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Forty Years and That Generation
"forty years was I grieved with that generation.."
Numbers 14:34 After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.
Ezekiel 4:6 And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
Luke 21:22,32 For these be the days of Vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all be fulfilled.
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Introduction
The significance of Matthew 24:34 goes well beyond the simple declaration of the then living generation being the recipients of all that had been spoken by Christ in the Olivet Discourse. Besides this statement, "this generation shall not pass, till all these things come to pass," the concept of the Messianic nature of the intermediate period springs from both Christian Scriptures and Jewish tradition. This is significant in that we can see that the doctrine of a temporal "1000 year reign of Christ," besides not mentioned in the Old Testament, is not consistent with the Scriptural designation of the period between the old age and the new.
At any rate, Acts 2:29-31 declares that Christ began reigning upon His throne at the resurrection. Paul affirms this in I Corinthians chapter 15, in declaring that "Then (at the second coming) cometh the end, when he shall have delivered the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet" (vv. 24-25) Clearly, Christ is reigning at that time, as there is no 1000 year gap between verses 23 and 24. Knowing that Christ was to return within forty years (Luke 21:32), this obviously gives great importance to their nature of Christ's reign during that generation.
The following commentaries will focus both upon the nature of the forty year generation, as well as the ultimiate significance thereof. Please pay close attention to what is spoken here, as the entire period was of the utmost significance. This is the key for unlocking why so much took place within the space of forty years, and why all prophecy was to be fulfilled in the first century.
The singificance of the forty years also clearly displays that the 'generation' of Matthew 24:34 as referring to a period of time, and not to a race of people. We will present evidence of this point, and of the general significance of the forty years, in regards to a kingly reign, with the following verses:
Acts 13:21 And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years.
1 Kings 2:11 And the days that David reigned over Israel were forty years: seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem.
2 Kings 12:1 In the seventh year of Jehu Jehoash began to reign; and forty years reigned he in Jerusalem.
2 Chron 9:30 And Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel forty years.
2 Chron. 24:1 Joash was seven years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem.
Acts 7:23 And when he (Moses) was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. (A)
Acts 7:30 And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush. (B)
Hebrews 3:17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? (C)
Commentaries on the "Generation" of Matthew :
Albert Barnes (1949)
"This generation, &c. - This age; this race of men. A generation is about thirty of forty years. The destruction of Jerusalem took place about forty years after this was spoken. See Notes on Mat. 16:28." (Notes, Matthew 24:34)
F.W. Farrar (1882)
" The powers of heaven were being shaken. Suns and moons and stars- from Roman Emperors down to Jewish Priests - were one after another waxing dim, and shooting from their spheres. Clearly the day must be at hand of which the Lord had said that it would come ere that generation passed away, and that all the things of which He had spoken would be fulfilled" (p. 414)
John Gill (1809)
(On Psalm 95) Ver. 10. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, &c.] The generation of the wilderness, as the Jews commonly call them; and which was a stubborn and a rebellious one, whose heart and spirit were not right with God, #Ps 78:8, wherefore, speaking after the manner of men, God was grieved with them, as he was with the old world, #Ge 6:6, or he was "weary" of them, and "loathed" them as the word {l} sometimes signifies; wherefore, after the affair of the spies, to which Aben Ezra thinks this had reference, they did not hear from the mouth of the Lord, there was no prophecy sent them by the hand of Moses, as the same writer observes; nor any history or account of them, from that time till they came to the border of Canaan; so greatly was their conduct and behaviour resented: and it was much such a term of time that was between the beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist and of Christ, and the destruction of Jerusalem; during which time the Jews tempted Christ, tried his patience, saw his works, and grieved his Spirit, which brought at last ruin upon them:"
(On Hebrews 3) and saw my works forty years; that is, God's works of providence, in furnishing them with the necessaries of life, in guiding, protecting, and supporting them for the space of forty years, in the wilderness; and his miracles, and the punishment of their enemies; yet they saw and perceived not, but all this time sinned against the Lord, see #De 29:2-8 the space of time, forty years, is in the psalm placed to the beginning of the next verse, and is joined with God's grief and indignation at the people, as it is also by the apostle, in #Heb 3:17 but the people's sin, and God's grief at it, being of equal duration, it matters not to which it is placed, and therefore to both; perhaps, one reason of its being repeated, and so much notice taken of it is, because there was just this number of years from Christ's sufferings, to the destruction of Jerusalem; which the apostle might have in view.
Hal Lindsey (1970)
"A generation in the Bible is something like forty years." (The Late Great Planet Earth. p. 148)
C.H. Spurgeon (1868)
"The Kingly Prophet foretold the time of the end: "Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation." It was before that generation had passed away that Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed. There was a sufficient interval for the full proclamation of the gospel by the apostles and evangelists of the early Christian Church, and for the gathering out of those who recognized the crucified Christ as their true Messiah. Then came the awful end, which the Savior foresaw and foretold, and the prospect of which wrung from his lips and heart the sorrowful lament that followed his prophecy of the doom awaiting his guilty capital." (in loc.)
"The King left his followers in no doubt as to when these things should happen: "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled." It was just about the ordinary limit of a generation when the Roman armies compassed Jerusalem, whose measure of iniquity was then full, and overflowed in misery, agony, distress, and bloodshed such as the world never saw before or since. Jesus was a true Prophet; everything that he foretold was literally fulfilled." (Matthew, The Gospel of the Kingdom, in loc.)
Rudolph Stier (1851)\
(On Matthew 24:34) "(this refers) to the generation living in that then extant and most important age." (Reden Jesu, in loc.)
(On Matthew 12:43-45) "In the period between the ascension of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem, especially towards the end of it, this nation shows itself, one might say, as if possessed by seven thousand devils.' (Reden Jesu; Matt. xii, 43-45)
John Wesley (1754)
"This generation of men now living shall not pass till all these things be done - The expression implies that great part of that generation would be passed away, but not the whole. Just so it was; for the city and temple were destroyed thirty-nine or forty years after." (Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament)
Commentaries on the Significance of the Forty Year Period:
Gary DeMar (1996)
"But now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Hebrews 9:26). Jesus was manifested, not at the beginning, but "at the consummation of the ages." The period between A.D. 30 and 70 is, as the apostle Peter describes it, "these last times" (1 Peter 1:20). As time drew near for Jerusalem's destruction, Peter could say that "the end of all things was at hand" (4:7).
Lohse, TDNT
"The idea of the millennium which the divine works out here is to be understood against the backdrop of the Jewish apoc. traditions that he adopts and uses. In the expectation of an intermediate Messianic kingdom which shall precede the end and the coming of the reign of God, Eth. En. 91:12f; 93:1-14; Sib., 3, 652-660; 4 Esr. 7:28f; S. Bar. 29:3; 30:1-5; 40:3, two forms of eschatological hope are combined. Acc. to the older view the Messiah will be the end-time king restoring the Davidic monarchy and raising it to new heights. In apoc., however, a very different concept of the future age of salvation develops. On this view God's envoy will appear from heaven, the dead will rise again at his coming, and all men must come before his judgment-seat. Later an attempt was made to fuse the older national concept with the universal eschatology by putting the reign of the Messiah-King before the end of the world and the beginning of the new aeon. The earthly Messianic age will be for a limited term and it will be followed by a last assault of the powers of chaos prior to the commencement of the future world." (TDNT, Vol. IX, page 470)
Philip Mauro (1923)
"Yet the predicted judgment did not immediately follow; for Christ prayed for His murderers in His dying hour, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Lu. 23:34). In answer to that prayer the full probationary period of forty years (A.D. 30 to A.D. 70) was added to their national existence, during which time repentance and remission of sins was preached to them in the Name of the crucified and risen One, and tens of thousands of Jews were saved. " (Seventy Weeks, ch. 5)
Ernest Renan (1873)
"THE period covered by the present volume is, after the three or four years of the public life of Jesus, the most extraordinary in the entire development of Christianity. Here, by a singular touch of the great unconscious Artist who appears to rule in the seeming caprice of historic evolution, we shall see Jesus and Nero - Christ and Antichrist - set, as it were, in contrast, face to face, like heaven and hell. The Christian consciousness is now full-grown. Hitherto it has known little else than the law of love: Jewish intolerance, though harsh, could not fret away the bond of grateful attachment cherished in the heart of the infant Church for her mother the Synagogue, from whom she is still hardly sundered. Now at length the Christian has before him an object of hate and terror. Over against the memory of Jesus rises a monstrous form, the ideal of evil, as He had been the ideal of holiness. Held in reserve, -like Enoch or Elias, to play his part in the last great tragedy of the world, Nero completes the cycle of Christian mythology: he inspires the first sacred book of the new canon; by a frightful massacre he lays the corner-stone of Romish primacy, and opens the way to that revolution which is to make of Rome a second Jerusalem, a holy city. At the same time, by a mysterious coincidence not infrequent in great crises of human destiny, Jerusalem is overthrown; the Temple disappears; Christianity, disburdened of a restraint already painful and advancing to a broadening freedom, follows out its own destinies apart from conquered Judaism. " (Antichrist, Intro.)
A.T. Robinson (1976)
"I believe that John represents in date, as theology, not only the omega but also the alpha of New Testament development. He bestrides the period like a colossus and marks out its span, the span that lies between two dramatic moments in Jerusalem which boldly we may date with unusual precision. The first was when, on 9 April 30, 'early on the Sunday morning, while it was still dark,' one man 'saw and believed' (Jno. 20:1-9). And the second was when, on 26 September 70, 'the dawn of the eight day of the month Gorpiaeus broke upon Jerusalem in flames.' Over those forty years, I believe, all the books of the New Testament came to completion, and during most of that period, if we are right, the Johannine literature was in the process of maturation." (p. 311)
H.J. Schoeps (1966)
(on the traditional views concerning the length of the intermediate Messianic kingdom) "fix a very short interval for the interim period, namely, forty years (R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus; Bar in Sanh. 99a; R. Aqiba: Midr. Teh. on Ps 90:15; Tanch. Eqeb 7b, Pes. Rabb. 4a). The two Tannaites, commenting on Ps 95:7, derive this time indication from the Messianically understood v.10 (forty years I loathed that generation) and from Deut. 8:2 by a parallelization with the forty years in the desert." (Paul, p. 100)
The Talmud
"Our Rabbis taught: During the last forty years before the destruction of the Temple.. the doors of the Hekal would open by themselves, until R. Johanan b. Zakkai rebuked them, saying: Hekal, Hekal, why wilt thou be the alarmer thyself (Predict thy own destruction) ? I know about thee that thou wilt be destroyed, for Zechariah ben Ido has already prophesied concerning thee: Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars" (The Soncino Talmud, Seder Mo'ed, vol. III Toma, p. 186)
B.F. Westcott (1889)
"Jewish teachers distinguished a 'present age' (this age) from 'that age' (the age to come). Between 'the present age' of imperfection and conflict and trial and 'the age to come' of the perfect reign of God they placed 'the days of the Messiah,' which they sometimes reckoned in the former, sometimes in the latter, and sometimes distinct from both. They were, however, commonly agreed that the passage from one age to the other would be through a period of intense sorrow and anguish, 'the travail-pains' of the new birth (Mt. 24:8). The apostolic writers, fully conscious of the spiritual crisis through which they were passing speak of their own time as the 'last days' (Acts 2:17; James 5:3; comp. 2 Tim. 3:1); the 'last hour' (1 Jno. 2:18); the 'end of the times' (1 Peter 1:20; 2 Pet. 3:3); 'the last time' (Jude 18)."
Other Related Passages of Scripture
Forty Years
Ge 25:20 And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian.
Ge 26:34 ? And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:
Jos 5:6 For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD: unto whom the LORD sware that he would not shew them the land, which the LORD sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with milk and honey.
Jos 14:7 Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadeshbarnea to espy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in mine heart.
Jud 3:11 And the land had rest forty years. And Othniel the son of Kenaz died.
Jud 8:28 Thus was Midian subdued before the children of Israel, so that they lifted up their heads no more. And the country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon.
Jud 13:1 ? And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.
1Sa 4:18 And it came to pass, when he made mention of the ark of God, that he fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy. And he had judged Israel forty years.
2 Sam 15:7 And it came to pass after forty years, that Absalom said unto the king, I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow, which I have vowed unto the LORD, in Hebron.
Ezekiel 29:11 No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years.
Ezekiel 29:12 And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries. (cf. Rev. 11:8)
Ezekiel 29:13 Yet thus saith the Lord GOD; At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered:
Acts 4:22 For the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of healing was shewed.
Acts 7:42 Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness?
Acts 13:18 And about the time of forty years suffered he their manners in the wilderness.
Forty Days
Using The Following Principles for the Forty Days:
Nu 14:34 After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.
Ezekiel 4:6 And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
Ge 7:17 ? And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.
Ex 24:18 And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights. (After which he "came down")
Numbers 13:25 And they returned from searching of the land after forty days.
Jonah 3:4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Luke 4:2 Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.
Acts 1:3 To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:
PERIODS AND NUMBERS
(1) Forty Days
-- Flood lasted # Ge 7:17
-- Noah sends forth a raven at end of # Ge 8:6
-- The embalming of Jacob occupied # Ge 50:3
-- Moses on the mount fasting # Ex 24:18 34:28
-- Spies in the land of Canaan # Nu 13:25
-- Moses in prayer for Israel # De 9:25
-- Goliath's defiance lasted # 1Sa 17:16
-- Elijah's meal lasted # 1Ki 19:8
-- Ezekiel's typical period # Eze 4:6
-- Jonah's warning concerning the destruction of Nineveh # Jon 3:4
-- Christ's Temptation # Lu 4:2
-- Christ's appearance after the resurrection # Ac 1:3