Luke 23:29
For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.
The words were spoken on the way from Pilate's court, the judgment-hall, to Calvary, as Jesus bore the cross after His scourging and fell beneath its burden. They belong to the account of His crucifixion in which He faced the Jewish priests and rulers who pressed the Roman governor to do their will. They were uttered after news of His condemnation had spread through Jerusalem, when people of all classes and ranks flocked toward the place of crucifixion and disciples and believers from the city and the surrounding region joined the vast multitude following Him, because the priests and rulers were bound by promise not to molest His followers if He Himself were delivered to them.
They were addressed to women of Jerusalem following Him to His death who wept for Him from common human pity rather than from faith in Him as sent from God, some having seen Him before or been healed by Him or having brought the sick to Him. Though bearing the sins of the world under suffering, He was not indifferent to their grief but looked on them with tender compassion without despising their tears and sympathy, felt a deeper sympathy for them, forgot His own suffering, and warned them to weep for themselves and their children because He looked forward from His own suffering to the destruction of Jerusalem. The saying foretells days of such terrible suffering, trial and distress that people will call childless women blessed and count childlessness a mercy, because they will be spared the suffering faced by mothers and children.
The days foretold came in the siege of Jerusalem with its famine and horrors of war, when its inhabitants including children died. Many of those same women who were then wailing over Him as He fell fainting beneath the cross perished with their children, realizing the doom the people had blindly invoked when they cried for His blood to be on them and their children. The warning refers not only to the destruction of Jerusalem but to the end of the world, to the wider judgment when all the impenitent will suffer condemnation for their sins.
It also describes the days when the Bridegroom is taken away and the disciples mourn and fast, the time of trial and temptation when the presence of the Comforter is not clearly discerned as Christ approaches the cross and descends into humiliation. It is when they witness Him in whom their hopes of eternal life are centered in the hands of wicked men, and hear His own nation clamoring for His blood. It is when they see Herod and his soldiers plaiting the crown of thorns, clothing Him in the purple robe while bowing and striking Him with the reed, and see Him scourged as the worst of criminals while the murderous Barabbas is chosen in His place though they thought He would take His place on David's throne. It is when they see Him lifted on the cross dying as a malefactor, so that they have cause to mourn and fast while their faith is tried and their hope and courage fail.