Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Matthew 24:34 - 24:34
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Mat_24:34. Declaration to the effect that all this is to take place before the generation then living should pass away. The well-nigh absurd manner in which it has been attempted to force into the words ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη such meanings as: the creation (Maldonatus), or: the human race (Jerome), or: the Jewish nation (Jansen, Calovius, Wolf, Heumann, Storr, Dorner, Hebart, Auberlen; see, on the other hand, on Mar_13:30), or: “the class of men consisting of my believers” (Origen, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius Zigabenus, Clarius, Paulus, Lange), resembles the unreasonable way in which Ebrard, following up his erroneous reference of πάντα ταῦτα (see on Mat_24:33), imports into the saying the idea: inde ab ipsorum (discipulorum) aetate omnibus ecclesiae temporibus interfutura, an imaginary view which passages like Mat_10:23, Mat_16:28, Mat_23:39, should have been sufficient to prevent. This also in opposition to the interpretation of Cremer: “the generation of the elect now in question,” and that of Klostermann: “the (future) generation which is to witness those events,” both of which are foreign to the sense. Comp. Mat_23:36.
The πάντα ταῦτα is the same as that of Mat_24:33, and therefore denoting neither the mere prognostics of the second advent, or, to be more definite, “the taking away of the kingdom from Israel” (Gess), nor specially the destruction of Jerusalem (Schott, E. J. Meyer, Hoelemann, Bäumlein in Klaiber’s Stud. I. 3, p. 41 ff.). That the second advent itself is intended to be included, is likewise evident from Mat_24:36, in which the subject of the day and hour of the advent is introduced.