Luke 21: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus watches rich people putting gifts into the temple treasury and a poor widow putting in two small coins, and says she gave more than all of them. When some people admire the temple's stonework, he says not one stone will be left on another, and he is asked when this will happen. He answers with a long warning about false claimants, wars, earthquakes, the arrest and betrayal of his followers, Jerusalem surrounded by armies, signs in the sun and moon and stars, and the Son of man coming in a cloud. He tells them to stay alert and pray, and the chapter ends with his daily pattern of teaching in the temple and spending nights on the Mount of Olives.

Claim by Claim

1. 21:1
   • He looked up.
   • He saw rich men putting their gifts into the temple treasury.
2. 21:2
   • He also saw a certain poor widow.
   • The widow put in two small copper coins.
3. 21:3
   • He said that he was speaking truly.
   • He said this poor widow had put in more than all of them.
4. 21:4
   • He said all these others gave into the offerings out of their abundance.
   • He said the widow gave out of her poverty.
   • He said the widow put in the whole of the living she had.
5. 21:5
   • Some people were speaking about the temple.
   • They said the temple was adorned with beautiful stones.
   • They said the temple was adorned with dedicated gifts.
   • He responded to them.
6. 21:6
   • He referred to the things they were looking at.
   • He said days would come.
   • He said in those days not one stone would be left upon another.
   • He said every stone would be thrown down.
7. 21:7
   • They asked him a question.
   • They addressed him as Teacher.
   • They asked when these things would be.
   • They asked what the sign would be when these things were about to happen.
8. 21:8
   • He told them to take heed that they not be deceived.
   • He said many would come in his name.
   • He said they would say 'I am Christ.'
   • He said they would say the time has drawn near.
   • He told them not to go after those people.
9. 21:9
   • He said they would hear of wars and commotions.
   • He told them not to be terrified when they heard of them.
   • He said these things must happen first.
   • He said the end would not come immediately.
10. 21:10
    • He then said to them that nation would rise against nation.
    • He said kingdom would rise against kingdom.
11. 21:11
    • He said there would be great earthquakes in various places.
    • He said there would be famines.
    • He said there would be pestilences.
    • He said there would be fearful sights.
    • He said there would be great signs from heaven.
12. 21:12
    • He said that before all these things, they would lay hands on his hearers.
    • He said they would persecute them.
    • He said they would deliver them to synagogues.
    • He said they would deliver them to prisons.
    • He said they would be brought before kings and rulers.
    • He said this would happen for the sake of his name.
13. 21:13
    • He said it would turn out for them as an occasion of testimony.
14. 21:14
    • He told them to settle it in their hearts not to plan beforehand what they would answer in their defense.
15. 21:15
    • He said he would give them a mouth and wisdom.
    • He said all their adversaries would not be able to contradict that wisdom.
    • He said all their adversaries would not be able to withstand it.
16. 21:16
    • He said they would be betrayed by parents.
    • He said they would be betrayed by brothers.
    • He said they would be betrayed by relatives.
    • He said they would be betrayed by friends.
    • He said some of them would be put to death.
17. 21:17
    • He said they would be hated by all.
    • He said this hatred would be because of his name.
18. 21:18
    • He said not a hair of their head would perish.
19. 21:19
    • He said that by their endurance they would gain their souls.
20. 21:20
    • He said they would see Jerusalem surrounded by armies.
    • He said when they saw that, they should know its desolation was near.
21. 21:21
    • He said those in Judea should then flee to the mountains.
    • He said those inside the city should leave it.
    • He said those in the country districts should not enter the city.
22. 21:22
    • He said these are days of vengeance.
    • He said this is so that all the things that are written may be fulfilled.
23. 21:23
    • He pronounced woe on pregnant women in those days.
    • He pronounced woe on nursing women in those days.
    • He said there would be great distress upon the land.
    • He said there would be wrath upon this people.
24. 21:24
    • He said they would fall by the edge of the sword.
    • He said they would be led away captive into all the nations.
    • He said Jerusalem would be trampled by the Gentiles.
    • He said this would last until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
25. 21:25
    • He said there would be signs in the sun.
    • He said there would be signs in the moon.
    • He said there would be signs in the stars.
    • He said on the earth there would be distress of nations.
    • He said the nations would be in perplexity.
    • He said the sea and the waves would roar.
26. 21:26
    • He said men's hearts would fail them from fear.
    • He said men's hearts would fail them from expectation of the things coming on the inhabited world.
    • He said the powers of the heavens would be shaken.
27. 21:27
    • He said that then they would see the Son of man coming in a cloud.
    • He said he would come with power and great glory.
28. 21:28
    • He said that when these things begin to happen, they should stand up straight.
    • He said they should lift up their heads.
    • He said the reason is that their redemption is drawing near.
29. 21:29
    • He spoke a parable to them.
    • He told them to look at the fig tree.
    • He told them to look at all the trees.
30. 21:30
    • He said that when the trees put out shoots, they see it.
    • He said they know of themselves that summer is now near.
31. 21:31
    • He said that likewise when they see these things happening, they should know the kingdom of God is near.
32. 21:32
    • He said truly to them that this generation would not pass away until all these things happen.
33. 21:33
    • He said heaven and earth would pass away.
    • He said his words would not pass away.
34. 21:34
    • He told them to take heed to themselves.
    • He said their hearts might be weighed down with carousing.
    • He said their hearts might be weighed down with drunkenness.
    • He said their hearts might be weighed down with cares of this life.
    • He said that day might come upon them suddenly and unawares.
35. 21:35
    • He said that day would come like a snare.
    • He said it would come upon all those dwelling on the face of the whole earth.
36. 21:36
    • He told them to keep watch.
    • He told them to pray at all times.
    • He said the purpose was that they might be accounted worthy to escape all these things that are going to happen.
    • He said the purpose was that they might stand before the Son of man.
37. 21:37
    • He was teaching in the temple during the daytime.
    • At night he went out and lodged on the mountain called the Mount of Olives.
38. 21:38
    • All the people came to him early in the morning in the temple.
    • They came to hear him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

21:1

The King James "treasury" was the temple's offering area, in the court where both men and women could go. Along its wall stood a row of chests with trumpet-shaped metal mouths, into which worshipers dropped their coins in the open where others could see.

21:2

The King James "two mites" translates a Greek word for the lepton, the smallest coin then in circulation, worth roughly a few minutes of a laborer's wages. Two of them together made up the smallest Roman coin, and a person could not give any smaller sum.

21:3

The two coins were the smallest money people used. Both together were worth only a few minutes of work.

21:4

"Penury" in 1611 meant extreme poverty, not merely having little. "All the living that she had" means her whole livelihood, the money she needed to buy food that day.

21:5

The "gifts" were objects dedicated to God and put on display in the temple: golden vines, plate, crowns and trophies given by wealthy donors and foreign rulers. The building itself was Herod the Great's reconstruction, still unfinished at this point after nearly fifty years of work, and its foundation stones were famously enormous, some of them many times the length of a man.

21:6

To leave "not one stone upon another" was a standard way of describing a building demolished down to the ground rather than merely damaged. Roman armies destroyed the temple about forty years after this, in the year 70.

21:7

The King James "Master" here does not mean owner. It translates a word for teacher, the ordinary way students addressed the rabbi they were learning from.

21:8

"Christ" is the Greek word for Messiah, meaning "anointed one," the king God had promised to Israel. In the oldest manuscripts the impostors say only "I am he," and the King James supplies the title to make the claim explicit.

21:9

"Commotions" means armed revolts and uprisings, not just unrest. "The end is not by and by" reads backwards to a modern eye: in 1611 "by and by" meant at once, immediately. The sense is that the end does not follow straight away.

21:11

"Divers places" is an older form of diverse, meaning various or scattered places. "Pestilences" means outbreaks of epidemic disease.

21:12

A synagogue was not only a place of worship but the local Jewish court, with authority to try, fine and flog members of the community. "For my name's sake" means because of your attachment to me, since a person's name stood for the person.

21:13

"Testimony" is a legal word. The point is that the trial itself becomes the witness stand, the occasion for saying publicly what they have seen.

21:14

"Meditate before" means to work out and rehearse in advance. The Greek verb behind "answer" is a legal term for the speech a defendant makes in his own defense, so the picture is of standing in a courtroom, not chatting with critics.

21:15

"Gainsay" means to speak against or contradict, from an old word for "against" plus "say."

21:16

"Kinsfolks" means relatives outside the immediate family, the wider circle of cousins and in-laws who in that culture would normally be a person's strongest protection.

21:18

"Not a hair of your head shall perish" was a standing expression for coming through something completely untouched. It sits deliberately beside the statement two verses earlier that some of them will be killed, and the text does not smooth over the tension.

21:19

The word behind "patience" means endurance, staying under a weight without breaking, rather than waiting calmly. The verb translated "possess" can mean either gain or hold on to, and the manuscripts differ over which form was written, so the line can be read either as "you will win your lives" or "keep hold of yourselves."

21:20

"Compassed with armies" means surrounded by a besieging force, which in ancient warfare meant the city was cut off and starved rather than stormed. "Desolation" means being emptied out and left in ruins.

21:21

Judaea is the region around Jerusalem. The instruction reverses normal wartime instinct: a walled city was where country people fled for safety, and here they are told the city is the one place not to go.

21:22

"Vengeance" in the King James means judicial punishment handed down, not personal revenge. "All things which are written" refers to the Hebrew scriptures, especially the prophets who described a siege and ruin of Jerusalem.

21:23

"Woe" is an exclamation of grief rather than a curse, closer to "how terrible for" than to "damn." "Them that give suck" means women breastfeeding. Both groups are named because neither can travel fast in a sudden flight. "The land" can mean the earth generally or the land of Judea in particular, and the Greek leaves it open.

21:24

"Led away captive" means sold or deported as slaves, the standard fate of a conquered population. "The times of the Gentiles" is a phrase found nowhere else, and it is left undefined here: it could mean the period during which foreign nations dominate Jerusalem, or a period allotted to them for some other purpose. The text does not say which.

21:25

Disturbances in sun, moon and stars are standard imagery in Israel's prophets for the collapse of a great power. Isaiah uses it for the fall of Babylon and Joel for the day of the LORD. Ancient hearers recognized it as the language of a whole world order coming apart, not as a weather forecast.

21:26

"Men's hearts failing them" describes fainting or collapsing, not losing courage in a moral sense. "The powers of heaven" can mean the sun, moon and stars themselves, or the unseen forces thought to stand behind them, and the Greek carries both.

21:27

"Son of man" is the phrase Jesus most often uses of himself in the Gospels. In ordinary Hebrew and Aramaic it simply means a human being, but the picture here of a figure coming on a cloud with power comes from the book of Daniel, chapter seven, where one "like the Son of man" is brought before God and given a kingdom. Both senses are present at once.

21:28

"Redemption" was a commercial word before it was a religious one: the price paid to buy a slave out of slavery or to ransom a prisoner of war. The rendering's "set free" catches the result; the word itself carries the idea of a price being paid.

21:29

A parable is a short comparison drawn from ordinary life to make a single point, not an allegory in which every detail stands for something. The fig tree is chosen because, unlike most trees in that climate, it drops its leaves in winter, so its budding is an unmistakable signal that the seasons have turned.

21:30

Fig trees drop every leaf in winter and grow new ones late, after the other trees. So fresh fig leaves were a sure sign that the hot season had arrived.

21:31

"The kingdom of God" in this period meant God's active reign or rule breaking into the world, an event rather than a territory.

21:32

The word translated "generation" can mean the people alive at one time, roughly forty years' worth, or it can mean a kind or breed of people. Which sense is meant here has been argued over since the earliest centuries, and the Greek does not settle it.

21:34

"Overcharged" means overloaded or weighed down, as a cart is overcharged with freight. "Surfeiting" translates a word for the thick-headed aftermath of heavy drinking, the hangover, paired here with the drinking itself.

21:35

The "snare" is a bird trap with a trigger, which lies flat and invisible until the moment it springs shut. The image is of something sudden rather than something cruel.

21:36

"Watch" translates a word for a sentry's alertness, staying awake on duty through the night while everyone else sleeps.

21:37

The Mount of Olives is a ridge just east of Jerusalem, across the Kidron valley, covered in olive groves. During festivals the city overflowed with pilgrims, and many of them camped on its slopes because there was no room to sleep inside the walls.

21:38

Teaching took place in the temple's outer courts and covered walkways, which were open public space where anyone could gather and listen. The working day began at first light, so a crowd arriving at dawn was ordinary rather than remarkable.