Luke 21 Footnotes

21:20-28 Here Luke begins to differ most significantly from Matthew and Mark. The Olivet discourse began with a question concerning the timing of Jesus’s prediction of the destruction of the temple, though Mt 24:3 makes it clear that the disciples understood that event as part of the final events of the age. Jesus’s response answered both questions—the timing of Jerusalem’s fall and the timing of the end of the age—by using the one event to characterize the other. Luke placed the emphasis on the destruction of Jerusalem, while Matthew and Mark placed it on the end of the age.

21:28,31-32 The references to “you,” “this generation,” and “these things” are interpreted in different ways. Matthew and Mark focused the remarks especially on the original audience and the question of the destruction of the temple. Here they seem to have referred both to the original audience, some of whom were alive at the destruction of Jerusalem, and to the generation of the end, who will witness the signs of the coming of the Son of Man. Presumably the latter generation is spoken of as the former because of the close link Jesus drew between the two events.