Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Thessalonians · About this commentary
Peace and Safety
1 Thessalonians 5:1-3
1 But concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need that anything be written to you. · WEB
About dates they need nothing written — and the one thing said about timing is that confidence is the danger.
Concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need that anything be written to you. Having just written at length about the coming, Paul declines to write about when. The refusal is the answer, and it matches the Lord's own — the times and seasons are the Father's own business Acts 1:7.
What they already know is the image: the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night. The Lord used it of himself Matthew 24:43, and Peter repeats it 2 Peter 3:10. A thief's arrival is not merely unknown but deliberately unannounced.
Verse 3 supplies the one marker Scripture does give, and it is a mood rather than a date. When they are saying, peace and safety, then sudden destruction comes. The sign is confidence itself, which makes it a sign nobody who relies on it can read.
The simile that follows is exact: like birth pains on a pregnant woman. Labor is entirely certain, imprecisely timed, sudden when it starts, and impossible to postpone once begun. Paul chooses a comparison in which the unexpectedness is real and the inevitability was never in doubt.
settled What this mark means