Matthew 23:38

38 Look, your house is left to you desolate.

Matthew 23:38 in Other Translations

38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

38 See, your house is left to you desolate.

38 And now, look, your house is abandoned and desolate.

38 And now you're so desolate, nothing but a ghost town

38 See, your house is left to you desolate.

Matthew 23:38 Meaning and Commentary

Matthew 23:38

Behold your house is left unto you desolate.
] Signifying that the city in which they dwelt, where they had their ceiled houses, and stately palaces, would, in a little time, within the space of forty years, be destroyed, and become a desert; and the temple, formerly the house of God, but now only their's, and in which they trusted, would be abandoned by God, he would grant his presence no more in it; and the Messiah, the proprietor of it, and who was now in it, would then take his leave of it, and never more return to it; and that also should share the same fate as the city, and at the same time. Our Lord seems to have in view those passages in ( Jeremiah 12:7 ) ( 22:5 ) and which the Jewish ^F15 writers understood of the temple. The author of the apocryphal the second book of Esdras has much such an expression as this: ``Thus saith the Almighty Lord, Your house is desolate, I will cast you out as the wind doth stubble.'' (2 Esdras 1:33)

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FOOTNOTES:

F15 Targum & Kimchi in Jer. xii. 7.

Matthew 23:38 In-Context

36 Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.

37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.

38 Look, your house is left to you desolate.

39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Cross References

• 1. 1 Kings 9:7,8; Jeremiah 22:5