When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. The tactical instruction — flee rather than stay and be martyred unnecessarily — and the eschatological timeline: the Son of Man will come before the disciples have completed the circuit of Israel's towns. The coming of the Son of Man has been variously interpreted as the resurrection, the coming judgment on Jerusalem in 70 AD, or the final return. In the context of the mission to Israel, it suggests an urgency that makes the disciples' mission a race against time — the kingdom's arrival in power will overtake the disciples' mission before it is complete.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

Publish a note on this verse