Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Luke 21:5 - 21:5
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
As some spake (tinōn legontōn). Genitive absolute. The disciples we know from Mar 13:1; Mat 24:1.
How (hoti). Literally, “that.”
It was adorned (kekosmētai). Perfect passive indicative, state of completion, stands adorned, tense retained in indirect discourse, though English has to change it. Kosmeō, old and common verb for orderly arrangement and adorning.
With goodly stones and offerings (lithois kalois kai anathēmasin). Instrumental case. Some of these stones in the substructure were enormous. “The columns of the cloister or portico were monoliths of marble over forty feet high” (Plummer). Cf. Josephus, War, V.5. The word anathēma (here only in the N.T.) is not to be confused with anathema from the same verb anatithēmi, but which came to mean a curse (Gal 1:8; Act 23:14). So anathema came to mean devoted in a bad sense, anathēma in a good sense. “Thus knave, lad, becomes a rascal; villain, a farmer, becomes a scoundrel; cunning, skilful, becomes crafty” (Vincent). These offerings in the temple were very numerous and costly (2 Maccabees 3:2-7) like the golden vine of Herod with branches as tall as a man (Josephus, Ant. XV. ii.3).