Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Matthew 24:28

For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

28. wheresoever the carcase is ] The spiritual perception will discern when the Lord comes and where, by a subtle sense like that by which the vulture is cognisant of his distant prey.

Another interpretation fixes upon the idea of corruption in the body, and taking the “eagles” to mean the eagles of the Roman standards reads the sense thus: “where the corrupt body of sin lies there will the eagles of vengeance be gathered.”

This view is excluded by the division of the prophecy adopted in these notes.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Wheresoever … – The words in this verse are proverbial. Vultures and eagles easily ascertain where dead bodies are, and hasten to devour them. So with the Roman army. Jerusalem is like a dead and putrid corpse. Its life is gone, and it is ready to be devoured. The Roman armies will find it out, as the vultures do a dead carcass, and will come around it to devour it. This proverb also teaches a universal truth. Wherever wicked people are, there will be assembled the instruments of their chastisement. The providence of God will direct them there, as the vultures are directed to a dead carcass.

This verse is connected with the preceding by the word for, implying that this is a reason for what is said there that the Son of man would certainly come to destroy the city, and that he would come suddenly. The meaning is that he would come, by means of the Roman armies, as certainly; as suddenly, and as unexpectedly as whole flocks of vultures and eagles, though unseen before, see their prey at a great distance and suddenly gather in multitudes around it. Travelers in the deserts of Arabia tell us that they sometimes witness a speck in the distant sky which for a long time is scarcely visible. At length it grows larger, it comes nearer, and they at last find that it is a vulture that has from an immense distance seen a carcass lying on the sand. So keen is their vision as aptly to represent the Roman armies, though at an immense distance, spying, as it were, Jerusalem, a putrid carcass, and hastening in multitudes to destroy it.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Mat 24:28

For wherever the carcase is.

The carcase and the vultures

Our Lord says, wherever there is a rotting, dead society, a carcase hopelessly corrupt and evil, down upon it, as if drawn by some unerring attraction, will come the angel, the vulture of the Divine judgment. There are many comings of the Lord which on a smaller scale have embodied the same principles as shall be displayed in world-wide awfulness at the last judgment.

I. The first thing in these words is that they are to us a revelation of a law which operates with unerring certainty through all the course of the worlds history. God can tell when evil has become incurable, when the man or country has become a carcase. There may be flickerings of life unseen by our eyes. So long as there is possibility of amendment, sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily.

II. We have here A law which shall have a far more tremendous accomplishment in the future. These days proclaim the day of the Lord. In the prophecies both of the Old and New Testament the universal judgment is seen gleaming through the nearer partial judgments. That judgment is to be the destruction of opposing forces, the sweeping away of the carrion and moral evil. There are many temptations to put the day of the Lord in the background; such suppression is unfaithfulness.

III. That this is a law which need never touch you, nor need you know about it except by the hearing of the ear. It is told us that we may escape it. Take Christ for your Saviour and you shall have a refuge from the vultures. (A. Maclaren,D. D.)

Suppression of retributive warnings

Such suppression is unfaithfulness. Surely if we preachers believe that tremendous truth, we are bound to speak. It is cruel kindness to be silent. If a traveller is about plunging into some gloomy jungle infested by wild beasts, he is a friend who sits by the wayside to warn him of his danger. Surely you would not call a signalman unfeeling because he held out a red lamp when he knew that just round the curve beyond his cabin, the rails were up, and that any train that reached the place would go over in horrid ruin; and surely that preaching is not justly charged with harshness which rings out the wholesome proclamation of a day of judgment when we shall give each account of ourselves to the Divine-human Judge. (A. Maclaren,D. D.)

Retribution operative in delay

Now that is the law that has been working from the beginning, working as well in regard of the long delays as in regard of the swift execution. There is another metaphor, in the Old Testament, that puts the same idea in a very striking form. It speaks about Gods awakening, as if His judgment slumbered. All round that dial there the hand goes creeping, creeping, creeping slowly, but when it comes to the appointed line, then the bell strikes. And so years and centuries go by, all chance of recovery departs, and then the crash! The ice palace, built upon the frozen blocks, stands for a while, but when the spring thaws come it breaks up.

The sanitary order of human life

You know how in Eastern lands, if any beast of burden falls and dies, though the moment before the whole horizon may have been clear, with not a bird in sight, a stream of vultures suddenly appears to wrangle over the unexpected feast. You know how on any tropical ocean, if a carcase be thrown overboard, though at the moment there may not be a speck in the sky, the albatross and other birds of mighty wing appear as if by magic, and scold and fight over the welcome repast. Our Lord, then applies this familiar image of the carcase and the birds of prey to the judicial and retributive forces of human history, and intends to illustrate some law or principle by which they are governed.

I. A certain order underlies the events of human history. Catastrophes do not come by chance, or spring from caprice. The effect always has a cause. Judgment only follows on the heels of offence.

II. This order is a sanitary and beneficent order. Unconsumed, the carcase would but rot and fester and infect the air. All the birds that prey on carrion are scavenger birds, and we owe them nothing short of health and life, for a world without scavengers would soon become a stinking sepulchre.

III. All the strifes and discords of time are parts of that great convict between good and evil in which the ultimate defeat of evil is assured. The calamities and miseries to which men lie open, are intended to remove only that which must be removed if we are to live in health and peace. Wherever there is evil, there also is good, to replace the evil as well as to overcome and destroy it. What greater consolation than to know that the very miseries of men are messengers of the Divine mercy, come to give health and life rather than to destroy, since they come only to destroy that which is fatal to life and health. (S. Cox, D. D.)

Inner reading of history

If only we have eyes to read it aright, to see the Divine will and the Divine laws at work in it, the history of the Kings of England is just as instructive to us as the history of the Kings of Israel, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire as the siege and capture of Jerusalem, the reformation wrought by Luther as the revival of religion under Hezekiah, the French Revolution as the rupture between the ten Hebrew tribes and the two. No historical event is without its religious lesson for us, if only we can trace it to its moral cause; no human life, if only we can read its illustrations of that law-abiding Providence which watches over us as carefully as it did over the Jews, and shapes our rough-hewed ends for us as it shaped theirs. (S. Cox, D. D.)

The need for scavengers

That the vultures gather wheresoever the carcase is, and gather to consume it, is clearly for the health of the world; for, unconsumed, the carcase would but rot and fester, and infect the air; by its infection turning the very breath of life into a minister of death. All the birds that prey on carrion are scavenger birds. Most of the scavengers, from the vulture of the East down to the flies which cleanse our shops and rooms from every morsel of corruption are a little loathsome to us: yet how much we owe them! We owe them nothing short of health and life. A world without scavengers would soon become a stinkingcsepulchre. (S. Cox, D. D.)

Speedy destruction of carcases

On the highway, the ass, mule, or camel, which has fallen under its burden, and is no longer able to rise, is unloaded by its master, its saddle, halter, and even its shoes are taken off, and it is scarcely dead when its skin, too, is hastily removed to be sold to a tanner; the carcase is left where it fell; and as the traveller passes by upon the narrow road his horse is frightened, not more by the repulsive scent and sight, than by the eagles, vultures, ravens, crows, and magpies, that take wing on his approach, or continue, to dispute the prey with hungry dogs. When night comes on, however, the winged devourers withdraw, and give place to sneaking jackals and foxes, and to the hyenas and wolves, which now warily quit their lairs, and hasten to secure a share of the feast. (Van Lennep.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 28. For wheresoever the carcass is] , the dead carcass. The Jewish nation, which was morally and judicially dead.

There will the eagles] The Roman armies, called so partly from their strength and fierceness, and partly from the figure of these animals which was always wrought on their ensigns, or even in brass, placed on the tops of their ensign-staves. It is remarkable that the Roman fury pursued these wretched men wheresoever they were found. They were a dead carcass doomed to be devoured; and the Roman eagles were the commissioned devourers. See the pitiful account in Josephus, WAR, b. vii. c. 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, and 11.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

For wheresoever the carcass is,…. Not Christ, as he is held forth in the Gospel, crucified and slain, through whose death is the savour of life, and by whom salvation is, and to whom sensible sinners flock, encouraged by the ministry of the word; and much less Christ considered as risen, exalted, and coming in great glory to judgment, to whom the word “carcass” will by no means agree, and but very poorly under the former consideration: but the people of the Jews are designed by it, in their fallen, deplorable, miserable, and lifeless state, who were like to the body of a man, or any other creature, struck dead with lightning from heaven; being destroyed by the breath of the mouth, and brightness of the coming of the son of man, like lightning, just as antichrist will be at the last day:

there will the eagles be gathered together: not particular believers here, or all the saints at the day of judgment; though these may be, as they are, compared to eagles for many things; as their swiftness in flying to Christ, their sagacity and the sharpness of their spiritual sight, soaring on high, and renewing their spiritual strength and youth: but here the Roman armies are intended, whose ensigns were eagles; and the eagle still is, to this day, the ensign of the Roman empire: formerly other creatures, with the eagle, were used for ensigns; but C. Marius, in his second consulship, banished them, and appropriated the eagle only to the legions: nor was it a single eagle that was carried before the army, but every legion had an eagle went before it, made of gold or silver, and carried upon the top of a spear z: and the sense of this passage is this, that wherever the Jews were, whether at Jerusalem, where the body and carcass of them was, in a most forlorn and desperate condition; or in any other parts of the country, the Roman eagles, or legions, would find them out, and make an utter destruction of them. The Persic version, contrary to others, and to all copies, renders it “vultures”. Though this creature is of the same nature with the eagle, with respect to feeding on carcasses: hence the proverb,

“cujus vulturis hoe erit cadaver?”

“what vulture shall have this carcass?” It has a very sharp sight, and quick smell, and will, by both, discern carcasses at almost incredible distance: it will diligently watch a man that is near death; and will follow armies going to battle, as historians relate a: and it is the eagle which is of the vulture kind, as Aristotle b observes, that takes up dead bodies, and carries them to its nest. And Pliny c says, it is that sort of eagles only which does so; and some have affirmed that eagles will by no means touch dead carcasses: but this is contrary not only to this passage of Scripture, but to others; particularly to

Job 39:30 “her young ones also suck up blood, and where the slain are, there is she”: an expression much the same with this in the text, and to which it seems to refer; see also Pr 30:17. Though Chrysostom d says, both the passage in Job, and this in Matthew, are to be understood of vultures; he doubtless means the eagles that are of the vulture kind, the Gypaeetos, or vulture eagle. There is one kind of eagles, naturalists say e, will not feed on flesh, which is called the bird of Jupiter; but, in common, the eagle is represented as a very rapacious creature, seizing, and feeding upon the flesh of hares, fawns, geese, c. and the rather this creature is designed here since, of all birds, this is the only one that is not hurt with lightning f, and so can immediately seize carcasses killed thereby; to which there seems to be an allusion here, by comparing it with the preceding verse: however, the Persic version, though it is literally a proper one, yet from the several things observed, it is not to be overlooked and slighted.

z Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 10. c. 4. Alex. ab Alex. Genial. Dier. l. 4. c. 2. a Aelian. de Animal. Natura, l. 2. c. 46. b De Hist. Animal. l. 9. c. 32. c Hist. Nat l. 10. c. 3. d In Matt. Homil. 49. e Aelian. de Animal. l. 9. c. 10. f Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 2. c. 55.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Carcase (). As in 14:12, the corpse. Originally a fallen body from , to fall, like Latin cadaver from cado, to fall. The proverb here as in Lu 17:37, is like that in Job 39:30; Prov 30:17.

Eagles (). Perhaps the griffon vulture, larger than the eagle, which (Aristotle) was often seen in the wake of an army and followed Napoleon’s retreat from Russia.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Carcase [] . From piptw, to fall. Originally a fall, and thence a fallen body; a corpse. Compare Lat. cadaver, from cado, to fall. See Mr 6:29; Rev 11:8. On the saying itself, compare Job 39:30.

Eagles [] . Rev. puts vultures in margin. The griffon vulture is meant, which surpasses the eagle in size and power. Aristotle notes how this bird scents its prey from afar, and congregates in the wake of an army. In the Russian war vast numbers were collected in the Crimea, and remained until the end of the campaign in the neighborhood of the camp, although previously scarcely know in the country.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

28 Wheresoever the carcass is. The meaning is, that by whatever methods Satan endeavors to scatter the children of God in various directions, still in Christ himself is the sacred bond of union, by which they must be kept united. For whence comes the dispersion, but that many depart from Christ, in whom alone our strength lies? Here then is a method laid down for promoting a holy union, that the separations produced by errors may not tear in pieces the body of the Church; and that method is, when we remain united to Christ. This ought to be carefully observed; for Christ does not restrict us either to the primacy of the Roman See, or to any other foolery, but employs this method alone for binding his Church together, that all in every quarter should look to him as the only head. Hence it follows, that those who are united to him by pure faith are beyond the risk of schism. Let the adherents of Rome now go, and exclaim that all are schismatics who do not allow themselves to be separated from Christ, that they may transfer their allegiance to a robber.

There also will the eagles be gathered together. When the Papists interpret the word carcass to denote the company of those who profess the same faith, and allegorically explain the eagles to represent acute and sagacious men, (149) it is excessively absurd, (150) for Christ had manifestly no other design than to call to himself, and to retain in union to him, the children of God, wherever they were scattered. Nor does Christ simply employ the word body, but ( πτῶμα) carcass; (151) and he ascribes nothing to eagles but what we might apply to crows or vultures, according to the nature of the country which we inhabit. I attach as little value to the ingenuity of other commentators, who say that the death of Christ had a sweet savor, to draw the elect to God; for, in my opinion, Christ intended to argue from the less to the greater, that if birds have so great sagacity as to flock in great numbers from distant places to a single carcass, it would be disgraceful in believers not to assemble to the Author of life, from whom alone they derive their actual nourishment.

(149) “ Les gens subtils et de jugement, à scavoir les docteurs;” — “men of acuteness and judgment, namely, the doctors.”

(150) “ Il n’y a ne rime ne raison en cela;” — “there is neither rhyme nor reason in it.”

(151) “ Aussi le mot Grec duquel use l’Evangeliste, ne signifie pas simplement un corps, mais un corps mort.” — “The Greek word, too, which the Evangelist employs, does not denote simply a body, but a dead body. ”

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(28) Wheresoever the carcase is.Two interpretations of this verse may, without much risk of error, be at once rejected:(1) That which sees in the eagles the well-known symbols of the strength of the Roman legions, and in the carcass the decayed and corrupted Judaism which those legions came to destroy. This, true as far as it goes, is too narrow and localised in its range for so wide and far-reaching a comparison. (2) The strange fantastic imagination of many of the Fathers that the carcass is Christ Himself, as crucified and slain, and that the eagles are His true saints and servants who hasten to meet Him in His coming. Those who picture to themselves with what purpose and with what results the vultures of the East swoop down on the carrion which they scent far off upon the breeze, will surely find such an explanation at once revolting and irrational. What the enigmatic proverb (if indeed it be enigmatic) means, is that wherever life is gone, wherever a church or nation is decaying and putrescent, there to the end of time will Gods ministers of vengeance, the vultures that do their work of destruction, and so leave room for new forms of life by sweeping off that which was ready to vanish away (comp. Heb. 8:13 for the phrase and thought), assuredly be found. What the disciples should witness in the fall of Jerusalem would repeat itself scores of times in the worlds history, and be fulfilled on the largest scale at the end of all things. The words of Isaiah (Isa. 46:11) and Ezekiel (Eze. 39:4), in which the ravenous bird is a symbol of the nations who do the work of destruction to which God sends them, illustrate the meaning of the generalised law which is here asserted.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

IV. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE LENGTHENED CALAMITIES OF THE JEWS THROUGH AGES, AND THE SUDDEN CONSUMMATION OF THE END, 28-31.

After the tribulation of Jerusalem’s destruction, a long train of calamities follows till a later day of restoration. And then after the tribulation of the later day the world shall be dissolved.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

28. For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles It is perfectly obvious that this verse stands in isolation, having no clear connection with what precedes or follows. The for which commences this verse clearly refers to nothing in Mat 24:27; while in our harmonizing below its reference is natural and convincing.

We may suggest that this arises from the fact that the sentence is but a part, which Matthew has preserved, of a passage which Luke presents more fully; in which the long train of calamities which succeeds the downfall of Jerusalem is briefly sketched, in order to present a contrast with the rapid consummation of the end.

If, in the usual manner of the harmonists, we incorporate Matthew and Luke together in this passage, it will read thus: “There shall be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword; for wheresoever the carcass is, there shall the eagles be gathered together. And they shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” On this passage we may remark,

1. That it traces with great clearness the sad train of wars which succeed the “these things” of the apostles’ question. Massacres and slaughters there would be at various periods, wherever the Roman army could find with its standard eagles a body of Jews, as an eagle finds a carcass; the dispersion through nations; the subjection of Jerusalem until a time of latter-day restoration.

2 . The eagles are no doubt in some sense an allusion to the images of eagles which were upon the standards of the Roman armies. Yet not directly. It would be more correct perhaps to say that the adoption of the eagles by armies for their standard, and the adoption of the term by our Lord to designate the pitiless enemy falling upon his prey, are founded in the same natural symbol. Yet the coincidence is of the most striking character.

3 . “Jerusalem shall be trodden down” is a phrase of the most abject subjection; but history furnishes its complete fulfillment. “The times of the Gentiles” are the times of Gentile pre-eminence in the kingdom of God. It is the period of the more exclusive Gentile Churchdom, lasting during the casting off of Israel until her restoration.

4 . This brings us to the very millennial threshhold, when Israel is restored, and ages of Gospel reign commence. These millennial ages terminate in the tribulation of those days, and an immediate judgment, as described in the twenty-ninth verse.

5 . This passage, as above harmonized, furnishes the first member of the contrast of which the second member is furnished in Mat 24:29-31.

29. Immediately after the tribulation of those days The words those days here refer to the latter days, implied in the passage in Luke above quoted, of which Matthew has preserved but a fragment. The those days of this verse, then, are the days of the great period of which the eagles and the carcass in the preceding verse are a fragmentary symbol. This symbol is a broken label of the whole period between the downfall and the advent, Luke supplying the condensed remainder of the label. The contrast lies between the slow expansion of that period and the suddenness of the advent to break and close it. Immediately, suddenly, after the “tribulation” following the those days of the treading down of Jerusalem, and the fulness of the Gentiles, shall the advent take place.

We have already shown that a tribulation before the judgment was a doctrine of the Jews, as well as that of the Scripture. See the note on Mar 13:24-27.

Thus the tribulation and destruction of Jerusalem, and the tribulation and judgment day, are parallel if not mutually typical.

This view is sustained by the parallel passage in Mark. His words are: “In those days, after that tribulation.” This language is inconsistent with the idea that the judgment immediately succeeds the tribulation of Jerusalem’s downfall.

The judgment is broadly described as being in those days after the Jerusalem tribulation. The those days of Mark may, by perspective, be made to cover the entire time of the dispersion, as described by Luke. So Bengel, and so Mr. Wesley has rendered Mark’s words. And we may here remark that the common interpretation, which makes Mat 24:29 figurative, has no countenance from Mr. Wesley. His comment is thus on Mar 13:24: “But in those days Which immediately preceded the end of the world. After that tribulation Above described.” We may add that the translators of our version have omitted the word but or and before the word “immediately” in Mat 24:29. Combining then the words of both Mark and Matthew, we should have: “But in those days, after that tribulation and immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened,” etc. The whole contrast, then, of the paragraph would be as follows: “There shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, for wheresoever the carcass is there shall the eagles be gathered together. And they shall be led away captive into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. But in those days after that tribulation, and immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall the sun be darkened, and the moon,” etc.

This precise verbal adjustment, however, of Matthew and Mark, though apparently satisfactory, need not be insisted upon as necessary to our interpretation of the general passage.

Those who find it difficult to extend our Lord’s discourse over “a chasm” of centuries may be aided by the following points:

1 . Our supplementary note, p. 301, shows that the leap of thought and language over the chasm of time to the judgment day is required in a whole class of passages; and will show, too, the principle upon which the leap is taken.

2 . Our Lord’s words were intentionally susceptible of expansion and contraction so far as time was concerned, on the very principle that the true extension of time was even to himself unknown. He specifies events, not periods; events of unknown duration. How long or short should be the “fall by the edge of the sword,” or the “captivity among all the nations,” or the “times of the Gentiles,” or the later “tribulation of those days,” or the time in which the “gospel should be preached to all nations” before the final tribulation, he does not say. “Immediately after ” this train of events the advent will take place; but the length of that train, like the whole scale of ante-judgment chronology, is professedly unknown.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments