The Temple Will Fall; the Hour Remains Unknown

Herod’s rebuilding had begun around 20 BC and was still going on (John 2:20 counts forty six years). Josephus describes stones some forty five cubits long and a front plated with gold that dazzled like the sun (War 5.222–224). Jesus walks out of it straight after saying “your house is left unto you desolate”.

Titus’s army burned the temple in AD 70, and Josephus says the city was so levelled that a visitor would not believe it had ever been inhabited (War 7.1–3). Huge Herodian blocks thrown down from the walls still lie on the paved street below the southwest corner, where excavators found them.

“Coming” is parousia, the word for the official arrival of a ruler on a state visit. Among the Gospels only Matthew uses it, four times in this chapter (verses 3, 27, 37, 39). Mark says they sat “over against the temple” and names the four who asked: Peter, James, John and Andrew (Mark 13:3).

“Take heed” is blepete, look out. “Deceive” is planao, to lead astray, the verb of the straying sheep in 18:12. It recurs four times in this chapter (verses 4, 5, 11, 24): the first danger Jesus names is not war or famine but being led off course.

Josephus names men who fit the warning before AD 70: Theudas, who promised to part the Jordan (Antiquities 20.97–98; Acts 5:36), and “the Egyptian”, who gathered thousands on the Mount of Olives to watch Jerusalem’s walls fall (War 2.261–263; Acts 21:38).

“Troubled” is throeo, to be startled or alarmed. “Must come to pass” echoes the Greek of Daniel 2:28, where God reveals to Nebuchadnezzar “what shall be in the latter days”. Things that must happen are not, for that reason, the end.

The line echoes Isaiah 19:2, “city against city, and kingdom against kingdom”. Acts 11:28 records a famine under Claudius, and Tacitus reports an earthquake that levelled Laodicea around AD 60 (Annals 14.27). “Pestilences” is absent from the oldest manuscripts.

“Sorrows” is odines, the pains of childbirth, the prophets’ image for the anguish of judgment (Isaiah 13:8; 26:17). Later rabbinic writings speak of “the birth pangs of the Messiah”. Labour pains are real pains, and they are only the start of labour.

“Afflicted” is thlipsis, the word for the “great tribulation” of verse 21. Mark says “hated of all men” (Mark 13:13); Matthew writes “of all nations”. Tacitus, describing Nero’s persecution in AD 64, says the Christians were convicted of “hatred of the human race” (Annals 15.44).

“Betray” is paradidomi, the same verb as “deliver you up” in verse 9 and the verb used of Judas. The pressure from outside becomes a fracture inside, brother handing over brother, as 10:21 had warned.

The Sermon on the Mount had already described them: “false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (7:15). Verse 5 spoke of false Christs deceiving many; here false prophets do the same, from inside the community.

“Love” is agape, and this is the only place Matthew uses the noun, though he uses the verb often. “Wax cold” is psycho, to cool, found nowhere else in the New Testament. The picture is of something warm left out until it chills.

The sentence repeats 10:22 word for word, from the instructions to the twelve. “Endure” is hypomeno, literally to remain under, to stay in place under a load rather than escape it.

“The gospel of the kingdom” is a phrase only Matthew uses (4:23; 9:35; 24:14). “All the world” is oikoumene, the inhabited world, the word Luke uses when Augustus orders “that all the world should be taxed” (Luke 2:1). “For a witness” is martyrion, testimony given in court.

Daniel’s phrase (Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11) was first applied to the altar to Zeus that Antiochus Epiphanes set up on the temple’s altar in 167 BC; 1 Maccabees 1:54 calls it “the abomination of desolation”. Mark writes “standing where it ought not” (Mark 13:14); Matthew names “the holy place”.

When Antiochus desecrated the temple, Mattathias and his sons “fled into the mountains” (1 Maccabees 2:28). Eusebius reports that the Jerusalem church, warned by an oracle, left the city before the war with Rome and settled in Pella east of the Jordan (Ecclesiastical History 3.5.3).

Roofs were flat and used for sleeping, drying produce and prayer (Acts 10:9), often reached by an outside stair. A man on the roof could come down and leave without going through the house. The command is to do exactly that.

The “clothes” are the himation, the outer cloak, left at the field’s edge while a man worked in his tunic. It doubled as a blanket at night, which is why the law forbade keeping a poor man’s cloak in pledge overnight (Exodus 22:26–27). Even that must be left.

“Woe” here is not the condemnation of chapter 23 but pity: alas for them. Josephus records that during the siege of Jerusalem a woman named Mary killed and ate her own infant (War 6.201–213), the horror Deuteronomy 28:56–57 had threatened in a siege.

Winter is the rainy season, when wadis flood and roads turn to mud. Only Matthew adds the sabbath: city gates might be shut and help refused, and a sabbath journey was limited (Acts 1:12). In 1 Maccabees 2:38 a thousand people died rather than defend themselves on the sabbath.

The words come from Daniel 12:1, “a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation”. Josephus opens his history of the war by claiming that the misfortunes of all peoples since the world began were small compared to those of the Jews (War 1.12).

“Shortened” is koloboo, to cut short, to dock or amputate. “No flesh” is the Hebrew idiom kol basar, no human being. “The elect” are the chosen of 22:14, and the length of the crisis is set for their sake.

Josephus tells of a Samaritan who promised to show sacred vessels Moses had buried on Mount Gerizim, drawing an armed crowd that Pilate’s cavalry cut down (Antiquities 18.85–87). Rumours of a deliverer here or there came with a location and a crowd, and the command is to believe none of them.

Deuteronomy 13:1–3 had already ruled on the case: if a prophet gives a sign or wonder and it comes to pass, yet he leads you after other gods, do not listen. A sign proves power, not truth. “If it were possible” implies it is not.

Three words in Greek. Mark has “I have foretold you all things” (Mark 13:23). The warning given in advance is itself the defence: when the claimants and the wonders arrive, they will confirm what Jesus said, not surprise those who listened.

The wilderness was where deliverers gathered followers; the Egyptian led his four thousand out into the wilderness (Acts 21:38). “Secret chambers” is tameion, the inner storeroom, the same word as the “closet” for private prayer in 6:6. Neither the open desert nor the hidden room is where the Son of man will be found.

Lightning is seen across the whole sky at once; nobody needs to be told where it is. Ezekiel saw the glory of the God of Israel come “from the way of the east” (Ezekiel 43:2). The contrast with verse 26 is between a rumour that needs directions and an event that needs none.

“Eagles” is aetoi, which in Greek also covered vultures, and vultures are what gather at a carcass. Job 39:30 says of the eagle, “where the slain are, there is she.” Some later readers saw the eagle standards of the Roman legions in the saying; the proverb itself names only birds.

The language is drawn from the prophets’ oracles against nations: Isaiah 13:10, against Babylon, and Isaiah 34:4 against Edom, where in the Greek Old Testament “all the powers of the heavens shall melt”. Joel 2:10 has sun and moon darkened and stars withdrawing their shining.

The “sign of the Son of man” is never described. The Didache, an early Christian manual, speaks of “the sign of spreading out in heaven”, and many early writers took it as the cross. The mourning tribes echo Zechariah 12:10–12, where they “look upon me whom they have pierced” and mourn, family by family.

Isaiah 27:13 promised that “the great trumpet shall be blown”, and exiles lost in Assyria and Egypt would come home. A daily Jewish prayer, the Amidah, still asks God to sound the great shofar for freedom and gather the exiles from the four corners of the earth. “Four winds” is Zechariah 2:6.

Most trees in the land, olive, carob and oak, are evergreen. The fig drops its leaves in winter, so its fresh leaves are a real marker of approaching summer. It is the second fig tree in four chapters; the first, in 21:19, was all leaves and no fruit.

The Greek has no subject: “it is near” or “he is near” are both possible. “At the doors” is the picture of someone already outside the house; James uses the same image, “the judge standeth before the door” (James 5:9).

“All these things” picks up “See ye not all these things?” in verse 2, where the phrase meant the temple buildings, and 23:36, “All these things shall come upon this generation.” The words tie the saying back to the stones the disciples were admiring.

Isaiah 51:6 says the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, “but my salvation shall be for ever”, and Isaiah 40:8 that the word of our God stands for ever. In 5:18 Jesus said not a jot of the law would pass till heaven and earth pass. Here his own words are given that permanence.

The oldest manuscripts, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus among them, read “no, not the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only”, as Mark 13:32 does. The Greek text behind the King James lacks “neither the Son”, perhaps because copyists found it hard.

“Noe” is the Greek spelling of Noah, like Elias for Elijah. Genesis gives the days before the flood a span: “his days shall be an hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3). Later tradition made Noah a preacher during those years (2 Peter 2:5); Genesis records no warning from him at all.

“Eating” is trogo, a blunt everyday word for munching or chewing, found only here in Matthew. The verbs are continuous: they were going on eating, drinking, marrying. “Until the day that Noe entered into the ark” echoes Genesis 7:13, “In the selfsame day entered Noah.”

“Took them all away” is airo, to lift and carry off, the verb of a flood sweeping everything with it. The next two verses use a different verb for “taken”. The flood generation’s failure is stated as ignorance, “knew not”, not as scoffing.

“Taken” here is paralambano, to take along with oneself. Matthew uses it when Joseph “took unto him his wife” (1:24) and Jesus “taketh Peter, James, and John” up the mountain (17:1), but also when soldiers “took Jesus” into the hall (27:27). The verb alone does not settle which kind of taking this is.

Grinding at the hand mill was women’s daily work, two women seated facing each other turning the upper stone; Exodus 11:5 speaks of “the maidservant that is behind the mill”. It is the small household mill, not the donkey’s millstone of 18:6.

“Watch” is gregoreo, to stay awake. It is the command Jesus will give in Gethsemane, “tarry ye here, and watch with me” (26:38), where the three fall asleep three times. Some manuscripts read “what day” instead of “what hour”.

The night was divided into watches; the Romans counted four, and Jesus came walking on the sea “in the fourth watch” (14:25). “Broken up” is diorysso, to dig through, since house walls were often mudbrick. The same verb was used of thieves who “break through and steal” in 6:19–20.

“Ready” is hetoimos, the word used of the wise virgins in the next chapter: “they that were ready went in with him to the marriage” (25:10). “In such an hour as ye think not” makes the least likely moment the likeliest.

In 1611 “meat” meant food of any kind. “Meat in due season” is the language of Psalm 145:15, “thou givest them their meat in due season”, said of God feeding every creature. The steward is set to do in the household what God does in the world.

Outside the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew’s Jesus pronounces only a handful of beatitudes (11:6; 13:16; 16:17). This one is conditional and hangs on two words: “so doing”. The servant is blessed for being caught in the middle of his ordinary task.

Potiphar made Joseph overseer and put all he had into his hand (Genesis 39:4), and Pharaoh later set him over all Egypt (Genesis 41:40). The reward for faithful stewardship is a larger stewardship, as the parable of the talents will repeat: “I will make thee ruler over many things” (25:21).

“That evil servant” implies the same man: the steward of verse 45 could turn out either way. “Say in his heart” is how Psalm 14:1 speaks of the fool: “The fool hath said in his heart”. “Delayeth” is chronizo, the verb used when “the bridegroom tarried” in 25:5.

Beating fellow servants is what the unforgiving servant did when he took his fellow by the throat (18:28). Eating and drinking recall the days of Noah in verse 38, where the same pair of verbs described a world that did not know what was coming.

The sentence says the same thing twice, a day he does not expect and an hour he does not know, answering verse 36’s “that day and hour”. Luke’s version of the parable (Luke 12:46) is nearly identical here.

“Cut him asunder” is dichotomeo, literally to cut in two, a known execution; in the Greek Susanna, Daniel tells the lying elder that the angel will “cut thee in two” (Susanna 55). Luke puts the servant “with the unbelievers” (Luke 12:46); Matthew writes “with the hypocrites”, the word of the woes in chapter 23.