Luke 19:41

And when he drew nigh, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace! but now are they hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast up a bank about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

He saw the city ... Dummelow, Bliss, Childers, Spence, and many others affirm that a most extraordinary view of Jerusalem and the temple was afforded by any of the routes that Jesus might have taken from Bethany into the city; however, Ash says that Jesus could have seen the crowds and the southeast corner of Jerusalem, but not the temple."[52] Barclay says, "The whole city lies fully displayed in sight."[53]

And wept ...

The word does not mean merely that tears forced themselves up and fell down his face. It suggests rather the heaving of the bosom, and the sob and the cry of the soul in agony. We could have no stronger word than the word used here.[54]

And why did Jesus weep so bitterly in the very moment of what men would have hailed as his most magnificent hour?

All this moved Jesus to tears. He saw something which others did not see. He saw the coming destruction of the city. He knew that all of his efforts to avert the tragedy had been repulsed and rejected.[55]

Even more, however, than the physical ruin of the city and the brutal slaughter of tens of thousands of her citizens, Jesus saw in his impending rejection by the people of Israel a second disaster, comparable in every way to the one in Eden. If, and only IF, the Jews had received the Son of God, hailed him as Lord and Saviour of mankind, and led the campaign for all nations to accept his authority, the subsequent centuries would have been times of unbelievable joy and happiness upon the earth. Eden indeed might not have been fully recovered, but humanity blew its second chance when the Jews rejected their King. This writer believes that it was the incredible moral setback of the human race which was sustained in the rejection of the Saviour which might have precipitated the bitter weeping of this occasion. True, the crucifixion could not have been avoided; the prophecies had foretold it, as well as the rejection; but it was the near totality of that rejection which bound all subsequent ages in wretchedness and frustration, at least as contrasted with what might have been.

Shall cast a bank about thee ... compass thee ... dash thee to the ground, etc. ... It has become fashionable in certain school of criticism to allege that the verses containing these prophecies "were not uttered by Jesus, but are a `vaticinium post eventum',"[56] that is, a retrospective inclusion of these words by Luke writing after the destruction of Jerusalem; but such extravagant claims are the kind that lead intelligent men to reject the totality of such "source criticisms." This Gospel was written before Paul's death, long before Titus destroyed Jerusalem; and there simply cannot be any intelligent doubt that Jesus prophesied the very thing that happened. Such is not only proved by the unanimous record of the holy Gospels, but is it likewise proved by the historical fact that not a Christian was lost in the siege of the Holy City. If Jesus did not predict it, how did that come about? Geldenhuys has a marvelous comment on these expressions as the true words of Jesus Christ.[57]

This lament over Jerusalem is actually one of three. See fuller comment in my Commentary on Matthew, Matthew 23:37. They are in Luke 13:34; Matthew 23:37 and here. Some would meld the three, or suppose only two; but this is not necessary at all. There were good and sufficient reasons on each of the three occasions for Jesus to have exclaimed over the fate of the Holy City which he so clearly foresaw.

[52] Anthony Lee Ash, op. cit., p. 101.

[53] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 251.

[54] Norval Geldenhuys, op. cit., p. 484.

[55] Charles L. Childers, op. cit., p. 588.

[56] Norval Geldenhuys, op. cit., p. 464.

[57] Ibid., pp. 484-485.