What Does Jesus Mean When He Talks About Vultures Gathering Where The Body Is?

One of the stranger verses in the New Testament comes in Matthew 24:28: “Wherever the body is, there the vultures will be gathered together.” This enigmatic saying is repeated almost word-for-word in Luke 17:37. What on earth are we supposed to make of it?

To begin with, a couple of translation notes are in order. First, the Greek word used for “body” in Matthew’s account is ptōma, which literally means “carcass” or “corpse” (versus Luke’s more generic sōma). Secondly, the word for vultures (aetoi) in Greek can just as easily mean “eagles,” which is how some modern translations render the verse. This ambiguity has led to a variety of interpretations, as we shall see shortly.

Another important consideration here is the context in which Matthew 24:28 and Luke 17:37 occur. Both verses arise in the midst of the eschatological sayings of Jesus, i.e., sayings pertaining to impending judgment.

In the case of Matthew, chapter 24 is part of the famous Olivet Discourse, and the discussion immediately preceding verse 28 is about the tribulations which will soon come on the earth, as well as the eventual and unmistakable return of the Son of Man. Similarly, in Luke’s account, Jesus offers a series of warnings against spiritual complacency, reminding His listeners that many people will not be ready for the second coming.

With this background in place, how then should we understand the verse in question? While admitting its relative obscurity, there are several possible interpretive approaches which help to render the verse more intelligible. The most straightforward of these is to say that Jesus is citing a well-known proverb along the lines of “There’s no smoke without fire.” Evidence for this is found in Job 39:27-30, an Old Testament passage which Jesus seems to be drawing from.

On this reading, the idea would be that Jesus is clarifying for His listeners how the return of the Messiah will be no less evident than the way that “the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west” (Mt 24:27). He then reinforces this lightning image with the image of the birds: just as the presence of an exposed carcass quickly becomes obvious due to the circling vultures, likewise when Christ returns, the signs of His coming kingdom will be made abundantly clear.

A related but slightly distinct interpretation, based on Luke’s version of the text, is to understand Jesus’s statement in light of the question put to Him by the Pharisees earlier in Luke 17:37 about where the Kingdom of God will come (see also their when question in 17:20). In choosing to answer the question in the way that He does, Jesus could be using the metaphor of the vultures to make the point that the Kingdom of God will not be confined to one physical space; rather, it will be composed of all the faithful who are gathered by God’s Word. On this reading, the vultures are symbolic of the people of God, and the body is symbolic of God’s Word.

Another possible interpretation is to take the context in Matthew’s Gospel as evidence that Jesus is providing His followers with a prophetic warning about the terrible devastation which the Roman armies would inflict on Jerusalem in the year A.D. 70. (Notice here that many theologians understand Jesus’s statements in Matthew 24 to involve multiple levels of fulfillment: His prophecies refer both to the end of the world in a final sense, but also to the impending destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in a more proximate sense.)

On this view, the Greek word aetoi employed by Jesus could be a coded reference to the Romans, whose emblem emblazoned on all their standards was the eagle. Thus the saying could be understood along the lines of: “Where those Roman legions are gathered, that is where all that death and destruction is going to take place, so be warned.”

As the foregoing discussion readily attests, arriving at a perfect resolution to the enigma which is Matthew 24:28 and its parallel in Luke 17:37 is perhaps an impossible task. Nevertheless, it is clear that the verse can be sensibly interpreted in a number of different ways, and so we can be confident that Jesus wasn’t speaking nonsense! Lastly, it is worth remembering that the saying could be operating on several different levels, in which case more than one of the foregoing theories might be true at the same time.