Matthew 24:29

εὐθέως. Each evangelist expresses himself here in his own way, Lk. most obviously adapting his words to suit the fact of a delayed parusia. Mt.'s word naturally means: immediately, following close on the events going before, the thlipsis of Jerusalem. One of the ways by which those to whom εὐθέως is a stumbling block strive to evade the difficulty is to look on it as an inaccurate translation by the Greek Matthew of פִתְאֹם, supposed to be in Hebrew original. So Schott, Comm. Ex. Dog. ὁ ἥλιος … σαλευθήσονται : a description in stock prophetic phrases (Isaiah 13:9; Isaiah 34:4; Joel 3:15, etc.) of what seems to be a general collapse of the physical universe. Is that really what is meant? I doubt it. It seems to me that in true prophetic Oriental style the colossal imagery of the physical universe is used to describe the political and social consequences of the great Jewish catastrophe: national ruin, breaking up of religious institutions and social order. The physical stands for the social, the shaking of heaven for the shaking of earth (Haggai 2:6); or in the prophetic imagination the two are indissolubly blended: stars, thrones, city walls, temples, effete religions tumbling down into one vast mass of ruin. If this be the meaning εὐθέως is to be strictly taken. θέγγος, applicable to both sun and moon, but oftener applied to the moon or stars; φῶς oftenest to the sun, but also to the moon. Vide Trench, Syn., p. 163.