Should no flesh be saved. — The words are of course limited by the context to the scene of the events to which the prophecy refers. The warfare with foes outside the city, and the faction-fights and massacres within, would have caused an utter depopulation of the whole country.
For the elect’s sake. — Those who, as believers in Jesus, were the “remnant” of the visible Israel, and therefore the true Israel of God. It was for the sake of the Christians of Judæa, not for that of the rebellious Jews, that the war was not protracted, and that Titus, under the outward influences of Josephus and Bernice, tempered his conquests with compassion (Ant. xii. 3, § 2; Wars, vi. 9, § 2). The new prominence which the idea of an election gains in our Lord’s later teaching is every way remarkable. (Comp. Matthew 18:7; Matthew 20:6). The “call” had been wide; in those who received and obeyed it He taught men to recognise the “elect” whom God had chosen. Subtle questions as to whether the choice rested on foreknowledge or was absolutely arbitrary lay, if we may reverently so speak, outside the scope of His teaching.