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The Hosannah quotation is found in Matt. 21: 9. It is important to notice that the
cry, "Blessed be He that cometh" is closely associated with "the house of the Lord". This
adds point to the Lord's words, "Your house is left unto you desolate", and also provides
a reason for the disciples' remarks concerning the buildings of the temple. When the
Lord told them that there should not be left one stone upon another, it is evident by their
threefold question that this desolation was connected in their minds with the coming of
the Lord.
The threefold question.
This threefold question and its answer occupies the whole of Matt. 24: from
verse 3:--
"And as He sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately,
saying, Tell us:--
(1) When shall these things be?
(2) And what shall be the sign of Thy coming.
(3) And the end of the age?"
In answering the disciples' questions, the Lord deals with them in the reverse order:--
1.
The end of the age (4-24).
2.
The sign of the coming (25-31).
3.
When these things shall be (32-42).
The answer of the Lord as to the end of the age is twofold. First, negative--"The end
is not yet"; "all these are the beginning of sorrows". Second, positive--"Then shall the
end come". Before going further we must notice that there are two words here translated
"end". In verse 3 it is sunteleia. In verse 6, 13 and 14 it is telos. The phrase
"the sunteleia of the age" occurs only in the Gospel of Matthew, whilst "the sunteleia
of the ages" occurs but once, viz., in Hebrews:--
"The harvest is the end of the age" (Matt. 13: 39).
"So shall it be at the end of the age" (Matt. 13: 40, 49).
"The end of the age" (Matt. 24: 3).
"Even unto the end of the age" (Matt. 28: 20).
"Once in the end of the ages" (Heb. 9: 26).
The first occurrence connects the term with the harvest and in this lies the explanation
of the word, for the first occurrence of the same word in the LXX of Exod. 23: 16
refers to the same period:--
"The feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field:
and the feast of ingathering (sunteleia) which is in the end of the year, when thou hast
gathered in thy labours out of the field."
At first it may seem that there is a discrepancy between the Lord's words in
Matt. 13: 39 and this passage. The Lord said that the harvest was the sunteleia, whereas