Mark 13:7

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(7) For such things must needs be.—Better, for it must needs be.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

13:5-13 Our Lord Jesus, in reply to the disciples' question, does not so much satisfy their curiosity as direct their consciences. When many are deceived, we should thereby be awakened to look to ourselves. And the disciples of Christ, if it be not their own fault, may enjoy holy security and peace of mind, when all around is in disorder. But they must take heed that they are not drawn away from Christ and their duty to him, by the sufferings they will meet with for his sake. They shall be hated of all men: trouble enough! Yet the work they were called to should be carried on and prosper. Though they may be crushed and borne down, the gospel cannot be. The salvation promised is more than deliverance from evil, it is everlasting blessedness.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

On the mount of Olives, over against the temple - The Mount of Olives was directly east of Jerusalem, and from it there was a fine view of the temple.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled—(See on [1490]Mr 13:13, and compare Isa 8:11-14).

for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet—In Luke (Lu 21:9), "the end is not by and by," or "immediately." Worse must come before all is over.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Ver. 7,8. Matthew adds pestilences. Luke saith, pestilences, and fearful sights and great signs from heaven. See Poole on "Matthew 24:6", and following verses to Matthew 24:8. Here are two or three more signs put together:

1. Wars, and rumours of wars; great commotions in nations, which though they may be at other times, yet probably may be more extraordinary before the day of judgment.

2. Famines, pestilences, and earthquakes.

3. Fearful sights, and apparitions in the air and the heavens. Such there were (as Josephus tells us) before the destruction of Jerusalem; and though these things be seen before the last day, yet it is most probable they will be greater before the day of judgment than at any time before; and for fearful sights, and great signs from heaven, they ordinarily go before some great judgment of God upon places, and therefore the observation of them by the heathen (as we learn by Livy and others) seems but to be a piece of natural religion; and Christ giving these things as signs of the approaching ruin, first of Jerusalem, then of the world, will make thinking Christians behold them with a religious fear, though not to undertake to expound them particularly or prophesy upon them.

Certainly we ought to look upon them as prognosticating some great work of God, and usually of judgment upon sinners.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And when ye shall hear of wars, and rumours of wars,.... Among the Jews themselves, and with the Romans:

be not troubled; keep your place, abide by your work, go on preaching the Gospel, without distressing yourselves about the event of things:

for such things must needs be: being decreed by God, foretold by Christ, and made necessary by the sins of the people:

but the end shall not be yet; of the temple, of Jerusalem, and of the Jewish state and nation; See Gill on Matthew 24:6.

Geneva Study Bible

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Mark 13:7 πολέμους: first pseudo-Messiahs preaching national independence; then, naturally, as a second σημεῖον, wars, actual or threatened (ἀκοὰς πολ.).—μὴ θροεῖσθε: good counsel, cheerful in tone, laconic in expression = be not scared; they must happen; but the end not yet. The disconnected style, no γὰρ after δεῖ ([120] [121]), suits the emotional prophetic mood.—τὸ τέλος, the crisis of Jerusalem.

[120] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

[121] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. - Wars and rumors of wars. "Rumours of wars" are mentioned, because they are often worse and more distressing than wars themselves; according to the saying, "Pejor est belle timer ipse belli." Be not troubled; be not troubled, that is, so as to let go your faith in me, through fear of the enemy, or through despair of any fruit of your apostolic labors; but persevere steadfastly to preach faith in me and in my gospel. These things must needs come to pass; but the end is not yet. There would be a succession of calamities, one leading on to another. But they must take courage, and prepare themselves for greater evils, not hoping for lasting peace on earth, but by patient endurance of evils here, reach onwards to a blessed and eternal rest in heaven. Our Lord, when his disciples asked him, as in one breath, about the destruction of their city, replied obscurely and ambiguously; mingling together the two events, in order that his disciples and the faithful through all times might be prepared, and never taken by surprise. Some of our Lord's predictions, however, clearly refer to the generation then living on the earth. Mark 13:7

Vincent's Word Studies

Rumors of wars

Wyc., opinions of battles. Such as would be a cause of terror to the Hebrew Christians; as the three threats of war against the Jews by Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. There were serious disturbances at Alexandria, a.d. 38, in which the Jews were the especial objects of persecution; at Seleucia about the same time, in which more than fifty thousand Jews were killed; and at Jamnia, near Joppa.

Troubled (θροεῖσθε)

Θροέω is, literally, to cry aloud.

Earthquakes

Between the prophecy and the destruction of Jerusalem (a.d. 70) occurred: A great earthquake in Crete, a.d. 46 or 47: at Rome, on the day on which Nero entered his majority, a.d. 51: at Apameia, in Phrygia, a.d. 53; "on account of which," says Tacitus, "they were exempted from tribute for five years:" at Laodicea, in Phrygia, a.d. 60: in Campania, a.d. 63, by which, according to Tacitus, the city of Pompeii was largely destroyed.

Famines

During the reign of Claudius, a.d. 41-54:, four famines are recorded: One at Rome, a.d. 41, 42; one in Judaea, a.d. 44; one in Greece, a.d. 50; and again at Rome, a.d. 52, when the people rose in rebellion and threatened the life of the emperor. Tacitus says that it was accompanied by frequent earthquakes, which levelled houses. The famine in Judaea was probably the one prophesied by Agabus, Acts 11:28. Of the year 65 a.d., Tacitus says: "This year, disgraced by so many deeds of horror, was further distinguished by the gods with storms and sicknesses. Campania was devastated by a hurricane which overthrew buildings, trees, and the fruits of the soil in every direction, even to the gates of the city, within which a pestilence thinned all ranks of the population, with no atmospheric disturbance that the eye could trace. The houses were choked with dead, the roads with funerals: neither sex nor age escaped. Slaves and freemen perished equally amid the wailings of their wives and children, who were often hurried to the pyre by which they had sat in tears, and consumed together with them. The deaths of knights and senators, promiscuous as they were, deserved the less to be lamented, inasmuch as, falling by the common lot of mortality, they seemed to anticipate the prince's cruelty" ("Annals," xvi., 10-13).