Verse 29
For behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts that never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us, for if they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry.
Blessed are the barren ... As Spence said, "This is a strange beatitude to be spoken to the women of Israel, who through all their checkered history, so passionately longed that THIS BARRENNESS might not be their portion."[17]
The green tree ... the dry ... This proverbial expression has been variously interpreted; but it would appear that Farrar's explanation is correct: "If they act thus to me, the Innocent and the Holy, what shall be the fate of these, the guilty and the false?"[18] There is here a dramatic prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, in which women especially would be deprived and suffer tribulations.
The green tree represents the innocent and holy Saviour in the spirituality and vigor of his life; the dry tree represents the morally dead and sapless people, typified by the fig tree, blasted by his word, four days earlier.[19]
Thus, by this prophecy, as Jesus left the city for the last time, he prophesied its doom no less than he did upon entering it (Luke 19:41f). Not even the prospect of immediate death took the Saviour's mind away from the awful penalities that would fall upon Jerusalem for his rejection. The fires of suffering consuming Jesus (the green tree) would be nothing to compare with the fires of destruction that would burn up the dead tree (Jerusalem, judicially and morally dead).
[17] H. D. M. Spence, op. cit., p. 239.
[18] Ibid.
[19] George R. Bliss, An American Commentary on the New Testament (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: The Judson Press), II, Luke, p. 335.
Be the first to react on this!
