Mark 13:17 Commentary and Bible Study

Then there are the regrets. It will be very hard for those with children; it will be a difficult flight. This seems to say, have special care for your mothers-to-be, and your nursing mothers. It will be terrible for them, because you have got to move at great speed. Take every care for them. ‘Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter.’ These are instructions for that generation of believers, who Christ urges to pray about this before it takes place, on the basis of his prophecy. Mothers and nursing children will all have to escape. This judgment of God on the city of Jerusalem is so determined by God that the only prayer that he will hear about it is that it will not take place in winter or on a Sabbath day (Matthew 24:20) when Jewish travel restrictions would make it harder to escape. They are not to pray that it will not happen at all – the Christians alive at the time are going to have to go through this – but Christ does not reveal the day of the season when it will happen, and this is something they can pray about.