Matthew 24:6-8

Matthew 24:6-8. And ye shall hear of wars, &c. This is the second sign. That there were wars and rumours of wars, appears by all the historians of those times, and above all by Josephus. To relate the particulars would be to transcribe a great part of his history of the Jewish wars. There were more especially rumours of wars when Caligula, the Roman emperor, ordered his statue to be set up in the temple at Jerusalem, which the Jews refused to suffer, and persisted in their refusal: and having therefore reason to apprehend a war from the Romans, were in such a consternation, that they omitted even the tilling of their lands. But this storm was soon blown over, and their fear dissipated by the timely death of that emperor. For nation shall rise against nation, &c. Here Christ declares that greater disturbances than those which happened under Caligula, should fall out in the latter times of Claudius, and in the reign of Nero. The rising of nation against nation portended the dissensions, insurrections, and mutual slaughters of the Jews, and those of other nations, who dwelt in the same cities together; as particularly at Cesarea, where the Jews and Syrians contended about the right of the city, which contention at length proceeded so far that above twenty thousand Jews were slain, and the city was cleared of the Jewish inhabitants. At this blow the whole nation of the Jews was exasperated; and, dividing themselves into parties, they burned and plundered the neighbouring cities and villages of the Syrians, and made an immense slaughter of the people. The Syrians, in revenge, destroyed not a less number of Jews, and every city was divided into two armies. At Scythopolis the inhabitants compelled the Jews who resided among them to fight against their own countrymen, and, after the victory, basely setting upon them by night, murdered above thirteen thousand of them, and spoiled their goods. At Ascalon they killed two thousand five hundred; at Ptolemais two thousand, and made not a few prisoners. The Tyrians put many to death, and imprisoned more. The people of Gadara did likewise; and all the other cities of Syria, in proportion as they hated or feared the Jews. At Alexandria the old enmity was revived between the Jews and heathen, and many fell on both sides, but of the Jews to the number of fifty thousand. The people of Damascus, too, conspired against the Jews of the same city, and, assaulting them unarmed, killed ten thousand of them. The rising of kingdom against kingdom portended the open wars of different tetrarchies and provinces against one another: as that of the Jews who dwelt in Peræa against the people of Philadelphia, concerning their bounds, while Cuspius Fadus was procurator; and that of the Jews and Galileans against the Samaritans, for the murder of some Galileans going up to the feast at Jerusalem, while Cumanus was procurator; and that of the whole nation of the Jews against the Romans and Agrippa, and other allies of the Roman empire. But there was not only sedition and civil war throughout Judea, but likewise in Italy, Otho and Vitellius contending for the empire. There shall be famines and pestilences The third sign. There were famines, as particularly that prophesied of by Agabus, and mentioned Acts 11:28; and by Suetonius, and other profane historians referred to by Eusebius, which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cesar, and was so severe at Jerusalem, that many perished for want of victuals And pestilences, the usual attendants upon famine. Scarcity and badness of provisions almost always end in some epidemical distemper. Many died by reason of the famine in the reign of Claudius: and when Niger was killed by the Jewish zealots, he imprecated, besides other calamities, famine and pestilence upon them, ( λιμοντε και λοιμον , the very words used by the evangelist,) all which, says Josephus, God ratified and brought to pass against the ungodly And earthquakes in divers places The fourth sign. In the time of Claudius and Nero there were great earthquakes at Smyrna, Miletus, Chios, Samos, Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colosse; in Crete also and Campania, and one at Rome in the reign of Galba. In Judea, likewise, there were judgments of the same kind. For Josephus tells us, Bell., 4. cap. 4, “There happened a most terrible tempest and violent winds, with the most vehement showers, and continual lightnings, and horrid thunderings, and prodigious bellowings of the shaken earth;” so that many were led to believe that these things portended no common calamity. St. Luke mentions a fifth sign, namely, Fearful sights and great signs from heaven, Luke 21:11; where see the notes, as also on Isaiah 66:6. All these are the beginning of sorrows Gr. ωδινων , a word which is properly used of the pains of travailing women. As if he had said, All these are only the first pangs and throes; and are nothing to that hard labour that shall follow.