Biblion Bible Commentary
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Of That Day and Hour
Matthew 24:36-44
36 “But no one knows of that day and hour, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only. · WEB
Nobody knows when — and the flood is the comparison, where the people taken away were the ones swept off.
"But no one knows of that day and hour, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only" Matthew 24:36.
The sentence is placed immediately after a chapter of signs, and it governs everything before it. Whatever can be known about the season, the date is held by one person and has not been delegated. Every attempt to calculate it has had this verse standing in front of it from the beginning.
"As the days of Noah were, so will the coming of the Son of Man be" Matthew 24:37.
The comparison is not to wickedness, though the generation was wicked. What is listed is eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage Matthew 24:38 — ordinary life, none of it sinful. The indictment is in the next clause: they didn't know until the flood came. There had been a warning and a hundred-year construction project in plain sight Genesis 6:13–22, and the ordinary went on around it until the day the door shut.
"Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and one will be left" Matthew 24:40–41.
These two verses are usually read as a rescue, and the comparison they hang on says otherwise. The sentence before them ends the flood came and took them all away — the ones taken in Noah's day were the ones swept off, and Noah was the one left. The pairs also make the same point the weeds made: two people at identical work, indistinguishable to any observer, separated at the end by something not visible in the field.
"Watch therefore, for you don't know in what hour your Lord comes" Matthew 24:42. The instruction follows from the ignorance rather than from the signs, and it is the discourse's refrain from here to the end of the next chapter.
"If the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched" Matthew 24:43. The thief image is used for the manner and never for the character — unannounced, at the worst hour, with no second chance to have prepared. And the householder's problem is exactly the one the chapter has been describing: the only defense against an unknown hour is a permanent one.
"Therefore also be ready, for in an hour that you don't expect, the Son of Man will come" Matthew 24:44. Readiness, not vigilance, is what is asked for — and the four parables that follow are all about what a person is doing while nothing appears to be happening.
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