Later text
Luke 23:30BSB
At that time ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’
Intertextuality Pair
Quotation
Later text
Luke 23:30BSB
At that time ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’
Earlier text
Hosea 10:8BSB
The high places of Aven will be destroyed—it is the sin of Israel; thorns and thistles will overgrow their altars. Then they will say to the mountains, "Cover us!" and to the hills, "Fall on us!"
Jesus' lament to the daughters of Jerusalem — "they will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!'" (Luke 23:30) — is a near-verbatim quotation of Hosea 10:8: wĕ-ʾāmĕrû leh-hārîm kassûnû wĕ-lag-gĕbāʿôt pĕlû ʿālênû ("and they will say to the mountains, 'Cover us!' and to the hills, 'Fall on us!'"). In Hosea, this is the terror of Samaria's population facing the destruction of their high places and the approach of the Assyrian army — the consequence of Israel's idolatry. Jesus applies the same oracle to Jerusalem's coming judgment under Rome (70 CE), signaling that the city's rejection of its Messiah places it in the same covenant-violation category as Samaria's apostasy. Revelation 6:16 reappropriates the same language for the final eschatological judgment, extending the Hosean oracle across three horizons: Samaria's fall, Jerusalem's fall, and the end-time judgment.