How are we to understand the Savior's words about the house that is now left empty? Judging by the context, He means the events of AD 70, which He foresaw: after the anti-Roman uprising organized primarily by the Zealots, the Romans would suppress it and destroy Jerusalem and the Temple to their foundations. In that case, Christ's words can and must be understood first of all...
How are we to understand the Savior's words about the house that is now left empty? Judging by the context, He means the events of AD 70, which He foresaw: after the anti-Roman uprising organized primarily by the Zealots, the Romans would suppress it and destroy Jerusalem and the Temple to their foundations. In that case, Christ's words can and must be understood first of all literally: after the terrible devastation, the city and the Temple—or rather, what remained of them, and very little would remain—would indeed be deserted.
There is, however, a second and deeper meaning in the Savior's words. He understands better than anyone that the events of AD 70 would be the consequence of the spiritual choice the people were making during His earthly ministry. He is naturally pleased neither by this choice itself nor by the catastrophe that would follow from it, but He knows that nothing can be done: both the people as a whole and every individual person are free in their choice, and no one can be forced into anything here. He brought into the world the Kingdom, which could have become the possession of the whole people, but only a minority paid attention to it. In the immediate future, salvation for the Jewish people was now inevitably to become the lot not of the majority but of the minority.
Here lies the tragedy of the Savior's earthly ministry. He could not even proclaim publicly that He was the Messiah He truly was—not because people would not have believed Him, but because, on the contrary, they would have believed and immediately tried to place Him at the head of yet another messianic movement that would grow into an anti-Roman uprising. They wanted to see not the Messiah He actually was, but one who would satisfy the expectations of a crowd inflamed by religious and political slogans. A crowd is always aggressive; it hates those who refuse to follow its slogans and meet its expectations, and its hatred is all the greater when its expectations of a potential leader had been greater. The Messiah is rejected, and His place is taken by those whom He Himself calls ravenous wolves, for whom sheep are of interest solely as food.
And the house becomes empty. The Temple, which according to the prophets was meant to receive the Messiah, admits Roman soldiers in place of the rejected Messiah, and they will not leave one stone upon another. Such is the price of the Kingdom offered and rejected, the price of salvation rejected: a price equal to destruction.
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23:30 We would not have been partakers - So ye make fair professions, as did your fathers.
23:31 Wherefore ye testify against yourselves - By your smooth words as well as devilish actions: that ye are the genuine sons of them who killed the prophets of their own times, while they professed the utmost veneration for those of past ages.
From the 3d to the 30th verse Mat 23:3-30 is exposed everythingthat commonly passes in the world for religion, whereby the pretenders to it keep both themselves and others from entering into the kingdom of God; from attaining, or even seeking after those tempers, in which alone true Christianity consists. As,
23:32 Fill ye up - A word of permission, not of command: as if he had said, I contend with you no longer: I leave you to yourselves: you have conquered: now ye may follow the devices of your own hearts. The measure of your fathers - Wickedness: ye may now be as wicked as they.
23:33 Ye serpents - Our Lord having now lost all hope of reclaiming these, speaks so as to affright others from the like sins.
23:34 Wherefore - That it may appear you are the true children of those murderers, and have a right to have their iniquities visited on you: Behold, I send - Is not this speaking as one having authority? Prophets - Men with supernatural credentials: Wise men - Such as have both natural abilities and experience; and scribes - Men of learning: but all will not avail. Luk 11:49.
23:35 That upon you may come - The consequence of which will be, that upon you will come the vengeance of all the righteous blood shed on the earth - Zechariah the son of Barachiah - Termed Jehoiada, Ch2 24:20, where the story is related:
Ye slew - Ye make that murder also of your fathers your own, by imitating it: Between the temple - That is, the inner temple, and the altar - Which stood in the outer court. Our Lord seems to refer to this instance, rather than any other, because he was the last of the prophets on record that were slain by the Jews for reproving their wickedness: and because God's requiring this blood as well as that of Abel, is particularly taken notice of in Scripture.
23:37 Luk 13:34.
23:38 Behold your house - The temple, which is now your house, not God's: Is left unto you - Our Lord spake this as he was going out of it for the last time: Desolate - Forsaken of God and his Christ, and sentenced to utter destruction.
23:39 Ye - Jews in general; men of Jerusalem in particular: shall not see me from this time - Which includes the short space till his death, till, after a long interval of desolation and misery, ye say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord - Ye receive me with joyful and thankful hearts. This also shall be accomplished in its season.