✨WEB · Luke 23:30
What does Luke 23:30 mean?
"Then they will begin to tell the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and tell the hills, ‘Cover us.’"
— Luke 23:30 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
A great multitude of the people followed him, including women who also mourned and lamented him.
But Jesus, turning to them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
For behold, the days are coming in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’
Then they will begin to tell the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and tell the hills, ‘Cover us.’
For if they do these things in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?”
There were also others, two criminals, led with him to be put to death.
When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified him there with the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left.
Explanation
Luke 23:30 records part of a solemn warning that Jesus speaks while being led to his crucifixion. As he carries his cross toward Golgotha, a group of women from Jerusalem follow him, weeping and mourning for him. Jesus turns to them and tells them not to weep for him, but for themselves and their children, because a day of severe judgment is coming. In this verse, he describes how terrible that day will be: people will be in such anguish that they will beg the mountains to collapse on top of them and the hills to bury them, preferring instant death by crushing to whatever suffering awaits them otherwise.
The immediate context is Luke 23:26-31, the final leg of Jesus’ journey to the cross. The “daughters of Jerusalem” likely represent sympathetic onlookers, perhaps women known for lamenting condemned crimin
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