Luke 23:29

“For behold the days are coming, etc.] The time is hastening on; yet a little while, a few years more, and such times of distress will be: in the which they shall say; or it shall be commonly said; it will be in every one's mouth: blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck; that is, happy wilt those persons be who have no children, to be starved to death, for want of bread; or to be killed with the sword before their eyes, which must greatly enhance their own miseries. Dr. Hammond thinks, that one passage particularly is referred to, related by Josephus; that when Titus had so closely encompassed the city with a wall, that there was no coming out…”

“23:29 Fortunate indeed are the women who are childless: Childlessness was normally a cause of great shame (see study note on 1:7), but during this catastrophe, those who didn’t have to see their children starve to death would be the fortunate ones.”

“the days: Our Lord here refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the final desolation of the Jewish state; an evil associated with so many miseries, that sterility, which had otherwise been considered an opprobrium, was accounted a circumstance most felicitous. No history can furnish us with a parallel to the calamities and miseries of the Jews; rapine and murder, famine and pestilence, within; fire and sword, and all the terrors of war, without. Our Saviour himself wept at the foresight of these calamities; and it is almost impossible for persons of any humanity to read the relation of them in Josephus without weeping also. He might justly affirm, "if the misfortunes of all, from the…”