Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 21:25

"And there shall be signs in sun and moon and stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows;" — Luke 21:25 (ASV)

And there shall be signs in the sun.—See Notes on Matthew 24:29-35, Mark 13:24–31, where the “signs” are defined as the sun being darkened, and the moon not giving her light.

Distress of nations.—The Greek for the first noun means literally, constraint, the sense of being hemmed in, as when we say “in great straits.” It is used by St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 2:4, and not elsewhere in the New Testament. The word for “perplexity” is used by St. Luke only.

The sea and the waves roaring.—The better manuscripts give a different punctuation and reading, with perplexity from the roar of the sea, and of the surge, or wave. In the common reading, we have another instance of agreement with St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1, where the word is rendered “tinkling”—better, echoing, or resounding. Assuming, as has been suggested above, that St. Luke’s report is of the nature of a paraphrase, we may, perhaps, connect this feature in it with his own experience. To one who had known the perils of waters narrated in Acts 27:0, no picture of the more dread phenomena of nature could be complete without the sea and the waves roaring.