<p>22:7- see on 22:11.<br /><em>When the king heard</em>- AV. When the news came to His ears. This may be just the furniture of the parable, or it may reflect the Old Testament impression given that God has a mechanism whereby He is informed of happenings on earth, e.g. of the wickedness of Sodom or the building of the tower of Babel. That mechanism presumably involves the Angels. &quot;When the king heard thereof&quot; implies that as soon as Israel's rejection of Christ came to God's notice, &quot;he sent forth his armies... and burned up their city&quot;.&nbsp;This is similar language to Gen. 6:12;&nbsp;11:5 and 18:21 concerning God 'noticing' man's wickedness at the time of the flood, Babel and Sodom.&nbsp;&nbsp; The judgments with which He reacted on those occasions were typical of the second coming.&nbsp;As Babylon burnt Jerusalem with fire, so it seems certain from many other prophetic references that literal fire will be used by Israel's enemies to inflict her final punishment.&nbsp;The Arab armies will therefore be those of God and Christ, as were those of Israel's earlier Arab invaders.&nbsp;They are called 'sanctified' in Joel 3:9 (A.V. mg.), i.e. 'separated unto' God's specific purpose in punishing Israel.</p><p><em>The King was angry</em>- &quot;Wrath s.w. upon this people&quot; was what happened in AD70 (Lk. 21:23). New Testament references to the wrath of God are often specifically about His wrath with Israel for rejecting His Kingdom and His Son. Of particular interest is Eph. 2:3, where Paul writes of how he had been one of those who were &quot;by nature the children of wrath&quot;. I suggest this refers to his being part of the generation of Jews who had rejected the Son of God; but now Paul could rejoice that God has &quot;delivered us from the wrath to come&quot; in AD70 (1 Thess. 1:10). In 1 Thess. 2:16 he specifically defines that &quot;wrath&quot; as God's wrath upon Israel. The fact he speaks of this as a past status which he had now come out of would make it hard to interpret this as any global statement about what it means to be human. I don't think this passage means that the wrath of God is upon every bearer of human nature. God's own Son had human nature but the wrath of God was not upon Him. God's wrath comes upon &quot;the children of disobedience&quot; (Eph. 5:6). To be a child of wrath therefore has no reference to physical birth, but is parallel to being a child of disobedience.</p><p><em>And he sent</em>- A reference to the common Old Testament concept of the court of Heaven, whereby God is presented as reviewing evidence and sending out His Angels, His &quot;hosts&quot;, in response. Those Heavenly hosts have hosts of soldiers on earth which they can move and use as they wish.&nbsp;</p><p><em>His armies</em>- The Roman armies were God's armies, just as the Babylonians had been. Josephus appealed to the Jews in Jerusalem in AD70 in these terms: &quot;It is God, therefore, it is God Himself who is bringing on this fire, to purge that city and temple by means of the Romans, and is going to pluck up this city, which is full of your pollutions&quot; (<em>The Jewish War&nbsp;</em>6.2.1). The Romans being described as &ldquo;his armies&quot; connects with Dan. 9:26, where they are spoken of as &quot;the people of the prince&quot; - Jesus. We must take the lesson that we can be strongly used by God, but this is no guarantee at all that we are His people.</p><p><em>And destroyed those murderers</em>- Using the word for &quot;destroy&quot; which the Jews had just used in 21:41, saying in response to the parable of the wicked labourers that they should indeed by &quot;destroyed&quot;. Out of their own mouths they were to be judged. The 'destruction' of the Jews for persecuting and killing the Lord Jesus and His apostles was in AD70, when their city was burned up. But the same word is that used in John when the Lord taught that those who believed in Him would not &quot;perish&quot; or be destroyed (Jn. 3:15,16; 10:28). Whatever else may be referred to in this teaching, it could also have simply meant in the first context that those Jews who believed in Christ would not be destroyed in the destruction of the Jewish system in AD70. The same word is used by Peter in predicting the perishing / destruction of the Jewish 'heavens and earth' in AD70 (2 Pet. 3:6,9). This destruction, however, was not going to touch those who were in Christ. They would not &quot;perish&quot; or be destroyed. For in the terms of the parable, they were not the murderers.</p><p><em>And burnt their city</em>- The burning of Jerusalem in AD70. The Roman soldiers who actually did this were directly moved and controlled by God to do so. Stephen used the same word when accusing the Jews of being Christ's &quot;betrayers and murderers&quot; (Acts 7:52).&nbsp;&nbsp; The Romans being described as &ldquo;his armies&quot; connects with Dan. 9:26, where they are spoken of as &quot;the people of the prince&quot; - Jesus.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>