Spoken weeping on His last day in the temple as His farewell to the city He loved, the words declare that the temple was no longer His Father's dwelling but left to the Jews themselves. Desolate means God's presence and glory departed forever when Christ went out from its walls, leaving its beautiful services a mockery and its ceremonies meaningless after their fulfillment in Him. This abandonment came only after long mercy, because Jerusalem killed the prophets, at last slew the Son, and stubbornly refused His repeated longing to gather and heal her children. The divine withdrawal doomed temple, city and nation to ruin by Rome, with not one stone left upon another, a judgment that also points to the final destruction of the world when mercy is likewise refused. The same ruin warns all later readers, cities and generations given great light that to reject truth and the Spirit's appeals is to be left without protection to desolation.
Setting and Wording
The words were spoken on Jesus' final day of teaching in the temple, when He warned the people against their leaders, exposed their conduct, and denounced the hypocrisy of the priests, scribes, rulers, Pharisees and elders. That denunciation was meant not only for those present but for people of every age and nation. He then left the temple for the last time before Passover and looked over Jerusalem and its temple from the Mount of Olives.
He spoke them weeping in very great grief and weeping love, with His body swaying as a tree before the tempest in agony over the rejecters of His mercy. They were His farewell to Jerusalem, the city of His love, and His final and irrevocable sentence upon Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. He felt His people's rejection as done to Himself, and the words are fearful words of sorrow bringing anguish and bitter tears in sympathy with the sorrow of the Son of God.
Until then He had called the temple His Father's house, but here He called it theirs, which means it was no longer God's dwelling place. The house left desolate is the temple, the city and the nation with all their privileges, also described as the Jewish nation and Israel's religious house, abandoned and destined for desolation. Though still outwardly beautiful with gold and precious stones and still sought by worshipers from every nation, Jehovah was no longer to be found there, for as the Son of God went out from its walls God's presence was withdrawn forever from the building made for His glory because Israel as a nation had separated from God.
The hearers were filled with fear and wondered whether the magnificent building would soon be ruined. The disciples were amazed at its massive stones and apparently unshakable walls, its immense size and beauty, even as He declared that not one stone would remain upon another. They heard His lament over Jerusalem but did not grasp that this judgment would come before the end of the world, and wrongly connected it with His personal return and the overthrow of Roman rule.
The chapter describes people blinded to relative importance, including neglecting the weightier matters of God's law. Its denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees and its warning against following their blind leadership was recorded as an admonition to future generations.
Abandonment by God
Desolate means that God's presence and glory departed from the temple forever when Christ went out from its walls. He was the true glory of the second temple, fulfilling the promise that its glory would exceed that of the first, and when He left its courts that glory departed permanently. Until then He had called it His Father's house, but in speaking these words near the close of His earthly ministry, when He looked for the last time upon its interior, He called it theirs, for it was no longer God's dwelling place or honored dwelling. Though the building remained outwardly beautiful with gold and precious stones, splendid as when the shekinah had glorified it, and was still sought by worshipers from every nation, Jehovah was no longer to be found there because Israel as a nation had separated from God. With that separation the temple was left desolate, its glory gone forever.
With God's presence withdrawn, the temple's services henceforth became a mockery and its ceremonies meaningless. The temple and its animal sacrifices would no longer serve their purpose after Jesus offered His life for the sins of the world, when the sacrificial types met their fulfillment in the Lamb of God. Jerusalem's time of probation had ended. The Son of God spoke a shut door to the unbelieving Jews of that generation, leaving their house desolate and without hope. By rejecting God's warnings they were left without His favor and presence, for God withdrew His Spirit and left them to the deceptions they chose and to the consequences of those deceptions. While the door was shut to the people of Jerusalem who disbelieved, it stayed open to the humble who believed and obeyed God.
The chosen nation, honored and favored above all people, was as a nation divorced from God and left desolate. The words are Christ's lamentation in which the very heart of God pours itself forth in His representative, the separation struggle and mysterious farewell of long-suffering, abused and rejected love after every resource has been exhausted, spoken in the most terribly momentous period of the Jewish nation while Jesus was in their midst. Though He loved them and labored for them and bore insult, mockery, and rejection from them, and did all that was possible to save them from ruin, they refused Him, and He had exhausted the resources of infinite love and could do no more. As the natural branches of the olive tree they were cut off to receive eternal retribution for refusal of Christ, with destruction lying at their own door by their own responsibility. Their salvation would have been the joy of Christ and the rejoicing of the angels, but they would not, for no one will be saved against his will.
As a general principle, when Jesus withdraws His presence from a house, home, or household that does not have Him abiding in it, it is left desolate. A home becomes desolate when its people refuse Christ and turn from His sacred influence to the sinful customs and amusements of the world, for Christ will not remain to guide and bless such a household, and His departure leaves it desolate because His presence has been withdrawn. God does not dwell with those who reject His truth, and rejecting truth means rejecting and dishonoring its Author. Without divine enlightenment people cannot rightly or correctly understand God's plans and ways, and may deny His existence or limit His power to fit their finite views.
Reasons for Rejection
Jerusalem had killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her, beating, scourging, crucifying and persecuting the wise men and scribes sent to her, rewarding good with evil and love with hatred, so that all righteous blood from Abel to Zacharias came upon that generation. She had been the murderer of the prophets, and when the Son of God came to His own His own received Him not, but cast the heir out of the vineyard and rejected and slew Him. This was the ground of the final and irrevocable sentence pronounced in weeping love, because Christ personally identified with His people and felt their rejection as done to Himself.
Though He had labored for years to convince the Jews, entreating blind priests and unbelieving Pharisees while denouncing their wickedness, He had often longed and repeatedly desired and invited to gather her children together as a hen gathers chickens under her wings to save, protect, heal and bless them. They would not be gathered and stubbornly refused His gathering love, sheltering care and the help God sent, and therefore their house — the Jewish nation, no longer a sacred dwelling protected by His presence — was left to them desolate and its destiny made certain. The desolation was the calamity that came upon the nation after it rejected the means that would have brought it light and knowledge.
They rejected the light of divine truth sent through prophets and the Son, refused the Spirit's appeals, scorned His love, and did not know the time of their visitation. They rejected the powerful evidence of His works that He was the Son of God and Messiah, persisting in obstinate unbelief despite that evidence, and as a proud unbelieving nation they professed to exalt and honor God's law while disregarding His commandments. For this refusal to hear Christ and opposition to the gospel, Jerusalem and its temple were left desolate, a destruction that need not have come if His teachings had been obeyed.
This rejection stood against what Jerusalem might have been, holiness unto the Lord. For Judah had for ages been the repository of sacred truth where the knowledge of Jehovah was cherished, its streets trodden by angel feet, its soil sacred, its temple sending prayer and praise to God and its bleeding altar testifying to guilt and pointing to the Lamb of God, with prophets sent with warning, reproof, consolation and promise. Sentence came only after long mercy, represented in the parable of the unfruitful tree with the gardener pleading that the nation be spared yet one more year for new experiments of mercy and grace. After Christ had done all that could be done, clothing His divinity with humanity for their sake and searching from highest bough to lowest for fruit and finding none, the Sun of Righteousness having shed divine beams of light upon the doomed city and the light having been persistently rejected, the irrevocable sentence fell.
Like the pretentious fig tree with rich foliage but only leaves when searched from topmost bough to lowest branches, which withered by the next morning under His curse, Israel had profession without fruit and would wither, its doom sudden and certain. The desolation prefigured by the blighting of the fig tree was connected with the second cleansing of the temple when buyers and sellers were dispersed for desecrating the place set apart for a holy purpose, showing the righteous anger of God. The priests standing as representative men of the nation were corrupting the people by false principles, leaving the people fruitless and desolate.
Destruction Foretold
Desolation means abandonment by God followed by ruin and destruction, a final and irrevocable sentence upon Jerusalem spoken in weeping love as Christ came near the city for the last time, leaving its temple, city and nation with all their privileges abandoned to ruin. The house left desolate is the temple and Jerusalem's religious house, left because the people rejected Christ, and its coming destruction fulfills that warning. Its hearers were filled with fear and wondered whether the magnificent building would soon be ruined, and Jesus clarified that despite its immense size and beauty and apparently unshakable walls that amazed the disciples with their massive stones, not one stone would remain upon another. That desolation came because Jerusalem killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her and would not be gathered as a hen gathers her chickens, after Christ had labored for years to convince the Jews that great calamities would come unless they repented, entreating blind priests and unbelieving Pharisees while denouncing their wickedness and pronouncing the woes upon Jerusalem. It came because they killed and crucified and scourged and persecuted the prophets and wise men and scribes He sent, so that all righteous blood from Abel to Zacharias came upon that generation, and because they rejected the light of divine truth and did not know the time of their visitation.
The warning foretold that Jerusalem and its temple stood under judgment, no longer a sacred dwelling protected by Christ's presence after He left the temple, with the city's later destruction by Roman forces as the consequence of its course in rejecting Christ and those sent to it. It points ahead to when its walls would be broken and its temple stones thrown down. The disciples soon learned that not one stone would remain upon another, and the temple and its animal sacrifices would no longer serve their purpose after Jesus offered His life for the sins of the world, when the sacrificial types met their fulfillment in the Lamb of God.
Had the people opened their hearts to the appeals of God's Spirit, they would have recognized Christ as the fulfillment of their sacrifices, sympathized with His work, accepted His teaching and repented, and been spared that doom. Jerusalem grieved Jesus because it could have accepted Him, been healed and delivered, and received the peace and destiny God offered; instead, refusing His gathering love and efforts to save, it was doomed. If its people had received Him and welcomed the Spirit's appeals, they could have escaped the doom He pronounced and received deliverance from Roman rule. The city, which had been under His care, would soon be destroyed for rejecting Christ, whereas if its people had received Him Jerusalem could have endured and become a center of peace and blessing to the nations, but their refusal of the Messiah and pursuit of their own course led to destruction.
This warning introduced Jesus' teaching about Jerusalem's destruction, which extended beyond that event to the final judgment of the world. Christ's prediction of Jerusalem's destruction also pointed to the destruction of the world, because people would continue to refuse God's mercy after rejecting His appeals and persisting in rebellion, choosing their own way until they lost His protection and brought humiliation and destruction upon themselves. Jerusalem's destruction marked the end of God's long forbearance toward the nation, coming when the nation's transgression had reached its full measure as the consequence of Israel's rejection of the light Jesus had given, and that destruction typifies the destruction of the world. Retributive judgment was hanging over Jerusalem and its temple, which Paul recognized when he returned to the city.
Warning for Later Readers
The desolation of Jerusalem and its temple was judgment for rejecting the light sent through prophets and the Son, and all who follow that same course and refuse the light given to them will likewise face divine rebuke. The warning reaches people today who have received great light and have seen power, goodness and mercy yet have not fulfilled the divine purpose, for refusal of the Messiah and pursuit of their own course leads to destruction. Those who hear the voice of God, serve Him and walk humbly receive blessing, while those who forget instruction and follow their own way dishonor Him, lose protection and must face humiliation and destruction as the result of their choices.
Because Israel refused repeated invitations their house was left desolate, and this was the final warning to the impenitent nation. The rejection of the message of salvation that brought destruction upon the Jewish people warns those given great light and opportunity in the generation before the second advent not to reject light and suffer the same ruin and desolation.
The same pattern holds for impenitent cities, for the Lord sends messengers with reproof and warning, and when those messengers are despised and abused and patience and forbearance will not turn hearts to Him, He sends judgments. So it was with San Francisco, whose inhabitants trusted their grand towering structures against destruction, yet no human power can stand against the mandates of Jehovah.
Jerusalem was left desolate after its people rejected warnings and the help offered through the Spirit, having reached the end of mercy with hearts hardened until they no longer responded and final pleadings could not deliver them. Its judgment warns people in every age that rejecting the reproofs of the Spirit brings condemnation. The door was shut to the disbelieving people of Jerusalem, leaving them without hope, while it stayed open to the humble who believed and obeyed, and this closing belongs to the same pattern as Noah, Sodom and Tyre that will be repeated at the end of time when the door is shut to all who are not ready.
Its fate also warns that the same evils could come upon a place that concentrates too much power and responsibility in one center, a danger facing Battle Creek if the warning was ignored. The grief over hearts turned from light and life, over children who would not be gathered as a hen gathers her brood under wings, rebukes complaint when neglect is met in work for God.
Spoken weeping on His last day in the temple as His farewell to the city He loved, the words declare that the temple was no longer His Father's dwelling but left to the Jews themselves. Desolate means God's presence and glory departed forever when Christ went out from its walls, leaving its beautiful services a mockery and its ceremonies meaningless after their fulfillment in Him. This abandonment came only after long mercy, because Jerusalem killed the prophets, at last slew the Son, and stubbornly refused His repeated longing to gather and heal her children. The divine withdrawal doomed temple, city and nation to ruin by Rome, with not one stone left upon another, a judgment that also points to the final destruction of the world when mercy is likewise refused. The same ruin warns all later readers, cities and generations given great light that to reject truth and the Spirit's appeals is to be left without protection to desolation.
Setting and Wording
The words were spoken on Jesus' final day of teaching in the temple, when He warned the people against their leaders, exposed their conduct, and denounced the hypocrisy of the priests, scribes, rulers, Pharisees and elders. That denunciation was meant not only for those present but for people of every age and nation. He then left the temple for the last time before Passover and looked over Jerusalem and its temple from the Mount of Olives.
He spoke them weeping in very great grief and weeping love, with His body swaying as a tree before the tempest in agony over the rejecters of His mercy. They were His farewell to Jerusalem, the city of His love, and His final and irrevocable sentence upon Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. He felt His people's rejection as done to Himself, and the words are fearful words of sorrow bringing anguish and bitter tears in sympathy with the sorrow of the Son of God.
Until then He had called the temple His Father's house, but here He called it theirs, which means it was no longer God's dwelling place. The house left desolate is the temple, the city and the nation with all their privileges, also described as the Jewish nation and Israel's religious house, abandoned and destined for desolation. Though still outwardly beautiful with gold and precious stones and still sought by worshipers from every nation, Jehovah was no longer to be found there, for as the Son of God went out from its walls God's presence was withdrawn forever from the building made for His glory because Israel as a nation had separated from God.
The hearers were filled with fear and wondered whether the magnificent building would soon be ruined. The disciples were amazed at its massive stones and apparently unshakable walls, its immense size and beauty, even as He declared that not one stone would remain upon another. They heard His lament over Jerusalem but did not grasp that this judgment would come before the end of the world, and wrongly connected it with His personal return and the overthrow of Roman rule.
The chapter describes people blinded to relative importance, including neglecting the weightier matters of God's law. Its denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees and its warning against following their blind leadership was recorded as an admonition to future generations.
Abandonment by God
Desolate means that God's presence and glory departed from the temple forever when Christ went out from its walls. He was the true glory of the second temple, fulfilling the promise that its glory would exceed that of the first, and when He left its courts that glory departed permanently. Until then He had called it His Father's house, but in speaking these words near the close of His earthly ministry, when He looked for the last time upon its interior, He called it theirs, for it was no longer God's dwelling place or honored dwelling. Though the building remained outwardly beautiful with gold and precious stones, splendid as when the shekinah had glorified it, and was still sought by worshipers from every nation, Jehovah was no longer to be found there because Israel as a nation had separated from God. With that separation the temple was left desolate, its glory gone forever.
With God's presence withdrawn, the temple's services henceforth became a mockery and its ceremonies meaningless. The temple and its animal sacrifices would no longer serve their purpose after Jesus offered His life for the sins of the world, when the sacrificial types met their fulfillment in the Lamb of God. Jerusalem's time of probation had ended. The Son of God spoke a shut door to the unbelieving Jews of that generation, leaving their house desolate and without hope. By rejecting God's warnings they were left without His favor and presence, for God withdrew His Spirit and left them to the deceptions they chose and to the consequences of those deceptions. While the door was shut to the people of Jerusalem who disbelieved, it stayed open to the humble who believed and obeyed God.
The chosen nation, honored and favored above all people, was as a nation divorced from God and left desolate. The words are Christ's lamentation in which the very heart of God pours itself forth in His representative, the separation struggle and mysterious farewell of long-suffering, abused and rejected love after every resource has been exhausted, spoken in the most terribly momentous period of the Jewish nation while Jesus was in their midst. Though He loved them and labored for them and bore insult, mockery, and rejection from them, and did all that was possible to save them from ruin, they refused Him, and He had exhausted the resources of infinite love and could do no more. As the natural branches of the olive tree they were cut off to receive eternal retribution for refusal of Christ, with destruction lying at their own door by their own responsibility. Their salvation would have been the joy of Christ and the rejoicing of the angels, but they would not, for no one will be saved against his will.
As a general principle, when Jesus withdraws His presence from a house, home, or household that does not have Him abiding in it, it is left desolate. A home becomes desolate when its people refuse Christ and turn from His sacred influence to the sinful customs and amusements of the world, for Christ will not remain to guide and bless such a household, and His departure leaves it desolate because His presence has been withdrawn. God does not dwell with those who reject His truth, and rejecting truth means rejecting and dishonoring its Author. Without divine enlightenment people cannot rightly or correctly understand God's plans and ways, and may deny His existence or limit His power to fit their finite views.
Reasons for Rejection
Jerusalem had killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her, beating, scourging, crucifying and persecuting the wise men and scribes sent to her, rewarding good with evil and love with hatred, so that all righteous blood from Abel to Zacharias came upon that generation. She had been the murderer of the prophets, and when the Son of God came to His own His own received Him not, but cast the heir out of the vineyard and rejected and slew Him. This was the ground of the final and irrevocable sentence pronounced in weeping love, because Christ personally identified with His people and felt their rejection as done to Himself.
Though He had labored for years to convince the Jews, entreating blind priests and unbelieving Pharisees while denouncing their wickedness, He had often longed and repeatedly desired and invited to gather her children together as a hen gathers chickens under her wings to save, protect, heal and bless them. They would not be gathered and stubbornly refused His gathering love, sheltering care and the help God sent, and therefore their house — the Jewish nation, no longer a sacred dwelling protected by His presence — was left to them desolate and its destiny made certain. The desolation was the calamity that came upon the nation after it rejected the means that would have brought it light and knowledge.
They rejected the light of divine truth sent through prophets and the Son, refused the Spirit's appeals, scorned His love, and did not know the time of their visitation. They rejected the powerful evidence of His works that He was the Son of God and Messiah, persisting in obstinate unbelief despite that evidence, and as a proud unbelieving nation they professed to exalt and honor God's law while disregarding His commandments. For this refusal to hear Christ and opposition to the gospel, Jerusalem and its temple were left desolate, a destruction that need not have come if His teachings had been obeyed.
This rejection stood against what Jerusalem might have been, holiness unto the Lord. For Judah had for ages been the repository of sacred truth where the knowledge of Jehovah was cherished, its streets trodden by angel feet, its soil sacred, its temple sending prayer and praise to God and its bleeding altar testifying to guilt and pointing to the Lamb of God, with prophets sent with warning, reproof, consolation and promise. Sentence came only after long mercy, represented in the parable of the unfruitful tree with the gardener pleading that the nation be spared yet one more year for new experiments of mercy and grace. After Christ had done all that could be done, clothing His divinity with humanity for their sake and searching from highest bough to lowest for fruit and finding none, the Sun of Righteousness having shed divine beams of light upon the doomed city and the light having been persistently rejected, the irrevocable sentence fell.
Like the pretentious fig tree with rich foliage but only leaves when searched from topmost bough to lowest branches, which withered by the next morning under His curse, Israel had profession without fruit and would wither, its doom sudden and certain. The desolation prefigured by the blighting of the fig tree was connected with the second cleansing of the temple when buyers and sellers were dispersed for desecrating the place set apart for a holy purpose, showing the righteous anger of God. The priests standing as representative men of the nation were corrupting the people by false principles, leaving the people fruitless and desolate.
Destruction Foretold
Desolation means abandonment by God followed by ruin and destruction, a final and irrevocable sentence upon Jerusalem spoken in weeping love as Christ came near the city for the last time, leaving its temple, city and nation with all their privileges abandoned to ruin. The house left desolate is the temple and Jerusalem's religious house, left because the people rejected Christ, and its coming destruction fulfills that warning. Its hearers were filled with fear and wondered whether the magnificent building would soon be ruined, and Jesus clarified that despite its immense size and beauty and apparently unshakable walls that amazed the disciples with their massive stones, not one stone would remain upon another. That desolation came because Jerusalem killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her and would not be gathered as a hen gathers her chickens, after Christ had labored for years to convince the Jews that great calamities would come unless they repented, entreating blind priests and unbelieving Pharisees while denouncing their wickedness and pronouncing the woes upon Jerusalem. It came because they killed and crucified and scourged and persecuted the prophets and wise men and scribes He sent, so that all righteous blood from Abel to Zacharias came upon that generation, and because they rejected the light of divine truth and did not know the time of their visitation.
The warning foretold that Jerusalem and its temple stood under judgment, no longer a sacred dwelling protected by Christ's presence after He left the temple, with the city's later destruction by Roman forces as the consequence of its course in rejecting Christ and those sent to it. It points ahead to when its walls would be broken and its temple stones thrown down. The disciples soon learned that not one stone would remain upon another, and the temple and its animal sacrifices would no longer serve their purpose after Jesus offered His life for the sins of the world, when the sacrificial types met their fulfillment in the Lamb of God.
Had the people opened their hearts to the appeals of God's Spirit, they would have recognized Christ as the fulfillment of their sacrifices, sympathized with His work, accepted His teaching and repented, and been spared that doom. Jerusalem grieved Jesus because it could have accepted Him, been healed and delivered, and received the peace and destiny God offered; instead, refusing His gathering love and efforts to save, it was doomed. If its people had received Him and welcomed the Spirit's appeals, they could have escaped the doom He pronounced and received deliverance from Roman rule. The city, which had been under His care, would soon be destroyed for rejecting Christ, whereas if its people had received Him Jerusalem could have endured and become a center of peace and blessing to the nations, but their refusal of the Messiah and pursuit of their own course led to destruction.
This warning introduced Jesus' teaching about Jerusalem's destruction, which extended beyond that event to the final judgment of the world. Christ's prediction of Jerusalem's destruction also pointed to the destruction of the world, because people would continue to refuse God's mercy after rejecting His appeals and persisting in rebellion, choosing their own way until they lost His protection and brought humiliation and destruction upon themselves. Jerusalem's destruction marked the end of God's long forbearance toward the nation, coming when the nation's transgression had reached its full measure as the consequence of Israel's rejection of the light Jesus had given, and that destruction typifies the destruction of the world. Retributive judgment was hanging over Jerusalem and its temple, which Paul recognized when he returned to the city.
Warning for Later Readers
The desolation of Jerusalem and its temple was judgment for rejecting the light sent through prophets and the Son, and all who follow that same course and refuse the light given to them will likewise face divine rebuke. The warning reaches people today who have received great light and have seen power, goodness and mercy yet have not fulfilled the divine purpose, for refusal of the Messiah and pursuit of their own course leads to destruction. Those who hear the voice of God, serve Him and walk humbly receive blessing, while those who forget instruction and follow their own way dishonor Him, lose protection and must face humiliation and destruction as the result of their choices.
Because Israel refused repeated invitations their house was left desolate, and this was the final warning to the impenitent nation. The rejection of the message of salvation that brought destruction upon the Jewish people warns those given great light and opportunity in the generation before the second advent not to reject light and suffer the same ruin and desolation.
The same pattern holds for impenitent cities, for the Lord sends messengers with reproof and warning, and when those messengers are despised and abused and patience and forbearance will not turn hearts to Him, He sends judgments. So it was with San Francisco, whose inhabitants trusted their grand towering structures against destruction, yet no human power can stand against the mandates of Jehovah.
Jerusalem was left desolate after its people rejected warnings and the help offered through the Spirit, having reached the end of mercy with hearts hardened until they no longer responded and final pleadings could not deliver them. Its judgment warns people in every age that rejecting the reproofs of the Spirit brings condemnation. The door was shut to the disbelieving people of Jerusalem, leaving them without hope, while it stayed open to the humble who believed and obeyed, and this closing belongs to the same pattern as Noah, Sodom and Tyre that will be repeated at the end of time when the door is shut to all who are not ready.
Its fate also warns that the same evils could come upon a place that concentrates too much power and responsibility in one center, a danger facing Battle Creek if the warning was ignored. The grief over hearts turned from light and life, over children who would not be gathered as a hen gathers her brood under wings, rebukes complaint when neglect is met in work for God.