Translation
Paraphrase
These things will be hard, but they will foreshadow even harder things to come before it’s over; what I predicted about the temple is certain to happen, but the timing will be unpredictable. It will be a long and painful process, and will get more and more painful until it is finished.
Footnotes
1
The picture of “birth pains” was used to convey the idea of certainty and unpredictability at the same time. When a woman gets pregnant, she will certainly experience labor pains if things follow their natural process and she does not have a miscarriage (or an abortion). One can know with certainty that labor pains are coming. However, it is unpredictable when those labor pains will start or when they will finish with the actual birth. Thus it is a picture of something that is certain yet unpredictable. It also depicted a hardship getting worse and worse until the final moment when it is over. However, since He was referring to the destruction of the temple, the result which follows all those birth pains would not bring joy the way the birth of a child does. The destruction of the temple was certain because Jesus had said it would come, but its timing was unpredictable.
The destruction of the temple was indeed a long and painful process. Much of the pain and sorrow was caused by infighting among three rival groups of Jews. The length of the struggle is shown by the following timeline. The city was captured in AD 63, the Jews revolted in AD 66 and expelled the Romans from the city. By AD 69 most of the countryside had been retaken by the Romans and the rebels had fled into the city of Jerusalem for protection. In April of AD 70 General Titus actually besieged the city, but as the Passover approached, he allowed travelers to enter for the special religious holiday. Thus there were many more people present which caused food supplies to dwindle more quickly. At one point in the siege the leader of one of the three rivalling Jewish factions is said to have commanded and achieved the destruction of most of the food stored in the city in order to make his fighters more desperate and aggressive! The breach of the city wall by the Romans happened in August of that same year. A great number of men, women and children were massacred. The scene of the final battle was the temple itself. During the intense fighting, something inside the temple caught fire, but no one could stop fighting long enough to put it out. The Romans succeeded in capturing the temple, killing all the Jews inside, burning what would burn and later they tore the structure down stone by stone.