Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Sign of the Son of Man
Matthew 24:29-35
29 “But immediately after the suffering of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken; · WEB
The coming itself: visible, audible, universal — and a fig tree to say that it can be seen approaching.
"The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken" Matthew 24:29.
The language is the prophets' standing vocabulary for the day of the Lord Isaiah 13:10 Joel 2:31, and it is borrowed deliberately. The order runs sun, moon, stars — the order of the fourth day of creation, undone.
"Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky... and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory" Matthew 24:30.
The clouds are Daniel's Daniel 7:13, where one like a son of man comes with them to receive a kingdom. Everything in the description is public: seen, heard, and universal. All the tribes of the earth will mourn — nobody has to be told it has happened, which is the point the lightning made.
"He will send out his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together his chosen ones from the four winds" Matthew 24:31. The purpose of the coming is a gathering, and the word is the one used of the hen and her chicks a chapter earlier Matthew 23:37. What was refused there is accomplished here.
"Now from the fig tree learn this parable: When its branch has now become tender and produces its leaves, you know that the summer is near" Matthew 24:32.
The fig is nearly the last tree in that country to leaf, so it is the reliable one — when it moves, the season has certainly turned. The lesson is modest and exact: you can tell that summer is near, and you cannot tell the date. Nobody predicts the solstice from a bud.
"This generation will not pass away until all these things are accomplished" Matthew 24:34. Readers have long differed over the reach of the sentence, and the difference turns on how much of the discourse all these things covers — the fall of the temple, which that generation did see, or the whole sequence to the coming. The word rendered generation is used elsewhere of a kind of people as well as of a span of years Matthew 12:39 Psalms 12:7, and both readings have been held by careful readers. What the verse will not carry is a date.
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" Matthew 24:35. The one fixed point in a chapter about upheaval, and it is a sentence about his own words placed in the middle of a prophecy — which is a claim as large as any in the book.
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