life of fiuth in the Son of God ! He is the man, and he only, who is ready for the great things coming on the earth, and ihe appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. The kingdom to which he belongs, is the only kingdom which shall never be destroyed. The King whom he serves, is the only King whose dominion shall never be taken away. (Dan. ii. 44. vii. 14.)
NoTSB. LuKB XXI 20—24.
20. — [ When ye shaU see, dc.'] From this verse down to the end of the 24tb, our Lord's prophecy is entirely confined to the last days of Jerusalem, and the duties of His disciples during that eventful period. Here at all events there is no reference to His second advent and the last siege of Jerusalem, after its future restoration. The siege by Titus and destruction by the Romans are exclnsively the subject under our eyes.
[Jerusalem compassed with armies^ then hnow.'] The following historical facts are well worthy of notice. Thejr show in a remarkable manner how the words of our Lord m this verse were accomplished. It appears that three years before the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman army under Oestius Gallus made a sudden attack upon Jerusalem, but most unaccoun- tably and without any apparent reason, withdrew again, although the city might have been taken with ease. The consequenee of this attack was that a large number of the inhabitants of Jerusalem took alarm, and withdrew from the city as soon as the Roman army had retired. To use the words of Josephus, they " swam away, as from a ship about to sink.*' Among those who escaped were the Christians, some of them retiring to Pella, and some to Mount libanus. The result of this was, that when the last great war, under Vespasian and Titus, broke out shortly afterwards, the Christians almost entirely es- caped its desolation.
It seems a high probability that the Christians remembered the very words of our Lord which we are now considering, ai\d that the remembrance of them was the preservation of their lives. They saw in the advance of the Roman army under Cestius Gallus the predicted sign of " desolation drawing ni^h.*' They at once acted on the advice of their master, and so escaped the miseries of the final siege.
21. — YFlee to the mountaim, Sc.] Mi^j or remarks, ''These 'were the mountains to the north east of Jerusalem, towards the
LrKB, CHAP. XXI. VER. 20 — 24. 373
souroe of the Jordan, which was io the territories of Agrippa. He continued faithful to the Eomans ; and hence the Christians avoided the destruction which overspread JudsBa."
22. — \Daps of vengeance.,, things written fulfilled.'] The " vengeance " spoKen of here appears to me to he the righteous retrihution of God on the Jewish nation, for all their sins against Him, irom the time when they iirst entered Canaan. I cannot confine it to " vengeance " for the sins of the nation during the last few hundred years of their existence after the Bahylonish captivity. The words of our Lord in Matt, xxiii. 35, 36, appear to confirm this view.
The ** things written " appear to me to include all the heavy judgmei/ts foretold in the Old Testament as coming on the Jews, and to hegin with the 26th chap, of Leviticus.
23. — [Woe. ..them with child, give suck, dc] The miseries of women in the siege of Jerusalem are specially foretold in Deut. xxviii. 66.]
[In the land.] Here, as in many other places in the Gospels, " the land " seems specially to mean the land of Palestine.
24. — [Fall by edge of sword, dc] Josephus records that there perished in the siege of Jerusalem, hy sword and hy famine, no less than eleven hundred thousand Jews.
[Led away captives^ dc] Josephus records that in the course of the war ninety-seven thousand Jews were made captives. Most of them were sent as slaves into Egypt, or dispersed over the provinces of the Boman Empire, to he cast to the wild heasts in the amphitheatres.
[Jerusalem trodden down of the Oentiles.] > This expression means that the citv of Jerusdem shall he possessed hy Gentile nations, and cruelly oppressed as a captive city, imtil the Jews shall he restored to their own land. How literally and exactly these words have been fulfilled all readers of history know. In spite of all the efforts of the crusaders, Jerusalem has almost always been a city trampled under foot and cruelly oppressed, by Komans, Greeks, Saracens, and Turks, from the time of Titus down to the present day.
\TJnt\l,.. times of. ..Oentiles he fulfilled.] Thi^ expression is variously interpreted.
1. Some, with Bishop Pearce, put a vague general meaning on it, and say it signifies " till the Gentiles have done all which God intended them to do."
2. Some think, with Hammond, that it refers entirely to something already past, and that it was accomplished after the days of Adrian, when a church composed of Gentiles, Christians,
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