What Does Luke 21:24 Mean?
They will fall by the mouth of the sword, and be led away captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the nations until the seasons of the nations are filled.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.THE KEY
The hidden hinge is “until”: the nations’ trampling is real, but it has a season whose measure can fill and end.
THE MEANING
You are shown the violence plainly: people fall by the sword, are led captive among the nations, and Jerusalem is trodden down. Yet the sentence sets an “until” against that domination: the nations’ time reaches its fullness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what is overrun is therefore erased, or that domination can last without limit. Here the violence is real, but its span has an endpoint.
THE ROOT
πληρωθῶσιν
plērōthōsin
GROWS FROM
πληρόω
plēroō
To fill, make full, complete.
“Fulfilled” can sound like a prediction merely coming true; πληρόω carries the image of something filled to its full measure. The verse frames the nations’ time as a span that fills up, not an unbounded condition.
ALSO GROWS
plērōma: Fullness, that which fills or is complete.
πλήρωμα
This related word makes the image of a span reaching its full measure concrete.
anaplēroō: To fill up or complete.
ἀναπληρόω
The same root remains visible in a verb for filling what remains, reinforcing the sense of completion.
πατουμένη
patoumenē
GROWS FROM
πατέω
pateō
To tread or walk; in context, to trample.
“trampled” in this verse is patoumenē. The verse uses a verb whose root can describe treading or walking, here made forceful: Jerusalem is treated as ground underfoot. The word holds ordinary movement and violent humiliation in the same root.
ALSO GROWS
peripateō: To walk or walk about.
περιπατέω
This common walking verb shares the same root, showing the physical act beneath the verse’s image of trampling.
katapateō: To trample underfoot.
καταπατέω
This compound intensifies the same root and makes the force of Jerusalem being trodden down unmistakable.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names domination plainly while marking the span of its reach.
He shall speak words against the Uplifted One, and wear out the set-apart ones of the Uplifted One, and think to change seasons and instruction. And they shall be given into his hand until a time, and times, and the splitting of a time.And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are filled, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, says the LORD, for their crookedness, and the land of the Chaldeans, and I will make it desolations of the ages.But throw out the court that is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it is given to the nations, and they trample the set-apart city for forty-two months.THE THREAD
But throw out the court that is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it is given to the nations, and they trample the set-apart city for forty-two months.Revelation uses the same Greek verb πατέω (pateō), meaning “to tread,” for the holy city being trodden underfoot, and gives that trampling a stated span: forty-two months. The shared root makes Luke’s “until” feel like a boundary around the same act of being walked over.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us