MATTHEW 23:38 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”
See, your house is left to you desolate. The judgment: your house — the temple, and by extension the entire religious establishment — is left desolate. The desolation is the fulfillment of the prophetic language of abandonment: the divine presence that made the temple holy departs, leaving the structure empty and therefore vulnerable to the destruction that Matthew 24 will describe.
Church Fathers on Matthew 23:38
The Lord next turns to address the city, desiring to instruct His bearers thereby. 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem:' this repetition of the name is a mark of compassion and intense love.
By 'Jerusalem' He means not the stones and buildings, but the dwellers there, over whom He laments with the feeling of a Father.
Foreseeing the destruction of the city, and the blow it would receive from the Romans, He called to mind the blood of the saints which had been, and should yet be, shed in it. Thou killedst Esaias who was sent unto thee, and stonedst my servant Jeremias; thou dashedst out the brains of Ezechiel by dragging him over stones; how shalt thou be saved, which wilt not suffer a physician to come nigh thee?
Read all 13 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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