks of armies surrounding the city, which was true then. He does not speak, as Matthew and Mark do, of the abomination of desolation, which can only be proved true in its closing agony. The siege our Lord describes, with all that came out of it, cannot be a future event. What follows it is the humiliating hold on the Jewish capital by one nation after another, until the allotted seasons of Gentile supremacy end.
This is the direct answer to what the disciples asked.
This is the clear reply to the only part of the disciples' question that Luke records. Jerusalem surrounded by armies was to be the sign that its desolation was near.
Many readers treat this verse and Matthew's warning about "the abomination of desolation" as the same event. Commentators place the two at different points in Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks.
When they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, they could know that its desolation was near. This is still a very different thing from the "abomination of desolation" that Matthew and Mark speak of. That one is tied to the middle of the last week of Daniel, while this one comes between the sixty-ninth and the seventieth week of the same chapter: "And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary" (Dan. 9:26). There is no excuse at all for confusing two things so different, when the gap between them is stated so clearly.
Some critics have read Luke as merging the two events. Kelly answers that Luke is the very writer who keeps them apart.
Schmiedel claims that Luke himself, in his own mind, treated Titus's desolation of Jerusalem as the same thing as Daniel's "abomination." That only shows how little that critic understands the plan of Old Testament prophecy. As the Expositor points out, it is typical of Luke that he kept the two apart.
A sign is only useful if people can see it and act on it. These people did.
Nothing can be simpler. The prediction is exact. The directions match exactly what the Christians living in the city did when Titus's army approached Jerusalem. There is no call to special haste, and in fact there was no occasion for special haste. Every reader knows what followed. The Christians, warned by this prophecy, left the city. The city was destroyed, and its people were either killed or carried off into slavery.
Where they went is on record.
The Christians, remembering the Lord's warning, left Jerusalem together before the siege closed in. They travelled to Pella, a village beyond the Jordan. There they stayed until Hadrian allowed them to return to the ruins of their ancient city.
The destruction was not an end in itself. It opened a long stretch of history that has not yet closed.
Then those who believed the words of Jesus did flee to the mountains, and so escaped the horrors of the siege. Then began the "days of vengeance" for the Jew. They will not stop until everything foretold has come true. Then started the long captivity, which has continued and will continue, with Jerusalem under the feet of the nations, until the times of the Gentiles end. Those times began when God raised up Nebuchadnezzar, who took the throne from the last king of David's line. They will end with the crushing of Gentile rule at the appearing of Christ.
This judgment had a cause. The commentators trace it back to the blood the city had shed.
Upon the guilty city, stained with the blood of the prophets, and now to be stained with that of their glorious King also, days of vengeance were coming.
- Sign — Luke alone reports armies around the city. Matthew and Mark report the abomination of desolation. The sign given here was one ordinary people could see with their own eyes.
- Sequence — Daniel 9:26 places the city's destruction between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. The abomination belongs to the middle of the last week. That gap keeps the two events apart.
- Sparing — Those who believed the warning left for Pella and lived. The warning came early enough that they needed no panic, only obedience.
- Sentence — Those who stayed were killed or carried off into slavery. The "days of vengeance" fell on a city stained with the blood of the prophets and of its King.
- Stretch — What the siege began still runs on. Jerusalem is trodden down through the times of the Gentiles, which started with Nebuchadnezzar and end only when Christ appears.
Then let those who are in Judaea flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of it depart out, and those who are in the country not enter into it;
Armies around Jerusalem were the signal. This verse is the order that follows: three groups of people, each told which way to move.
Commentators tie this warning to a dated event, not to the end of the world. The signal Luke gives is not the one Matthew gives.
Here the Lord Jesus gives us a very direct and immediate picture of the destruction of Jerusalem, which was then close at hand. Matthew passes by the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. He fixes attention on what will take place at the end of the age... He says, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains." He does not say "the abomination of desolation" — not a word about that here, for it belongs to the last days only.
Why the mountains? One writer points to the hills that ring the city. The same writer notes that the tone here is calmer than Matthew's parallel warning.
Is it surprising that danger in Jerusalem at two different dates should have the same way of escape? The ring of mountains around the city makes that way especially fitting. The directions, however, in the two cases are not the same, though similar. In Luke there is a command that those in Judea were to go to the mountains, and that those in the country were not to enter in. Yet there is no note of alarming urgency here. In Matthew we find one, at the setting up of the abomination of desolation. There, delay of even an instant is forbidden.
The two passages sound alike, so readers mix them up. Kelly traces a common misreading back to that mix-up.
The effort to apply the abomination of desolation to the Romans under Titus, or to the Pope, is utterly vain. The first of these probably comes from confusing Matthew 24:15 with Luke 21:21. Luke alone brings in the Roman siege and captivity, since he alone deals with the times of the Gentiles.
The order here is to run, not to stand firm. The reason is what God was doing to that city.
The days of vengeance fell on Jerusalem, when the Lord's murderers were destroyed and their city burnt. In that smaller case there was no question of suffering as a privilege. It was a retributive dealing of God. So the Lord told those who listened to His words to escape as soon as they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies.
The warning was not just words on a page. Some people acted on it, and there is a record of where they went.
This unhappy people had plenty of time to be warned. If they had listened to the voice of their Messiah, they could have been saved... Obeying this command, the Christians left Jerusalem and settled at Pella. So they escaped the doom about to fall on this guilty people.
Pella lies in the Jordan valley, not in the hills. Some critics say Luke reshaped the prophecy to fit events already past. Kelly answers that this mismatch points the other way.
"Flee to the mountains." Wellhausen, like others, says Luke brought the prophecy "up to date." But these words support a date before AD 70, because the actual flight was to Pella, in the Jordan valley.
A warning is useless to anyone who does not believe the person giving it. Darby presses that point.
What was the use of the Lord warning the disciples in advance to flee in such and such circumstances? It would be no use if they did not understand what He was speaking about, and did not believe His word beforehand. It was exactly this knowledge and this faith that set them apart from all their unbelieving countrymen.
- Sign. The marker in Luke is armies around Jerusalem, not the abomination of desolation. Matthew leaves that out, and it ties this verse to the Roman siege.
- Order. Three groups get three instructions: leave Judea for the hills, get out of the city, stay out of the city — no route back in.
- Pace. There is no note of alarming urgency here. The flight that allows no delay belongs to Matthew.
- Escape. These were days of God's retribution on the city. So the godly were to get clear, not to stay and suffer. Those who obeyed settled at Pella and lived.
- Faith. The warning only helped those who believed it in advance. That faith was the one thing that set them apart.
for these are days of avenging, that all the things that are written may be accomplished.
Jesus is telling His disciples what is about to fall on Jerusalem. He gives the coming siege a name: days of vengeance. Two questions follow. Which siege did He mean? And which written words did it fulfill?
Luke's account describes armies surrounding the city. Matthew and Mark record a different sign. Commentators use Daniel's prophecy to place this siege in time.
Days of vengeance were coming on the guilty city, stained with the blood of the prophets and now to be stained with the blood of their glorious King as well. When they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, they could know that its desolation was near. That is a very different thing from the "abomination of desolation" that Matthew and Mark speak of. That sign belongs to the middle of the last week of Daniel, while this one falls between the sixty-ninth and seventieth in the same chapter: "and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary" (Dan. 9:26). There is no excuse for confusing things so different, when Scripture states the interval between them so plainly.
Luke's Gospel uses one word for God's merciful visits to His people. The word in this verse is a different one.
Luke 7:16 — "Visited." Compare 1:68 and 19:44, where it also means a merciful visitation. The word for "visitation" in the sense of vengeance is ekdikēsis, as in Luke 21:22.
The blow did not fall at once after the death of the Messiah. Commentators stress the long patience that came first.
I need not stay to tell you how completely this solemn prediction came true. Jerusalem fell soon afterwards. God, in patient grace, waited a little; He did not destroy it the day after the death of His Son. No — for sixty years He waited on His rebellious people, who first rejected their Messiah and then resisted the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51-52). At length He sent out His edict.
The Lord did not announce something new. He said the pages already written would be filled out, and history supplies the measure of it.
Everyone knows how terrible these days of vengeance were. Josephus gives the number of those killed in the siege as 1,000,000, and those carried away captive as 97,000. The complete fulfilment of our Lord's words is a matter of common history.
This verse gives the reason for a set of instructions. Those who believed Jesus obeyed them and got out in time.
The prediction is exact. When Titus's army approached Jerusalem, the Christians living in the city followed exactly these directions. This passage calls for no special haste, and in fact none was needed. Every reader knows the rest. The Christians, warned by this prophecy, left the city. The city was destroyed, and its people were either killed or carried into slavery.
Commentators differ on the scope. Some read the phrase as covering the siege of AD 70 and its immediate aftermath. Others hear in the plural "days" a long age that is still running.
This day of vengeance on Israel as a nation extends, in a sense, right through these present "times of the Gentiles." The crisis in the latter day gives its character to the whole period. They are all "days of vengeance," as the Lord calls them here. Yet a special season and visitation is still to come at the close — "the day of vengeance," as the prophet calls it (Isa. 34; Isa. 63).
Earlier in the same Gospel, Jesus read from Isaiah aloud and stopped short.
He ends His reading with the words "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." He closed the book in the middle of a sentence, because Isaiah adds "and the day of vengeance of our God." In this way He separated the two events very pointedly... But the day of vengeance had not yet come. Old Testament Scripture gave no sign that the preaching of grace would run for a long time before the day of vengeance came. Yet it has now continued for nearly 2000 years.
- Written first. Nothing in AD 70 came as a surprise. The siege carried out what Scripture had already written, including Daniel 9:26.
- Written, then warned. The written words let Jesus give exact instructions: see the armies, leave the city. Those who trusted Him acted in time.
- Written, then fulfilled. The word vengeance here is not the merciful visiting of Luke 1, 7 and 19. It is a different word for a different visit, and the casualty figures show how exactly it came.
- Written, then delayed. The full day of vengeance is real but still held back. Jesus closed Isaiah's scroll before that line, and the year of God's favor has run ever since.
- Written, and still running. The days of vengeance run on through the times of the Gentiles, and a special visitation still waits at the close.
But woe to them that are with child and to them who give suck in those days, for there shall be great distress upon the land and wrath upon this people.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of [the] nations until [the] times of [the] nations be fulfilled.
Jesus stood near the temple in its final days. He told His hearers what was coming on the city that had rejected Him: the sword, exile, and long centuries under foreign rule. One sentence covers it all, and it ends with a word that sets a limit — "until."
Three Gospels record this prophecy. This part of it belongs to Luke alone.
Luke 21:20-24 holds truth that is not in Matthew or Mark. It plainly predicts the coming destruction of Jerusalem, and the great distress that would fall on the land and on this people. Only Luke says they would be led captive into all the nations. Only Luke gives the remarkable sentence, still in force, that Gentiles would trample Jerusalem until their appointed times are complete... This fits the plan of the third Gospel, which leaves out the abomination of desolation and the tribulation like no other, both so prominent in the two Gospels before it. From verse 25 on, Luke joins the other two writers in describing the time of the end.
The words landed on real events. Roman armies under Titus took the city, and captivity followed.
This came true in what happened to the Jews when Titus took the city and "this people" went into captivity for the second time... And so it happened. For many centuries Gentiles have trampled Jerusalem. One national power after another was to hold the holy city. It is still so: the trampling goes on, because the seasons given to the Gentiles are not yet complete.
The phrase "the times of the Gentiles" is not in the book of Daniel. It is the Lord's own expression, and He does not date its start from His own rejection.
The expression "the times of the Gentiles" is not found in the book of Daniel. It is a New Testament phrase, and only our Lord used it... Now, the times of the Gentiles did not begin when Jerusalem rejected the Lord who came from heaven. Our Lord does not say they were brought in then. They started with the Babylonian captivity under Nebuchadnezzar. The glory of the Lord departed from Jerusalem.
That start marks a transfer of authority.
God was patient with Israel for a long time. Then He set the house of David aside and sent it into captivity. He handed the power to govern for Him to the Gentiles, and the times of the Gentiles began with Nebuchadnezzar... Three other empires followed Babylon, and the times of the Gentiles still go on, under one form of government after another. They will run on until God, in His own time, gives supremacy in the earth back to His ancient people.
The Gentiles are the nations other than Israel. The phrase is about who is on top and who is underneath.
"The times of the Gentiles" points to Gentiles on top and Israel pressed down. He is looking ahead over this whole age. In verse 24 He calls the whole age "the times of the Gentiles" — the Gentiles rule, and Israel has no land or inheritance in the earth.
Commentators differ over how the modern State of Israel fits this. Some read the Jewish return as a sign that Gentile control is loosening and "the times of the Gentiles are nearly over" (A. J. Pollock). Others point to the nation's long suffering since it rejected its Messiah, and say that holding the city today settles nothing, because another trampling is still to come.
Because they rejected and crucified their Messiah, the Jewish nation has suffered centuries of being "trampled underfoot by the Gentiles" (Luke 21:24). At the present time the Jews have possession of Jerusalem. A nation of Israel exists, and it makes its mark on world affairs. They are there in unbelief. Their troubles are not over yet, and the city will again be overrun by the Gentiles: "they will trample the holy city for forty-two months" (Rev. 11:2).
God never leaves His judgement on Israel open-ended.
Whenever God speaks in His Word about judgement on Israel, He always sets a limit to it with an "until." So Romans 11:25 tells us that "a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." Luke 21:24 sets the same kind of limit for Jerusalem... "The fullness of the Gentiles" means the present Christian company. "The times of the Gentiles" means the period when the Gentiles hold power, which started with Nebuchadnezzar some six centuries before Christ.
The next verses say what happens when that limit runs out.
"Immediately after the tribulation," when the times of the Gentiles close, the Son of Man will come in person. We know these times are still running: the Gentiles still trample Jerusalem. But that trampling will end, and the Lord will come to deliver Israel.
- Cause. God took government from the house of David and handed it to Nebuchadnezzar. The "times of the Gentiles" began there, not at the cross.
- Course. Empire has followed empire ever since, with Jerusalem passing from one national power to the next.
- Confirmation. Titus fulfilled the first half of the verse exactly: sword, captivity, and scattering into all nations.
- Contrast. Luke alone records this Roman siege; Matthew and Mark pass over it and go straight to the final crisis.
- Close. "Until" is the mercy in the sentence. God has measured Gentile rule, and it ends when the Son of Man comes.