Luke 21:28-33

It might be thought that after this saying relative to the Parousia (Luke 21:26-27), which is strictly speaking a digression, Jesus returns to the principal topic of this discourse, the destruction of Jerusalem. The expression: your deliverance, would then denote the emancipation of the Judeo-Christian Church by the destruction of the persecuting Jewish power. The coming of the kingdom of God, Luke 21:31, would refer to the propagation of the gospel among the Gentiles; and Luke 21:32: this generation shall not pass away, would thus indicate quite naturally the date of the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet the fact of the Parousia, once mentioned, is too solemn to be treated as a purely accessory idea. The kingdom of God seems, therefore, necessarily to denote here rather the final establishment of the Messianic kingdom; and the deliverance (Luke 21:28) should be applied to the definitive emancipation of the Church by the return of the Lord (the deliverance of the widow, Luke 18:1-8). Of yourselves, Luke 21:30: “It is not necessary that an official proclamation announce to the inhabitants of the world that summer is near!” It is about the middle of March that fruits begin to show themselves on the old branches of the spring fig-tree; they reach maturity before the shooting of the leaves. The first harvest is gathered in June (Keim, iii. p. 206).

Can Luke 21:32 refer still to the Parousia? But in that case, how are we to explain the expression: this generation? Jerome understood by it the human species, Origen and Chrysostom the Christian Church. These explanations are now regarded as forced. That of Dorner and Riggenbach, who take it to mean the Jewish people (applying to their conversion the image of the fig-tree flourishing again, Luke 21:29-30), is not much more natural. In this context, where we have to do with a chronological determination (“ is nigh,” Luke 21:31), the meaning of γενεά must be temporal. Besides, we have the authentic commentary on this saying in Luke 11:50-51, where Jesus declares that it is the very generation which is to shed His blood and that of His messengers, which must suffer, besides, the punishment of all the innocent blood shed since that of Abel down to this last. It is not less false to give to this expression, with the Tübingen School, such an extension that it embraces a period of 70 years (Hilgenfeld), or even of a century (Volkmar): the duration of a man's life. It has not this meaning among the ancients. In Herod. (2. 142, 7. 171), Heraclitus, and Thuc. (1. 14), it denotes a space of from 30 to 40 years. A century counts three generations. The saying of Irenaeus respecting the composition of the Apocalypse, wherein he declares “that this vision was seen not long before his epoch, almost within the time of our generation, towards the end of Domitian's reign,” does not at all prove the contrary, as Volkmar alleges; for Irenaeus says expressly: σχεδόν, almost, well aware that he is extending the reach of the term generation beyond its ordinary application. An impartial exegesis, therefore, leaves no doubt that this saying fixes the date of the near destruction of Jerusalem at least the third of a century after the ministry of Jesus. The meaning is: “The generation which shall shed this blood shall not pass away till God require it” (in opposition to all the blood of the ancients which has remained so long unavenged). Πάντα, all things, refers to all those events precursive of that catastrophe which are enumerated Luke 21:8-19, and to the catastrophe itself (20-24).

The position of this saying immediately after the preceding verses relative to the Parousia, seems to be in Luke a faint evidence of the influence exercised by that confusion which reigns throughout the whole discourse as related by the other two Syn. There is nothing in that to surprise us. Would not the omission of some word of transition, or the simple displacing of some sentence, suffice to produce this effect? And how many cases of similar transpositions or omissions are to be met with in our Syn.? But if this observation is well founded, it proves that the Gospel of Luke was not composed, any more than the other two, after the destruction of Jerusalem.

Heaven and earth (Luke 21:33) are contrasted with those magnificent structures which His disciples would have Him to admire (Luke 21:5): Here is a very different overthrow from that which they had so much difficulty in believing. This universe, this temple made by the hand of God, passeth away; one thing remains: the threats and promises of the Master who is speaking to them.