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Luke 21:4-6
New Catholic Bible
Luke 21:4-6
New Catholic Bible
4 For the others have all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has given all that she had to live on.”
The Destruction of the Temple and the Return of Christ[a]
Jesus Announces the Destruction of the Temple.[b] When some people were talking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and votive offerings, Jesus remarked, 6 “As for all these things that you are gazing at now, the time will come when not one stone here will be left upon another; everything will be thrown down.” Read full chapterFootnotes
- Luke 21:5 Scenes of terror and visions of hope alternate in this great discourse. If we are to understand its tone and vocabulary, we must put ourselves in the atmosphere created by various terrifying and magnificent pages of the Old Testament. On the eve of the catastrophe that destroyed both Jerusalem, for the first time, and the state of Israel in 587 B.C., some prophets had a presentiment of the spiritual ruin of the people and had warned them, with harsh invectives, of future punishments. Later on, people began to ask about the ultimate destiny of the world and humanity; this created a restlessness that was eschatological, that is, concerned with the ultimate end, the last times.
5
In the “apocalypses” or “revelations,” some authors imagined awe-inspiring scenes of wars, disasters, and judgment, which would usher in the coming of God and the salvation of the people. These accounts, which are to be read in accordance with their particular literary genre, always remain bewildering. - Luke 21:5 Around the year 19 B.C., Herod the Great undertook a splendid reconstruction of the temple. The very magnificence of the restored temple caused a sense of self-reliance and presumption (see Lk 13:34-35; 19:46; Jer 7:1-15; 26; Ezek 8:11; Mic 3:9-12).
