O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!” (Matthew 23:37-38).

    The Jews, following the lead of their corrupted authorities, rejected Christ as the Messiah and had Him crucified. From the statement above, it is obvious that Jesus agonized over this rejection, but not merely for what it would mean for Himself. The Jewish people would suffer the wrath of God for their rejection. Telling of God’s mercy in a parable about a king holding a wedding feast, Jesus told the chief priests and Pharisees the consequences of their refusing God’s invitation: “But the king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire” (Matthew 22:7).

    Following Jesus’ anguished statement of Matthew 23:37, He described to His disciples the extent of the devastation. Looking at the temple, He said, “Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here shall be left upon another, which will not be torn down” (Matthew 24:2).

    Such horrors were indeed realized in the year 70 A.D. Following a four-year invasion of the land and a five-month siege of the city, the Roman army of Titus—as an instrument of God’s wrath—destroyed Jerusalem. All that Jesus described happened. Conditions became so terrible in the city before its destruction that the historian Josephus writes of a wealthy woman, who, in desperate hunger, killed and ate her baby son, saying to him, “O you miserable infant! For whom shall I preserve you in this war, this famine, and this rebellion?” Of those living in the city in those days, Josephus writes, “So those who were thus distressed by the famine were very desirous to die, and those already dead were esteemed happy, because they had not lived long enough either to hear or to see such miseries” (The Jewish War, 6.3.4).

    So it was that knowing these things would occur, even while hauling the cross to His own execution, Jesus turned to a group of women from the city who were following along, mourning the cruelty of His suffering, and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things in the green tree, what will happen in the dry?” (Luke 23:28-31). Even knowing what future event the Savior is alluding to, His words are difficult for us to understand without some background information.

    Once again, notice that even in this moment, Jesus was concerned for the fate of those who were rejecting Him. “Weep for yourselves and your children.” In days to come, days their children would see, the nation would suffer horribly. They had called this wrath upon themselves at Jesus’ trial: “And all the people answered and said, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” (Matthew 27:25).

    "Days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’” In this time, Jews believed a woman who was unable to have children was cursed by God (see Exodus 23:26; Deuteronomy 7:14; Leviticus 20:21; also Luke 1:25, 36). The judgment to come would be so terrible, this curse would be reversed. A woman would be glad that she was not able to bring children into such a world of trouble.

    "Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’” Men in that time would wish for a quick death instead of the prolonged suffering they would be faced with. These are the same words applied to great men at the time of judgment who have rejected Christ as their King and Refuge: “And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come; and who is able to stand?’” (Revelation 6:16-17).

    Then Jesus states the reason why they should expect such times: “For if they do these things in the green tree, what will happen in the dry?” Jesus is referring to fuel that is fit for burning. A tree that is still green does not make for good kindling—it does not burn well. Dry, dead wood, on the other hand, burns long and well. He is comparing the public spectacle He was undergoing at the hands of the Romans to the violence that the Romans would inflict upon the entire city. His meaning is this: “If this kind of abuse can fall upon an innocent man, how much worse will things be for people who are deserving of it, people who are fit for burning?” Jesus was telling the women, “Don’t weep for me. Weep for the people who will reject Me.” Jesus, at that moment, was on His way to do His redemptive work, bringing salvation to Jew and Gentile alike. For the Jews who saw their Savior and refused Him, to borrow the words of Peter, “the last state has become worse for them than the first” (2 Peter 2:20).

    This holds true for men today, who hear the gospel and choose to walk away—Christ mourns their loss! And how much worse is the condition of the one who sees and hears and responds to the gospel, receiving the gift of salvation, but then falls away? “…It is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame” (Hebrews 6:6). “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:6). Let us dwell faithfully in Christ’s mercy that we may not force His judgment down on us (Hebrews 10:26-31). ? - MDS