Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Matthew 24:8
All these [are] the beginning of sorrows.
8. sorrows ] Literally, pains of travail, that preceded the birth of a new order of things, a fresh on.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The beginning of sorrows – Far heavier calamities are yet to come before the end.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 8. All these are the beginning of sorrows.] , travailing pains. The whole land of Judea is represented under the notion of a woman in grievous travail; but our Lord intimates, that all that had already been mentioned were only the first pangs and throes, and nothing in comparison of that hard and death-bringing labour, which should afterwards take place.
From the calamities of the nation in general, our Lord passes to those of the Christians; and, indeed, the sufferings of his followers were often occasioned by the judgments sent upon the land, as the poor Christians were charged with being the cause of these national calamities, and were cruelly persecuted on that account.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
All these are the beginning of sorrows,…. They were only a prelude unto them, and forerunners of them; they were only some foretastes of what would be, and were far from being the worst that should be endured. These were but light, in comparison of what befell the Jews, in their dreadful destruction. The word here used, signifies the sorrows and pains of a woman in travail. The Jews expect great sorrows and distresses in the times of the Messiah, and use a word to express them by, which answers to this, and call them, , “the sorrows of the Messiah”; , they say r, signifies the sorrows of a woman in travail; and the Syriac version uses the same word here. These they represent to be very great, and express much concern to be delivered from them. They s ask,
“what shall a man do, to be delivered from “the sorrows of the Messiah?” He must employ himself in the law, and in liberality.”
And again t,
“he that observes the three meals on the sabbath day, shall be delivered from three punishments; from “the sorrows of the Messiah”, from the judgment of hell, and from Gog and Magog.”
But alas there was no other way of escaping them, but by faith in the true Messiah, Jesus; and it was for their disbelief and rejection of him, that these came upon them.
r Gloss. in T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 118. 2. s T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 98. 2. t T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 118. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The beginning of travail ( ). The word means birth-pangs and the Jews used the very phrase for the sufferings of the Messiah which were to come before the coming of the Messiah (Book of Jubilees, 23:18; Apoc. of Baruch 27-29). But the word occurs with no idea of birth as the pains of death (Ps 18:5; Acts 2:24). These woes, says Jesus, are not a proof of the end, but of the beginning.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
8. But all these things are the beginnings of sorrows. Not that believers, who always have abundant consolations in calamities, should consume themselves with grief, but that they should lay their account with a long exercise of patience. Luke adds likewise earthquakes, and signs from heaven, with respect to which, though we have no authentic history of them, yet it is enough that they were predicted by Christ. The reader will find the rest in Josephus, (Wars of the Jews, VI. 5:3.)
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(8) The beginning of sorrows.The words mean strictly, the beginning of travail pangs. The troubles through which the world passes are thought of as issuing in a new birththe regeneration of Mat. 19:28. So St. Paul speaks of the whole creation as travailing in pain together (Rom. 8:22). So a time of national suffering and perplexity is one in which the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth (Isa. 37:3).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
8. Beginning of sorrows Those more distant troubles and tribulations, while they have no connection with the END of the world, are but the omens of the nearer catastrophe to the state and temple about which you have inquired.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“But all these things are the beginning of birth pains.”
So all these thing will be but the first contractions in the process leading up to His coming. There will still be a long way to go. Such birth pains which will lead up to judgment or to God’s final consummation are a regular feature of Scripture (see Isa 13:8 where the Babylonian invasion is in mind; Mat 26:17 where they will finally lead up to the resurrection; Jer 4:31; Jer 6:24 which are prior to the previous destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar; Mic 4:9-10 where it precedes their being taken to Babylon, but with the final deliverance in kind; and so on). Here Jesus warns that they will be long and arduous as birth pains often are, and that they are only just beginning. (Every father knows the interminable wait between the beginning of birth pains and the final birth that results).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Mat 24:8. All these are the beginning of sorrows , the beginning of throes, or pangs. Great troubles and calamities are often expressed in Scripture language metaphorically, by the pangs of travailing women: “All these are only the first pangs and throes, and are nothing to that hard labour which shall succeed.” See on Mat 24:6.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Mat 24:8 . But all this will be the beginning of woes (Euthymius Zigabenus: ), will stand in the same relation to what is about to follow, as the beginning of the birth-pangs does to the much severer pains which come after. It is apparent from Mat 24:7 that is understood. The figure contained in is to be traced to the popular way of conceiving of the troubles that were to precede the advent of the Messiah as . Comp. on Mat 24:3 .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Ver. 8. All these are the beginning, &c. ] q.d. There yet remain far worse matters than war, -famine, pestilence, earthquakes. Adhuc restant gravissimi partus cruciatus. And yet war is as a fire that feeds upon the people, Isa 9:19-20 . Famine is far worse than that, Lam 4:9 . Pestilence is God’s evil angel,Psa 78:49-50Psa 78:49-50 . Earthquakes are wondrous terrible, and destructive to whole cities, as to Antioch of old, and to Pleurs in Italy of late, where fifteen hundred men perished together. A conflux of all these abides the condemners of Christ’s gospel. The holy martyrs, as Saunders, Bradford, Philpot, &c.; the confessors also that fled for religion in Queen Mary’s days acknowledged (as Ursinus relates) that that great inundation of misery came justly upon them, for their unprofitableness under the means of grace which they had enjoyed in King Edward’s days. “When I first came to be pastor at Clavenne,” saith Zanchy, “there happened a grievous pestilence, that in seven months’ time consumed 1200 persons.” Their former pastor, Mainardus, that man of God, had often foretold such a calamity for their popery and profaneness: but he could never be believed, till the plague had proven him a true prophet; and then they remembered his words, and wished they had been warned by him. When the Protestants of France began to grow wanton of their peace and prosperity, to jangle among themselves about discipline, and to affect a vain frothy way of preaching, then came the cruel massacre upon them. (Melch. Adam. in Vita Bulling.)
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Mat 24:8 . : yet all these but a beginning of pains. It is not necessary to find here an allusion to the Rabbinical idea of the birth pangs of Messiah, but simply the use of a natural and frequent Biblical emblem for distress of any sort. As to the date of the Rabbinical idea vide Keil. The beginning : such an accumulation of horrors might well appear to the inexperienced the end, hence the remark to prevent panic.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
the = a.
sorrows = birth-pangs.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Mat 24:8. , the beginning) sc. with regard to the Jews; contrasted with the end spoken of in Mat 24:6; Mat 24:14.-, of pangs) which precede the regeneration [or new birth of the world]: see ch. Mat 19:28, and Rom 8:22. A metaphor taken from childbirth.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Lev 26:18-29, Deu 28:59, Isa 9:12, Isa 9:17, Isa 9:21, Isa 10:4, 1Th 5:3, 1Pe 4:17, 1Pe 4:18
Reciprocal: Deu 28:65 – failing of eyes Deu 32:23 – heap mischiefs Psa 59:15 – for meat Jer 38:2 – He Mat 24:29 – Immediately Mar 13:8 – these
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
24:8
The word sorrows is from ODIN which Thayer defines, “the pain of childbirth, travail-pain, birth-pang.”
The suffering destined to come upon the nation and city of the Jews is compared to the pangs of childbirth. And as the full development of those pains are preceded by brief and comparatively light ones, warning the expectant mother that her time is near, so these rumors of wars reaching the ears of the people of Jerusalem are compared with the preliminary labor pains.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Mat 24:8. The beginning of travail, i.e., birth pangs. The physical woes are the basis of the greater succeeding moral woes. The death-throes of the Jewish state precede the regeneration of the universal Christian Church, as the death-throes of this world the new heavens and new earth (Alford).
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
24:8 All these [are] the beginning of {c} sorrows.
(c) Literally, “of great torments”, just like women in childbirth.