What Remains When the Admired Stones Fall

“Looked up” is the verb used as Jesus looked up at Zacchaeus in the tree (19:5); Mark says he sat facing the treasury. The Mishnah describes thirteen trumpet-shaped chests in the Court of the Women, each marked for a different purpose (Shekalim 6:5), which may be what “the treasury” means here.

Mites are lepta, the smallest bronze coin in circulation. Mark explains to Roman readers that two make a quadrans; Luke does not bother. The word for poor here is penichros, needy, found only here in the New Testament; in the next verse Luke changes it to ptochos, the destitute.

“Of a truth” is alethos, which Luke uses where Mark has “Verily” (amen). The comparison is startling in its grammar: not more than any one of them, but “more than they all”, two coins weighed against the whole morning’s giving.

“Penury” is hysterema, shortfall, the opposite of the others’ perisseuma, surplus: they give out of what is left over, she out of what is lacking. “Living” is bios, the word of the prodigal’s share (15:12) and of the sick woman who “had spent all her living upon physicians” (8:43).

Herod’s rebuilding had used white stone, some blocks forty-five cubits long by Josephus’s reckoning (Jewish War 5.224). The “gifts” are votive offerings, like the golden vine over the sanctuary door with clusters as tall as a man (Antiquities 15.395). In Luke the discourse is spoken in the temple itself, not on the mount of Olives as in Mark.

“One stone upon another” repeats what Jesus said over the city in 19:44. Josephus reports that Titus ordered the whole city and temple razed, leaving only three towers and part of the western wall standing (Jewish War 7.1–3).

Mark names the four who asked, Peter, James, John and Andrew; Luke leaves the questioners anonymous and calls Jesus “Master”, didaskale, teacher. They ask two things, the time and the sign, and the rest of the chapter answers the second far more fully than the first.

“I am Christ” is literally “I am”, ego eimi; the King James supplies the title to make the claim plain. Luke alone adds the deceivers’ slogan, “the time draweth near”, so that the language of imminence itself is put in the mouths of the men not to be followed.

“Commotions” is akatastasia, disorder or insurrection, the tumults Paul lists among his sufferings (2 Corinthians 6:5). “Terrified” is ptoeo, which Luke uses again in 24:37 when the disciples take the risen Jesus for a spirit. “Must” is dei once more: these things are not outside God’s ordering.

“Then said he unto them” opens the speech a second time, as though Luke marks a new stage. The wording echoes 2 Chronicles 15:6, “nation was destroyed of nation, and city of city”, and Isaiah 19:2, “kingdom against kingdom”.

“Famines, and pestilences” is a jingle in Greek, limoi kai loimoi. Luke records one such famine himself, foretold by Agabus “throughout all the world” under Claudius (Acts 11:28). “Fearful sights” is phobetra, terrors, a word found only here in the New Testament.

Each item comes true in Acts: Peter and John before the council (Acts 4), the apostles in the common prison (5:18), Paul before the governors Felix and Festus and before King Agrippa (Acts 24–26). “For my name’s sake” is the charge in all of them.

“Turn to you” is apobaino, to result, to turn out. “Testimony” is martyrion; the English “martyr” grew from this word family, but in Luke it still means evidence given, and the hearing itself becomes the occasion for giving it.

“Settle it in your hearts” is literally “put it in your hearts”, a Hebrew way of saying resolve. “Meditate before” is promeletao, to rehearse a speech in advance, the orator’s practice, found only here in the New Testament. Jesus gave the same instruction earlier in 12:11.

In 12:12 the promise was that the Holy Ghost would teach them; here Jesus says “I will give”. It echoes God to Moses, “I will be with thy mouth” (Exodus 4:12). Acts 6:10 uses the same verb of Stephen’s opponents, who “were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake.”

Betrayal by one’s own household recalls Micah 7:6, which Jesus applied in 12:53: “the father shall be divided against the son”. “Some of you” proves to include Stephen (Acts 7:59) and James the brother of John, killed by Herod Agrippa (Acts 12:2).

The saying fulfils the last beatitude in Luke’s sermon on the plain: “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you… for the Son of man’s sake” (6:22). “All men” is hyperbole in the Hebrew manner, meaning hatred from every quarter, including the households of verse 16.

The idiom is old and Luke knows it well. The people rescued Jonathan with it: “there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground” (1 Samuel 14:45). Paul says it on the doomed ship in Acts 27:34, and Jesus has already said “the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (12:7).

“Patience” is hypomone, endurance under a load, the word of the good soil that “bring forth fruit with patience” (8:15). Manuscripts divide between the command “possess ye” and the promise “ye shall gain”; the King James follows the first. “Souls” here means lives.

Where Mark and Matthew speak cryptically of “the abomination of desolation”, Luke names the thing outright: Jerusalem surrounded by armies. He keeps Daniel’s word “desolation”, eremosis, so the reader can hear the prophecy behind the plain speech.

Eusebius records that the church in Jerusalem, warned by an oracle before the war, left the city and settled at Pella, across the Jordan in the Decapolis (Church History 3.5.3). “The countries” means the fields and farms around the city: those out working are not to go back in.

When Jesus read Isaiah 61 in Nazareth he stopped at “the acceptable year of the Lord” (4:19) and did not read the next words, “and the day of vengeance of our God”. Here those days are named. The word is ekdikesis, the same root as the widow’s “avenge me” in 18:3.

Jesus will say the same to the women on the road to the cross: “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck” (23:29). Josephus tells of a woman in the siege who killed and ate her own infant (Jewish War 6.201–213).

“The edge of the sword” is literally “the mouth of the sword”, a Hebrew idiom carried into Greek. Josephus puts the dead of the siege at 1,100,000 and the captives at 97,000 (Jewish War 6.420), numbers inflated or not, and many captives were sold into slavery across the empire.

“Perplexity” is aporia, having no way through, found only here in the New Testament. Sun, moon and stars recall Joel 2:31, which Peter quotes at Pentecost (Acts 2:20). The roaring sea is the old image of chaos restrained by God: “which stilleth the noise of the seas” (Psalm 65:7).

“Failing them” is apopsycho, to faint, literally to breathe out one’s life, used only here in the New Testament. “The powers of heaven” echoes Isaiah 34:4, where “all the host of heaven shall be dissolved” and the heavens are rolled up like a scroll.

Luke has “a cloud”, singular, where Mark has “clouds”. It is the same cloud language Luke uses at the ascension, when “a cloud received him” and the angels promise he “shall so come in like manner” (Acts 1:9–11). Luke wrote both scenes and meant them to be read together.

“Look up” is anakypto, to straighten up, the verb used of the woman bent double who “could in no wise lift up herself” (13:11). “Redemption” recalls Anna, who spoke of the child “to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (2:38).

Most trees in the land of Israel keep their leaves through the winter, but the fig is one of the few that drops them, so its bare branches suddenly leafing are an unmistakable sign of the season. Luke has already told of a barren fig tree given one more year (13:6–9).

“Shoot forth” is proballo, to put out leaves. “Of your own selves” means without being told, as in 12:57, “why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?” The disciples already read the weather this way (12:54–56); they are asked to read events with the same ordinary sense.

Where Mark says “it is nigh, even at the doors”, Luke names the subject: “the kingdom of God is nigh”. The seventy had been sent to say “the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you” (10:9), and 17:20 warned that it would not come “with observation”.

Wherever else Luke uses “this generation” it means Jesus’ contemporaries (7:31; 11:29–32; 11:50–51; 17:25), a usage every reading of the verse has to reckon with. “All” echoes verse 22, “that all things which are written may be fulfilled”.

In 16:17 Jesus said it was easier “for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail”. He now says the same of his own words. Isaiah 40:8 had said it of God’s: “the word of our God shall stand for ever.”

“Overcharged” is bareo, weighed down, the verb of the disciples “heavy with sleep” on the mount of transfiguration (9:32). “Surfeiting” is kraipale, the nausea and headache after drinking, a hangover. “Cares of this life” are the thorns of the sower parable (8:14).

A snare is pagis, a bird trap that springs shut without warning. Isaiah 24:17 puts the same words together: “Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.” It closes on all the earth’s inhabitants alike.

“Watch” is agrypneo, to stay awake, to go without sleep. On the mount of Olives a few nights later the disciples will be found “sleeping for sorrow” and told to “rise and pray” (22:45–46). The best manuscripts read “that ye may have strength to escape” where the King James has “accounted worthy”.

“Abode” is aulizomai, to lodge in the open, to camp out, as Passover pilgrims did in thousands on the hills around the city. The habit makes Jesus easy to find at night, and Luke will say in 22:39 that he went there “as he was wont”.

“Came early in the morning” is the single Greek verb orthrizo, to rise at dawn, found only here in the New Testament. One group of manuscripts places the account of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) immediately after this verse, since it opens the same way: “early in the morning he came again into the temple”.