But the court which is outside the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.
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Bede
AD 735
without: They who in name alone are united to the Church, and who neither draw near to the altar nor the most holy place, are cast forth by the rule of the Gospel, and are joined to the nations. For "all the glory of her who is the daughter of kings is from within."
tread: Not only are they driven from the Church, but they also fight against the Church itself, with the heathen as their allies, for three years and a-half. It is not that they only trample upon it then in the time of the Antichrist; but that in that time all the body of the wicked, "in whom the ministry of iniquity already works," is joined as it were, to its own head. THE TWO WITNESSES <a
The holy city they shall tread under foot forty-two months. That is, Gentiles and Jews shall be permitted to persecute the Church and the faithful servants of God; but only for a short time, expressed by forty-two months, as elsewhere by twelve hundred and sixty days, and also by a time, and times, and half a time, which, as St. Jerome observes, is for a year, and two years, and half a year, which three different ways of speaking by years, by months, and by days, are only to signify that God never permits his faithful to be under any violent persecution for any long time. (Witham)
'(On this): The city is the Church ; and these months they are to persecute her and kill, when the false Christ [St. Matth. xxiv. 24] shall come, because she worships him not. Now of this said Daniel, He shall approve the covenant for many, one week; in the half of the week shall cease the sacrifice [Dan, ix. 27]. The half of the week: that is, three years and a-half; and these make the forty and two months which are mentioned. The sacrifice he speaks of is not that of sheep, but the prayers of the upright. And the holy city he speaks of is the righteous, i. e. [those] who are oppressed and trodden under foot by the horn that sprang up in the midst [Dan. vii. 8, 20, 21, 25], which is Antichrist, as Daniel said.
Hippolytus otherwise interprets that which is said in the Gospel, When indeed ye shall see the pollution of desolation [St. Matth. xxiv. 15] : for he says that it is not concerning the Jews, and the laying waste of Jerusalem, that these things are said, but concerning the en...
That is, to the men of this world, that it may be trodden under foot by the nations, or with the nations. Then he repeats about the destruction and slaughter of the last time.
The space which is called the court is the empty altar within the walls: these being such as were not necessary, he commanded to be ejected from the Church.
