But all these things are the beginnings of sorrows. Not that believers, who always have abundant consolations in calamities, should consume themselves with grief, but that they should lay their account with a long exercise of patience. Luke adds likewise earthquakes, and signs from heaven, with respect to which, though we have no authentic history of them, yet it is enough that they were predicted by Christ. The reader will find the rest in Josephus, (Wars of the Jews, VI. 5:3.)

The beginning of sorrows - Far heavier calamities are yet to come before the end.

All these are the beginning of sorrows - Ωδινων, travailing pains. The whole land of Judea is represented under the notion of a woman in grievous travail; but our Lord intimates, that all that had already been mentioned were only the first pangs and throes, and nothing in comparison of that hard and death-bringing labor, which should afterwards take place.
From the calamities of the nation in general, our Lord passes to those of the Christians; and, indeed, the sufferings of his followers were often occasioned by the judgments sent upon the land, as the poor Christians were charged with being the cause of these national calamities, and were cruelly persecuted on that account.

All these [are] the beginning of (c) sorrows.
(c) Literally, "of great torments", just like women in childbirth.

All these are the beginning of sorrows,.... They were only a prelude unto them, and forerunners of them; they were only some foretastes of what would be, and were far from being the worst that should be endured. These were but light, in comparison of what befell the Jews, in their dreadful destruction. The word here used, signifies the sorrows and pains of a woman in travail. The Jews expect great sorrows and distresses in the times of the Messiah, and use a word to express them by, which answers to this, and call them, , "the sorrows of the Messiah"; they say (r), signifies the sorrows of a woman in travail; and the Syriac version uses the same word here. These they represent to be very great, and express much concern to be delivered from them. They (s) ask,
"what shall a man do, to be delivered from "the sorrows of the Messiah?" He must employ himself in the law, and in liberality.''
And again (t),
"he that observes the three meals on the sabbath day, shall be delivered from three punishments; from "the sorrows of the Messiah", from the judgment of hell, and from Gog and Magog.''
But alas there was no other way of escaping them, but by faith in the true Messiah, Jesus; and it was for their disbelief and rejection of him, that these came upon them.
(r) Gloss. in T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 118. 2. (s) T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 98. 2. (t) T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 118. 2.

Shall deliver you up to tribulation. To persecution. Soon literally fulfilled in the Jewish persecutions. The awful persecution of Nero also soon followed.
Ye shall be hated. Tacitus, describing Nero's persecution begun in A. D. 64, says "the Christians were haters of mankind."