Meaning of “GENERATION” in Matthew 24:34. . . What Scholars Say

“Verily I say unto you, this generation (genea, not genos) shall not pass, till all be fulfilled.”

Definition of genea: generation

Definition of genos: race, stock, kin

F.F. Bruce (1983)
“The phrase ‘this generation’ is found too often on Jesus’ lips in this literal sense for us to suppose that it suddenly takes on a different meaning in the saying we are now examining. Moreover, if the generation of the end-time had been intended, ‘that generation’ would have been a more natural way of referring to it than ‘this generation.’” (The Hard Sayings of Jesus, p. 227)

John Nolland (2005):

“Matthew uses genea here for the tenth time. Though his use of the term has a range of emphases, it consistently refers to (the time span of) a single human generation. All the alternative senses proposed here (the Jewish people; humanity; the generation of the end-time signs; wicked people) are artificial and based on the need to protect Jesus from error. ‘This generation’ is the generation of Jesus’ contemporaries.” (The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text 988–989.)

David Brown (1858):

“Does not this tell us plainly as words could do it, that the whole prophecy was meant to apply to the destruction of Jerusalem? . . .  Nothing but some fancied necessity, arising out of their view of the prophecy, could have led so many sensible men to put this gloss upon our Lord’s words. Only try the effect of it upon the perfectly parallel announcement in the previous chapter: ‘That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zecharias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation’ (Matthew 23:32-36). Does not the Lord here mean the then existing generation of the Israelites? Beyond all question he does; and if so, what can be plainer than that this is his meaning in the passage before us? (Christ’s Second Coming, Will it be Pre-millennial? p. 435)

David Chilton (1996):

“Some have sought to get around the force of this text by saying that the word generation here really means race, and that Jesus was simply saying that the Jewish race would not die out until all these things took place. Is that true? I challenge you: Get out your concordance and look up every New Testament occurrence of the word generation (in Greek, genea) and see if it ever means ‘race’ in any other context. Here are all the references for the Gospels: Matthew 1:17; 11:16; 12:39, 41, 42, 45; 16:4; 17:17; 23:36; 24:34; Mark 8:12, 38; 9:19; 13:30; Luke 1:48, 50; 7:31; 9:41; 11:29, 30, 31, 32, 50, 51; 17:25; 21:32; Acts 2:40. Not one of these references is speaking of the entire Jewish race over thousands of years; all use the word in its normal sense of the sum total of those living at the same time. It always refers to contemporaries. (In fact, those who say it means ‘race’ tend to acknowledge this fact, but explain that the word suddenly changes its meaning when Jesus uses it in Matthew 24! We can smile at such a transparent error, but we should also remember that this is very serious. We are dealing with the Word of the living God.” (The Great Tribulation, p. 3)

John Gill (lived 1697-1771):

“Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, etc. Not the generation of men in general; as if the sense was, that mankind should not cease, until the accomplishment of these things; nor the generation, or people of the Jews, who should continue to be a people, until all were fulfilled; nor the generation of Christians; as if the meaning was, that there would always be a set of Christians, or believers of Christ in the world, till all these events came to pass; but it respects that present age, or generation of men then living in it; and the sense is, that all the men of that age should not die, but some should live till all things were fulfilled; see Matt. 26:27-28. . . this is a full and clear proof, that not anything that is said before, related to the second coming of Christ, the day of judgment, and the end of the world; but that all belong to the coming of the Son of man, in the destruction of Jerusalem, and to the end of the Jewish state.” (Exposition of the Whole Bible, Vol 2, p. 240)

Ezra Gould (1896):

“There is general consent now that the prophecy is restricted in time to that generation, v. 34. In general, the historical interpretation of this prophecy is fairly settled.” (Commentary on Mark, p.249)

Eusebius (A.D. 325):
“And when those that believed in Christ had come thither from Jerusalem, then, as if the royal city of the Jews and the whole land of Judea were entirely destitute of holy men,
the judgment of God at length overtook those who had committed such outrages against Christ and his apostles, and totally destroyed that generation of impious men.”
(Ecclesiastical History, Book III, Ch. 5)

Robert G. Bratcher and Eugene A. Nida (1961):

“[T]he obvious meaning of the words ‘this generation’ is the people contemporary with Jesus. Nothing can be gained by trying to take the word in any sense other than its normal one: in Mark (elsewhere in 8:12, 9:19) the word always has this meaning.” (A Translator’s Handbook of the Gospel of Mark, p. 419.)

Albert Barnes (1832):
“This generation ― This age; this race of men. A generation is about thirty of forty years. The destruction of Jerusalem took place about forty years after this was spoken.” (Barnes’ New Testament Notes)

Gary DeMar (1997):
“First, ‘this generation’ always means the generation to whom Jesus is speaking. It is the contemporary generation, the generation alive at the hearing of Jesus’ words… Those who deny that ‘this generation’ refers to the generation to whom Jesus was speaking in the Matthew 24 context must maintain that “this generation” means something different from the way it is used in other places in Matthew and the rest of the New Testament!” (Last Days Madness, p. 33)

Geneva Bible Notes (1599):
“Matthew 24:34 ‘Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.’ This age: the word ‘generation’ or “age” is here being used for the men of this age. For within fiftie yeres after, Jerusalem was destroied: the godlie were persecuted, false teachers seduced the people, religion was polluted, so that the worlde semed to be at an end.”

Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr. (1989):

“A simple reading of Matthew 24:34 lucidly reveals that all of the things Christ the Great Prophet mentions up to this point ― that is, everything in verses 4 through 34 ― will occur in the same generation of the original disciples: “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things are fulfilled.” (The Great
Tribulation is Past: Exposition, p. 65)

Abiel Abbot Livermore (1843):
“Matthew 24:34. This generation shall not pass, etc. i.e., those then living would witness the fulfillment of Jesus’ predictions; which was the case, for the destruction of Jerusalem took place about forty years after, and many then living were involved in the great catastrophe. . . . It is apparent from this verse, that Jesus has been previously speaking of the downfall of the Jews, not of future judgment. . . . Yet forty years accomplished it all. What boundless confidence ought we ever to repose in the promises and warnings of Jesus, since he has so clearly established his claim of an unerring prophet!” (The Four Gospels: With a Commentary, p. 288)

Philip Mauro (1921):
“The Lord’s own predictions and warnings concerning that event, which was then close at hand, were most explicit. And not only so, but He plainly said that “all these things
shall come upon this generation”. Besides all that, He specified the very sins for which that generation was to be thus punished beyond anything known before, or that
should be thereafter, thus making it a simple impossibility that the ‘tribulation’ and ‘vengeance’ which He predicted could fall upon any subsequent generation.” (Seventy
Weeks and the Great Tribulation)

Thomas Newton (1754):
“He proceeds to declare that the time of his coming was at no very great distance, and to show that he hath been speaking all this while of the destruction of Jerusalem, he affirms with his usual affirmation, ver. 34, ‘Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled!’ It is to me a wonder how any man can refer part of the foregoing discourse to the destruction of Jerusalem, and part to the end of the world, or any other distant event, when it is said so positively here in the conclusion, ‘All these things shall be fulfilled in this generation.’ It seemeth as if our Saviour had been aware of some such misapplication of his words, by adding yet greater force and
emphasis to his affirmation, v 35 ― ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.'” (Newton, p. 426)

James Stuart Russell (1878):
“These are all the examples in which the expression ‘this generation’ occurs in the sayings of our Lord, and they establish beyond all reasonable question the reference of the words in the important declaration now before us. But suppose that we were to adopt the rendering proposed, and take genea as meaning a race, what point or significance would there be in the prediction then? Can anyone believe that the
assertion so solemnly made by our Lord, ‘Verily I say unto you,’ etc., amounts to no more than this, ‘The Hebrew race shall not become extinct till all these things be fulfilled?’ Imagine a prophet in our own times predicting a great catastrophe in which London would be destroyed, St. Paul’s and the Houses of Parliament levelled with the ground, and a fearful slaughter of the inhabitants be perpetrated; and that when asked, ‘When shall these things come to pass?’ he should reply, ‘The Anglo-Saxon race shall not become extinct till all these things be fulfilled!’ Would this be a satisfactory answer? Would not such an answer be considered derogatory to the prophet, and an affront to his hearers?Would they not have reason to say, ‘It is safe prophesying when the event is placed at an interminable distance!’ But the bare supposition of such a sense in our Lord’s prediction shows itself to be a reductio ad absurdum. Was it for this that the disciples were to wait and watch? Was this the lesson that the budding fig- tree taught? Was it not until the Jewish race was about to become extinct that they were to ‘look up, and lift up their beads’? Such a hypothesis is its own refutation.” (The Parousia, p. 83,  http://www.preteristcentral.com/pdf/pdf%20books/1878_russel_parousia.pdf

R.C. Sproul Jr.
“Thankfully, God in his mercy has done a great work in waking up many people to their condition. The rapid spread of the doctrine of preterism has been a welcome tonic. No more visits to the chiropractor after making ‘some of you will not sleep’ and ‘this generation shall not pass’ stretch out into two millennia. . . . This position, known as preterism, takes seriously the time frame references of Jesus and the apostles regarding Christ’s return. While all others, especially the most hard-core dispensationalists, are practicing exegetical yoga with Jesus’ promises that ‘some of you will not sleep’ and ‘this generation will not pass,’ preterists read and understand without contortion or embarrassment.” (Foreword to The End of All Things, p.9)

John Gill (lived 1697-1771):

“Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, etc. Not the generation of men in general; as if the sense was, that mankind should not cease, until the accomplishment of these things; nor the generation, or people of the Jews, who should continue to be a people, until all were fulfilled; nor the generation of Christians; as if the meaning was, that there would always be a set of Christians, or believers of Christ in the world, till all these events came to pass; but it respects that present age, or generation of men then living in it; and the sense is, that all the men of that age should not die, but some should live till all things were fulfilled; see Matt. 26:27-28. . . this is a full and clear proof, that not anything that is said before, related to the second coming of Christ, the day of judgment, and the end of the world; but that all belong to the coming of the Son of man, in the destruction of Jerusalem, and to the end of the Jewish state.” (Exposition of the Whole Bible, Vol 2, p. 240)

Milton Terry (1898):

“The affirmation of v. 34, however, does not exclude the fact that no one knows the day and hour when the second advent, with its accompanying phenomena, is to take place. It is to occur during the life-time of the generation then existing, but no one knows on what day or at what hour within the period thus indicated.” (Biblical Apocalyptics, p. 220).

John Wesley (1754):
“This generation of men now living shall not pass till all these things be done ― The expression implies that great part of that generation would be passed away, but not the whole. Just so it was; for the city and temple were destroyed thirty-nine or forty years after.”

Jack P. Lewis (1976):
“The meaning of generation (genea) is crucial to the interpretation of the entire chapter. While Scofield, following Jerome, contended that it meant the Jewish race, there is only one possible case in the New Testament (Luke 16:8) where the lexicon suggests that genea means race. There is a distinction between genos (race) and genea (generation).
Others have argued that genea means the final generation; that is, once the signs have started, all these happenings would transpire in one generation (cf. 23:36). But elsewhere in Matthew genea means the people alive at one time and usually
at the time of Jesus (1:17; 11:16; 12:39,41,45; 23:36; Mark 8:38; Luke 11:50f.; 17:25), and it doubtlessly means the same here. ” (The Gospel According to Matthew, Part 2; Living Word Commentary: Sweet Publishing, p. 128)

C.H. Spurgeon (1868):
“The King left his followers in no doubt as to when these things should happen: ‘Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.’ It was just about the ordinary limit of a generation when the Roman armies compassed Jerusalem, whose measure of iniquity was then full, and overflowed in misery, agony, distress, and bloodshed such as the world never saw before or since. Jesus was a true Prophet; everything that he foretold was literally fulfilled.” (The Gospel of the Kingdom, p.218)

New Bible Commentary (1994):
“Christ’s use of the words ‘immediately after’ does not leave room for a long delay (2,000 years or more before his literal second coming occurs,) neither does the explicit time-scale given in Matthew 24:34. The word ‘parousia’ does not occur in this section but is prominently reintroduced in the new paragraph which begins at Matthew 24:36, where its unknown time is contrasted with the clear statement that the events of this paragraph will take place within ‘this generation’ (Matthew 24:36). This section is therefore in direct continuity with what has gone before, the account of the siege of Jerusalem. Here we reach its climax. . . .

The language … is drawn from Daniel 7:13-14, which points to the vindication and enthronement of Jesus (rather than his second coming [‘parousia’]). . . .  In this context, therefore, this poetic language appropriately refers to the great changes which were about to take place in the world, when Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. It speaks of the ‘Son of Man’ entering into his kingship, and ‘his angels’ gathering in his
new people from all the earth. The fall of the temple is thus presented, in highly allusive language, as the end of the old order, to be replaced by the new regime of Jesus, the Son of Man, and the international growth of his church, the new people of God.

The NIV margin offers ‘race’ as an alternative to ‘generation.’ This suggestion is prompted more by embarrassment on the part of those who think Matthew 24:30
refers to the ‘parousia’ (second coming) rather than by any natural sense of the word ‘genea’!” (New Bible Commentary, 21st Edition, edited by Wenham, Motyer, Carson, France, 936-937.)

Donald A. Carson (1985)

“[This generation] can only with the greatest difficulty be made to mean anything other than the generation living when Jesus spoke.” ( “Matthew” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, 8:507.)

Dr. E. Robinson (1843):
‘The question now arises whether, under these limitations of time, a reference of our Lord’s language to the day of judgment and the end of the world, in our sense of these
terms, is possible. Those who maintain this view attempt to dispose of the difficulties arising from these limitations in different ways. Some assign to (genea) the meaning suddenly, as it is employed by the LXX in Job v. 3, for the Hebrew. But even in this passage the purpose of the writer is simply to mark an immediate sequence — to intimate that another and consequent event happens forthwith. Nor would anything be
gained even could the word (genea) be thus disposed of, so long as the subsequent limitation to ‘this generation’ remained. And in this again others have tried to refer genea to the race of the Jews, or to the disciples of Christ, not only without the slightest ground, but contrary to all usage and all analogy. All these attempts to apply force to the meaning of the language are in vain, and are now abandoned by most commentators of note.” (Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 1)

David Turner (1989):
“‘This generation’ applies to Jesus’ contemporaries who lived to see the destruction of Jerusalem; ‘all these things’ (Matt. 24:34) is limited by the contextual fig tree analogy to the events marking the course of the ages, particularly the events of A.D.70.” [“The Structure and Sequence of Matthew 24,” Grace Theological Journal 10 (Spring 1989)

C.S. Lewis (1960):
“It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.” (Essay “The World’s Last Night,” found in The Essential C.S. Lewis, p. 385)

Robertson Nicholl (1956)
“What is said therein is so perplexing as to tempt a modern expositor to wish it had not been there, or to have recourse to critical expedients to eliminate it from the text.” (The
Expositor’s Greek Testament, p. 294)

Harold Fowler (1968)

“That the expression ‘this generation’ (Mt. 24:34; Mk.13:30; Lk. 21:32) is to be taken in its natural sense, referring to the people living in Jesus’ time. This phrase is not to be applied to the entire race of the Jews living down through the centuries to the present time, however tempting it might be to see their continued existence, despite the terrible judgments just mentioned, as a real wonder, or sign. This definition is sound since Jesus is talking about the ’same manifestation of the Kingdom of God during the lifetime of the Apostles. So “this generation” means ‘the people living rjght now, in these times,’ i.e. the generation in which Jesus was on earth. . . .

A generation is usually considered to cover a period of roughly forty years, If the surest interpretation of a prophecy is to be sought in its undoubted fulfillment, then the fact that every event that Jesus predicted took place roughly forty years after He prophesied it, i.e. from 30-70 A.D., is corroborative evidence that He spoke literally here. . . . That this generation corresponds to Jesus’ contemporaries is corroborated by 16:28 where He promised the majestic manifestation of His Kingdom during the lifetime of His disciples. Similarly, Luke places that same appearance during the lifetime of this generation (Luke 21:31, 32; cf. Luke 9:27). Jesus warned that the final crisis of Jerusalem would occur during the lifetime of men, women and children who even then inhabited that city, (Luke 19:41-44; 23:27-31). Can it be seriously doubted that He had in mind the invasion and siege by the Romans in 70 A.D.?”

(“The Gospel of Matthew,” pgs. 509-512, http://abarc.org/legacy/Bible%20Study%20Textbook%20Series/Books/Matthew%20Vol%204/Matthew%20Vol%204%20Section%2060.pdf)