Matthew
Chapter Twenty-Four

Matthew 24:28

"For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together."
Josephus' Jewish Wars - ensigns of eagles 
 

Albert Barnes (1832)
"Verse 28. Wheresoever, etc. The words in this verse are proverbial. Vultures and eagles easily ascertain where dead bodies are, and come to devour them. So with the Roman army. Jerusalem is like a dead and putrid corpse. Its life is gone, and it is ready to be devoured. The Roman armies will find it out, as the vultures do a dead carcass, and will come around it, to devour it. This proverb also teaches a universal truth. Wherever wicked men are, there will be assembled the instruments of their chastisement. The providence of God will direct them there, as the eagles are directed to a dead carcass.

This verse is connected with the preceding by the word "for," implying that this is a reason for what is said there, that the Son of man would certainly come to destroy the city, and that he would come suddenly. The meaning is, he would come by means of the Roman armies, as certainly, as suddenly, and as unexpectedly, as whole flocks of vultures and eagles, though unseen before, suddenly find their prey, see it at a great distance, and gather in multitudes around it. Travellers in the deserts of Arabia tell us that they sometimes witness a speck in the distant sky, which for a long time is scarcely visible. At length, it grows larger; it comes nearer; and they at last find that it is a vulture, that has from an immense distance seen a carcass lying on the sand. So keen is their vision, and so aptly does this represent the Roman armies, though at an immense distance, yet spying, as it were, Jerusalem, a putrid carcass, and hastening in multitudes to destroy it. " (Albert Barnes Commentary on Matthew 24:28).

John Broadus (1886)
"The meaning of the saying as here applied seems to be, that things will come to pass when the occasion for them exists. When Jerusalem is ready for destruction, the Roman armies will gather and destroy it." (ibid, p. 489)
 

John Brown (1858)
(On I Peter 4:17-19) "There seems here a reference to a particular judgment or trial, that the primitive Christians had reason to expect. When we consider that this epistle was written within a short time of the commencement of that awful scene of judgment which terminated in the destruction of the ecclesiastical and civil polity of the Jews, and which our Lord had so minutely predicted, we can scarcely doubt of the reference of the apostle's expression. After having specified wars and rumours of wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, as symptoms of "the beginning of sorrows," our Lord adds, "Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of all nations for my sake." "They shall deliver you up to councils and to synagogues, and shall be beaten," etc. (Matt. 24:9-13,22)

"This is the judgment which, though to fall most heavily on the Holy Land, was plainly to extend to wherever Jews and Christians were to be found, "for where the carcase was, there were the eagles to be gathered together;" which was to begin at the house of God, and which was to be so severe that "the righteous should scarcely," i.e. not without difficulty, "be saved." They only who stood the trial should be saved, and many would not stand the trial. All the truly righteous should be saved; but many who seemed to be righteous would not endure to the end, and so should not be saved, etc. Some have supposed the reference to be to the Neronian persecution, which by a few years preceded the calamities connected with the Jewish wars and the destruction of Jerusalem." (ibid., vol. ii. p 357)

Adam Clarke (1837)
Verse 28. For wheresoever the carcass is— ptwma, the dead carcass. The Jewish nation, which was morally and judicially dead.

There will the eagles— The Roman armies, called so partly from their strength and fierceness, and partly from the figure of these animals which was always wrought on their ensigns, or even in brass, placed on the tops of their ensign-staves. It is remarkable that the Roman fury pursued these wretched men wheresoever they were found. They were a dead carcass doomed to be devoured; and the Roman eagles were the commissioned devourers. See the pitiful account in Josephus, WAR, b. vii. c. 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, and 11. (Adam Clarke's Commentary On Matthew 24)

John Lightfoot (1859)
"for wheresoever the carcase is, &c. I wonder any can understand these words of pious men flying to Christ, when the discourse here is of quite a different thing: they are thus connected to the foregoing: Christ shall be revealed with a sudden vengeance; for when God shall cast off the city and people, grown ripe for destruction, like a carcase thrown out, the Roman soldiers, like eagles, shall straight fly to it with their eagles (ensigns) to tear and devour it. And to this also agrees the answer of Christ, Luke xvii. 37; when, after the same words that are spoken here in this chapter, it was inquired, 'Where, Lord?' he answered, 'Wheresoever the body is: &c.; silently hinting thus much, that Jerusalem, and that wicked nation which he described through the whole chapter, would be the carcase, to which the greedy and devouring eagles would fly to prey upon it" (John Lightfoot, vol. 2, p. 319).

Date: 09 Feb 2006
Time: 16:17:59

Comments:

"Where the eagles be gathered together" is a direct reference to America and the coming 1 hour war of revelation 18. See also Jerimiah 50 & 51. A warning to repent and get right for the lord for the missles will come across the atlantic and pacific like lighting and devour all.

Date: 16 Apr 2007
Time: 21:51:24

Comments:

Keep in mind this passage is teaching about when the end of the age would come!(matt24:3) The word SOMA in Luke17:37 and PTOMA in Matt24:28(auditory slip?) do not both mean carcass or dead body- Soma means "body" (live body that is!)I believe both should read SOMA. (Eagles of the Near East do eat carrion, i.e. dead fish near the shores of the Sea of Galilee. So not that it matters , but here again is a perfect example of pseudoscientists trying to explain it couldn't be Eagles-yes it could and is without doubt EAGLE). Eagles have tremendous eyesight- which spiritually speaking refers to the gift of prophesy in the body of Christ. When the body gathers( one will be taken one will be left) unto the Lord and begins to function as HIS body we will have the necessary forewarning to know when these things are taking place, and what we should do!