Matthew 24:7 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For nation shall rise, &c.— Here, as Grotius observes, Christ declares, that greater disturbances than those which happened under Caligula should fall out in the latter times of Claudius, and in the reign of Nero. The rising of nation against nation portended the dissensions, insurrections, and mutual slaughters of the Jews, and those of other nations, who dwelt in the same cities together; as particularly at Caesarea, where the Jews and Syrians contended about the right of the city; which contention at length proceeded so far, that above twenty thousand Jews were slain, and the city was cleared of the inhabitants. At this blow the whole nation of the Jews was exasperated, and, dividing themselves into parties, they burned and plundered the neighbouring cities and villages of the Syrians, and made an immense slaughter of the people. The Syrians, in revenge, destroyed not a less number of Jews; and every city, as Josephus expresses it, was "divided into two armies." At Scythopolis the inhabitants compelled the Jews who resided among them to fight against their own countrymen, and after the victory, basely setting upon them by night, murdered above thirteen thousand of them, and spoiled their goods. At Ascalon, they killed two thousand five hundred; at Ptolemais, two thousand and made not a few prisoners. The Tyrians put many to death, and imprisoned more. The people of Gadara did likewise, and all the other cities of Syria, in proportion as they hated or feared the Jews. At Alexandriathe old enmity was revived between the Jews and Heathens, and many fell on both sides, but of the Jews to the number of fifty thousand. The people of Damascus too conspired against the Jews of the same city, and, assaulting them unarmed, killed ten thousand of them. The rising of kingdom against kingdom portended the open wars of different tetrarchies and provinces against one another; as that of the Jews who dwelt in Peraea against the people of Philadelphia concerning their bounds, while Caspius Fadus was procurator; that of the Jews and Galileans against the Samaritans, for the murder of some Galileans going up to the feast at Jerusalem, while Cumanus was procurator; and that of the whole nation of the Jews against the Romans and Agrippa, and other allies of the Roman empire, which began while Gessius Florus was procurator. But, as Josephus says, there was not only sedition and civil war throughout Judea, but likewise in Italy, Otho and Vitellius contending for the empire. It is farther added, and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places. There were famines, as particularly that prophesied of by Agabus, and mentioned, Acts 11:28 and by Suetonius, and other prophane historians referred to by Eusebius, which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar, and was so severe at Jerusalem, that, as Josephus says, many perished for want of visuals:—andpestilences, for these are the usual attendants upon famines. Scarcity and badness of provisions almost always end in some epidemical distemper. We see that many died by reason of the famine in the reign of Claudius; and Josephus farther informs us, that when Niger was killed by the Jewish zealots, he imprecated, besides other cruelties, famine and pestilence upon them (λιμοντε και λοιμον, the very words used by the Evangelist,) all which, says he, God ratified and brought to pass against the ungodly:—And earthquakes in divers places; as particularlythat in Crete, in the reign of Claudius, mentioned by Philostratus in the life of Apollonius; those also mentioned by Philostratus at Smyrna, Miletus, Chios, Samos, in all which places some Jews inhabited; those at Rome mentioned by Tacitus; that at Laodicea, in the reign of Nero, mentioned also by Tacitus; which city was overwhelmed, as were likewise Hierapolis and Colosse; that in Campania, mentioned by Seneca; that at Rome, in the reign of Galba, mentioned by Suetonius; and that in Judea, mentioned by Josephus: for by night there broke out a most dreadful tempest, and violent strong winds, with the most vehement showers, and continual lightnings, and horrid thunderings, and prodigious bellowings of the shaken earth; so that it was manifest, as he observes, that the constitution of the universe was confounded for the destruction of men; and any one might easily conjecture, that these things portended no common calamity.