Luke 21:5-7

1. The Question: Luke 21:5-7.

To the preceding declaration, some of the hearers might have objected, that if only such gifts as the widow's had been made in that holy place, those magnificent structures and those rich offerings would not have existed. It was doubtless some such reflection which gave rise to the following conversation. This conversation took place, according to Matthew 24:1 and Mark 13:1, as Jesus left the temple, and on occasion of an observation made by His disciples (Matthew), or by one of them (Mark). According to Matthew, this observation was certainly connected with the last words of the previous discourse (not related by Mark and Luke), Luke 23:38: “ Your house is left unto you [desolate].” How can it be asserted that three evangelists, copying the same document, or copying from one another, could differ in such a way?

In the answer of Jesus (Luke 21:6), the words, ταῦτα ἃ θεωρεῖτε, these things which ye behold, may be taken interrogatively: “These are the things, are they, which ye are beholding?” Or we may take them as in apposition to λίθος, and the subject of ἀφεθήσεται, which is more categorical and solemn: “As to these things which ye behold...there shall not be left one stone upon another.”

It was evening (Luke 5:37), at the moment perhaps when the setting sun was casting his last rays on the sacred edifice and the holy city.

Several critics think that Luke places this discourse also in the temple. But this opinion does not agree either with Luke 21:5-6, where the temple buildings are contemplated by the interlocutors, which supposes them to be at some distance from which they can view them as a whole, or with Luke 21:7, which conveys the notion of a private conversation between the disciples and the Master. According to Mark (Mark 13:3), Jesus was seated with Peter, James, John, and Andrew, on the Mount of Olives, over against that wonderful scene. Here is one of those details in which we recognise the recital of an eye-witness, probably Peter. Matthew, while indicating the situation in a way similar to Mark, does not, any more than Luke, name the four disciples present. Luke and Matthew would certainly not have omitted such a circumstance, if they had copied Mark; as, on the contrary, Mark would not have added it at his own hand, if he had compiled from the text of the other two.

The form of the disciples' question, Luke 21:7, differs in Luke and Mark, but the sense is the same: the question in both refers simply to the time of the destruction of the temple, and to the sign by which it shall be announced. It is, no doubt, possible the disciples more or less confounded this catastrophe with the event of the Parousia; but the text does not say so. It is quite otherwise in Matthew; according to him, the question bears expressly on those two points combined: the time of the destruction of the temple, and the sign of the coming of Christ. Luke and Matthew each give the following discourse in a manner which is in keeping with their mode of expressing the question which gives rise to it. In Luke, this discourse contemplates exclusively the destruction of Jerusalem. If mention is made of the end of the world (Luke 21:25-27), it is only in passing, and as the result of an association of ideas which will be easily explained. The Parousia in itself had been previously treated of by Luke in a special discourse called forth by a question of the Pharisees (chap. 17). On his side, Matthew combines in the following discourse the two subjects indicated in the question, as he has expressed it; and he unites them in so intimate a way, that all attempts to separate them in the text, from Chrysostom to Ebrard and Meyer, have broken down. Comp. Luke 21:14; Luke 21:22, which can refer to nothing but the Parousia, while the succeeding and preceding context refer to the destruction of Jerusalem; and on the other hand, Luke 21:34, which points to this latter event, while all that precedes and follows this verse applies to the Parousia. The construction attempted by Gess is this: 1. From Luke 21:4-14, the general signs preceding the Parousia, that believers may not be led to expect this event too soon; 2. From Luke 21:15-28, the destruction of the temple as a sign to be joined to those precursive signs; 3. Luke 21:29-31, the Parousia itself. But (a) this general order is far from natural. What has the destruction of the temple to do after the passage Luke 21:4-14, which (Gess acknowledges) supposes it consummated long ago? The piece (No. 2) on the destruction of Jerusalem is evidently out of place between the description of the signs of the Parousia (No. 1) and that of the Parousia itself (No. 3). (b) This division cannot be carried out into detail: Luke 21:22, which Gess is obliged to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem, can apply only to the Parousia. And the “ all these things ” of Luke 21:34, which he restricts to the destruction of Jerusalem and the first preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles, as first signs of the Parousia, has evidently a much wider scope in the evangelist's view. It must therefore be admitted, either that Jesus Himself confounded the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, and that those two events formed, in His judgment, one and the same catastrophe, or that two distinct discourses uttered by Him on two different occasions appear in Matthew united in one. Different expedients have been used to save the accuracy of Matthew's account, without prejudice to the Saviour's infallibility. It has been supposed that the description of the Parousia, Matthew 24, refers exclusively to the invisible return of Jesus to destroy Jerusalem. This explanation is incompatible with the text, especially Luke 21:29-31. It has also been alleged that in the prophetic perspective the final coming of the Messiah appeared to the view of Jesus as in immediate connection with His return to judge Israel. But (a) this hypothesis does not at all attain the end which its authors propose, that of saving our Lord's infallibility. (b) Jesus could not affirm here what He elsewhere declares that He does not know (Mark 13:32), the time of the Parousia. Even after His resurrection He still refuses to give an answer on this point, which is reserved by the Father in His own power (Acts 1:6-7). (c) We can go further, and show that Jesus had a quite opposite view to that of the nearness of His return. While He announces the destruction of Jerusalem as an event to be witnessed by the contemporary generation, He speaks of the Parousia as one which is possibly yet very remote. Consider the expression, ἐλεύσονται ἡμέραι, days will come (Luke 17:22), and the parable of the widow, the meaning of which is, that God will seem to the Church an unjust judge, who for a protracted time refuses to hear her, so that during this time of waiting the faith of many shall give way (Luke 18:1 et seq.). The Master is to return; but perhaps it will not be till the second, or the third watch, or even till the morning, that He will come (Mark 13:35; Luke 12:38). The great distance at which the capital lies (Luke 19:12) can signify nothing else than the considerable space of time which will elapse between the departure of Jesus and His return. In Matthew 25:5 the bridegroom tarries much longer than the bridal procession expected; Luke 24:48, the unfaithful servant strengthens himself in his evil-doing by the reflection that his Lord delayeth His coming. Matthew 24:14, the gospel is to be preached in all the world and to all the Gentiles (Mark 16:15, to every creature); and Matthew 26:13, Mary's act is to be published in the whole world before Jesus shall return. In fine, the gospel shall transform humanity not by a magical process, but by slow and profound working, like that of leaven in dough. The kingdom of God will grow on the earth like a tree which proceeds from an imperceptible seed, and which serves in its maturity to shelter the birds of heaven. And Jesus, who knew human nature so deeply, could have imagined that such a work could have been accomplished in less than forty years! Who can admit it? The confusion which prevails in this whole discourse, Matt. xxiv (as well as in Mark 13), and which distinguishes it from the two distinct discourses of Luke, must therefore be ascribed not to Jesus, but to the account which Matthew used as the basis of his recital.

This confusion in Matthew is probably closely connected with the Judeo-Christian point of view, under the sway of which primitive tradition took its form. In the prophets, the drama of the last days, which closes the eschatological perspective, embraces as two events nearly following one another, the judgment whereby Israel is purified by means of the Gentiles, and the punishment of the Gentiles by Jehovah. Preoccupied with this view, the hearers of Jesus easily overlooked in His discourses certain transitions which reserved the interval between those two events usually combined in the O. T.; and that so much the more, as, on looking at it closely, the destruction of Jerusalem is really the first act of the world's judgment and of the end of the days. The harvest of an early tree announces and inaugurates the general harvest; so the judgment of Jerusalem is the prelude and even the first act of the judgment of humanity. The Jew has priority in judgment, because he had priority of grace (comp. the two corresponding πρῶτον, Romans 2:9-10). With the judgment on Jerusalem, the hour of the world's judgment has really struck. The present epoch is due to a suspension of the judgment already begun, a suspension the aim of which is to make way for the time of grace which is to be granted to the Gentiles (καιροὶ ἔθνων, the times of the Gentiles). The close combination of the destruction of Jerusalem with the end of the world in Matthew, though containing an error in a chronological point of view, rests on a moral idea which is profoundly true.

Thus everything authorizes us to give the preference to Luke's account. 1. Matthew's constant habit of grouping together in one, materials belonging to different discourses; 2. The precise historical situation which gave rise to the special discourse of chap. 17 on the coming of Christ, and which cannot be an invention of Luke 3. The established fact, that the confusion which marks the discourse of Matthew was foreign to the mind of Jesus; 4. Finally, we have a positive witness to the accuracy of Luke; that is Mark. For though his great eschatological discourse (chap. 13) presents the same confusion as that of Matthew in the question of the disciples which calls it forth, it is completely at one with Luke, and, like him, mentions only one subject, the destruction of Jerusalem.

Might Mark have taken the form of his question from Luke, and that of the discourse from Matthew, as Bleek alleges? But the incongruity to which such a course would have led would be unworthy of a serious writer. Besides, the form of the question is not the same in Mark as in Luke. Finally, the original details which we have pointed out in Mark, as well as those special and precise details with which his narrative abounds, from the day of the entry into Jerusalem onwards, do not admit of this supposition. No more can Luke have taken his question from Mark. He would have borrowed at the same time the details peculiar to Mark which he wants, and the form of the question is too well adapted in his Gospel to the contents of the discourse to admit of this supposition. It must therefore be concluded, that if in the compilation of the discourse Mark came under the influence of the tradition to which Matthew's form is due, the form of the question in his Gospel nevertheless remains as a very striking trace of the accuracy of Luke's account. The form of the question in Matthew must have been modified to suit the contents of the discourse; and thus it is that it has lost its original unity and precision, which are preserved in the other two evangelists.